“There’s no kind way to say it: Windows Phone 7 will be a failure,” Galen Gruman writes for InfoWorld. “Announced to much bravado in February as the platform that would breathe life into Microsoft’s mobile ambitions, Windows Phone 7 looked based on very early previews as if it might bring something new and exciting to the table. Back then, I noted that I was impressed by what I saw — with the caveat ‘so far.'”
“No caveats now: Windows Phone 7 is a waste of time and money,” Gruman writes. “It’s a platform that no carrier, device maker, developer, or user should bother with.”
“Microsoft should kill it before it ships and admit that it’s out of the mobile game for good. It is supposed to ship around Christmas 2010, but anyone who gets one will prefer a lump of coal,” Gruman writes. “I really mean that.”
“In Microsoft’s in-depth demo this week at the Mobile Beat conference, there’s no mistaking the big pig behind the gloss,” Gruman writes. “Seeing the UI in action across several tasks, not just in a highly controlled presentation, shows how awkward and unsophisticated it is — I had the same feeling you get when you got a movie based on a great trailer, only to discover that all the good stuff was in the trailer and the rest of the movie was a mess. A pig, in fact.”
Gruman writes, “The bottom line is this: Windows Phone 7 is a pale imitation of the 2007-era iPhone. It’s as if Microsoft decided in summer 2007 to copy the iPhone and has shut its developers in a bunker ever since, so they don’t realize that several years have passed, that the iPhone has advanced… Microsoft is stuck in 2007, with a smartphone OS whose feature checklist might match that era’s iPhone but whose fit and finish would look like a Pinto next to a Maserati.”
Oh, there’s more, much more (three pages worth) in the full article – very highly recommended – here.
MacDailyNews Take: Ballmer’s days are numbered. When the ax finally falls, in the spirit of one clueless sales guy buffoon for another, may they promote Kevin Turner to CEO.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dirty Pierre le Punk” for the heads up.]
I don’t know. but I am just fine with my iphone 3Gs. I don’t need to worry about how bad windows 7 mobile will be or not. by the way, windows 7 is pretty nice. I actually like it a lot.
I just hope Ballmer stays on long enough so that it’s long as it takes.
Nowadays Micro$oft is so predictable that whichever way you read the tea leaves you will never veer far from the truth: Micro$oft is bonks.
Micro$oft’s fingers are too deep into every tech pie that if it were to act in one way it will affect the others. It is so loaded with legacy products that it is not able to act with speed. That’s Micro$oft quandary.
Con,
I am not sure I agree that they handled the PR so badly. Perhaps they could have reacted more quickly, but that is not Apple. They tend to remain silent and work. You never hear the childish snide comments (like moto and nokia have recently made) or pompous blowhard nonsense (of Balmer, calling apple “a rounding error”) coming out of Cupertino. They simply continue to turn out fantastically clever, meticulously crafted, industry upturning and game changing devices. Over and over again.
If other companies want to compete they might consider innovating, rather than trying to make (usually pale) copies of Apple products, often years behind. (as is, apparently, the case with winmo 7)
The IP4 is so clearly (head and shoulders) the best smartphone on the market. That some in the press found one (fairly trivial) flaw and blew it completely out of proportion, I think caught Steve by surprise.He kept expecting reality to dawn on most of the press (without Apple having to call it it for what it was, hyperbole) When it became apparent that either there were a tremendous number of apple haters in the tech press, or someone is spreading a huge amount of money around. (And it may not be a competitor, hedge fund management firms have millions, even billions, to gain via the slingshot or snapback effect by foment ing the market (even though fomenting the market is clearly illegal the FTC appears to be turning a blind eye to the activities of some))
Do not make the false press make you anxious about purchasing an iP4, the phone it is absolutely the best that is available. (ask almost anyone who <actually> owns one)
Perfect? No, nothing is.
But it is far, far ahead of the pack.
Microsoft…yet again the Clay Standard of technology.
I hope Microsoft get’s its act together, even to the extent of just copying Apple like they did with Win7 copying OSX. We don’t need MS to be innovative, just to do a feasible copy of Apple that is usable by a large chunk of the marketplace. Why? Apple has gotten arrogant, and it’s no good for Apple users when Apple rides rough shod over its users with no competition. I don’t like Microsoft products, but I need them to give Apple some competition.
@Zune Tang
Poor fellow, what a pity: your beloved platform is dooooooooooooooooomed!
I just found out that Ballmer died seven years ago. He’s just now realizing it.
@chew
Notice that nobody has demonstrated this problem w/ the Motorola Droid (and now Droid X). Not even Jobs himself…. Why wouldn’t you use the single second most successful smartphone model on a competitor’s network to prove your point?
I think Job’s press conference really damaged Apple’s credibility or honesty…
Statement from Motorola’s Sanjay Jha, former head of Qualcomm’s chipset division:
Motorola Inc Co-Chief Executive Officer Sanjay Jha also said his devices don’t have the same antenna shortcomings as the iPhone 4.
Phones with the antenna on the outside of the chassis — the design used by Apple’s latest model — are more likely to have reception issues if they’re held a certain way, Jha said on Friday in an e-mailed statement. Motorola’s Droid phones compete with the iPhone 4.
“It is disingenuous to suggest that all phones perform equally,” he said. “In our own testing, we have found that Droid X performs much better than iPhone 4 when held by consumers.”
@Wireless
“Motorola Inc Co-Chief Executive Officer Sanjay Jha also said his devices don’t have the same antenna shortcomings as the iPhone 4”
Tell that to his customers..
http://androidforums.com/motorola-droid-x/124825-droid-x-has-same-reception-problem-iphone-4-a.html
http://androidforums.com/support-troubleshooting-droid-x/124078-droid-x-signal-problems.html
I think droid lemmings will soon overtake Apple fanboys for sheer gullibility and hypocrisy.
just FYI to all: the author is the former executive editor for Macworld.
seeing is believing… so lets wait for it… i dont expect Windows Phone 7 to be revolutionary, but Microsoft is putting lot of $$$ and efforts behind it hence need to worry (little bit).
@Perfect
Still trying to sell an Antennagate story? What kind of ditch sh!t are you smoking? I knew when the bitching and moaning about the iPhone antenna started that it was overblown BS designed at one thing — the only chance the competition had to keep selling their smartphones, even though they didn’t have the amazingly sharp screen, the crisp response to touch, the extensibility that comes with having the ITunes App Store right there at that touch.
It’s not a bad strategy, mind you. If people didn’t need the phone function, they’d save themselves a ton of money with an iPod Touch, or get a little more functionality and ease of use from an iPad along with a much bigger display. So you have to attack the phone if your goal is to bring done the iPhone 4, as a product.
But Jobs had the data. He showed it. It was pretty compelling as far as functionality of he phone goes. I’ve been using mobile phones daily for probably 15-17 years, but my first was in 1983. Every mobile phone I have ever used has dropped calls, or been unable to complete them. Those include the iPhone (3 of them), but also include phones from US Cellular (Mototola Razr), Verizon (Palm Treo — far and away the worst of any phone/network I have ever used, and the reason I would not now own an iPhone if Verizon had taken the opportunity to be the exclusive carrier), RIM Blackberry, Sprint, Bell Atlantic, and probably another one or two others.
It appears from return rates and calls into Applecare, that people that actually use the iPhone 4 vs. those that test it in inferior lab settings and inferior/inadequate/inept sets of tests for the conclusions they are drawing, the real-life empirical evidence of my own, and of others, dissuades me from believing that all the hype of the iPhone 4 antenna is nothing but inferior competition doing anything they can to even the playing field. It’s a lot cheaper to run smear campaigns than it is to envision and then developed the advanced technology and R&D platform that is able to consistently expand and develop the technology.
So smear away, Mr. (oh so far from) Perfect. We know who you are and what your real motives are.
Painful to see this happen but the company is lost.
@con
Go buy a HTC or motorola. You will have a new model every other week.
Get John Scully he will get it done………NOT!!!!!!!!!
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Wireless Test Man
“Motorola Inc Co-Chief Executive Officer Sanjay Jha also said his devices don’t have the same antenna shortcomings as the iPhone 4.”
Yes it has different shortcomings….
The droid x is not a a great phone- it has serious call and voice quality issues (and wifi issues and…), Moto did locate the antenna in the top of the phone so grip problems are minimized, problem is it appears that it is too small. (huge signal quality on the order of 20-30% customers, far above the miniscule (1%) of iPhone owners that have reported signal attenuation problems on the iPhone)
The other problem (typically) with top antenna phones is they radiate the most microwave energy into your brain (of any other location- ie proximity to head/brain) and this is a non trivial issue, particularly with moto who have been in hot water on this issue before.
Truthfully the moto droid is not a great unit, if the iPhone had never been made, the droid-x would not even be in my top 4 phones
though in reality… if the iPhone had never been made, the droid-x would not exist, moto would still be pushing some razr POS on us.
“there’s definitely an Apple slant to this article. However there are some very valid points”
Of course there’s an Apple slant to the article. The author of the article used to run Macworld magazine. The article is heavily biased.
Still, there’s no way I’m buying a Windows Phone 7…
Just some anecdotal evidence to throw in the mix. I just got back from a local Apple Store– there are probably 5 on the general vicinity here in S. Florida. I went to get an adapter and to reserve my iPhone. The store was swamped. There were lines five and six deep to reserve and to pick up an iPhone.
This phone will be everywhere very soon. And when some of the games start to take advantage of the gyroscope, I suspect it’s going to get a new round of attention, this time all oohs and ahs.
Courier should never have been ended…
Let me insist… Ballmer’s days are numbered.
“There’s no kind way to say it: Windows Phone 7 will be a failure”. Kind or otherwise!
No offense but what a pathetic bunch.
Rob,
I hate to break it to you but courier was never ended, because it never was. It was just smoke and mirrors, hollywood special effects, no working prototype ever existed (or ever could have). Like apple’s “Knowledge navigator” (and the “flying car” concepts of the 50’s and 60’s) it was just pie in the sky nonsense.
MS doesn’t stand a snowball in hell’s chance in the mobile market at this point. The really amusing thing is they are so blinded by hubris they can’t even see that.
This is highly offensive to pigs. Pigs are highly intelligent animals, and we Apple shareholders can be grateful to the MS Board for not choosing a real pig to run the company instead of the faux-porker Ballmer. A pig would not have made so many stupid mistakes and would be a much better dancer.
When is Microsoft going to realize that Ballmer is KILLING the company.
Ever since Gates left there has been zero innovation at Microsoft…
Zune, Kin.. At least Windows 7 is pretty good (I boot camped it on my Macbook.
You know what. I could be superficial and bash MS but with some perspective I wont bet anymore to some company failure for me to be right or pick what could be considered as a right choice.
This is because as a consumer but mostly as a human being I understand we all benefit from competition. I can’t understand what is happening inside MS and why they are not able to compete successfully, but I hope they will with their future products.
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