Comments on: The philosophical difference between Windows Phone and iPhone

By: Actualización "Mango" a fondo: ¿Es este un "relanzamiento" de Windows Phone 7? | ideasweb.info | Noticias, Software y novedades. Las mejores aplicaciones web, con los trucos más útiles y toda la información es nuestro blog.

Sun, 29 May 2011 16:41:04 +0000

[...] otro lado, con Mango no hay ningún cambio en la filosofía que Windows Phone prometía en sus comienzos. Al revés, Mango es una profundización en el esfuerzo por prescindir de las aplicaciones para las [...]

By: Actualización "Mango" a fondo: ¿Es este un "relanzamiento" de Windows Phone 7? | Linkeando: La Isla Buscada

Sun, 29 May 2011 11:02:18 +0000

By: Actualización “Mango” a fondo: ¿Es este un “relanzamiento” de Windows Phone 7? |

Sun, 29 May 2011 10:29:34 +0000

By: Actualización "Mango" a fondo: ¿Es este un "relanzamiento" de Windows Phone 7?

Actualización "Mango" a fondo: ¿Es este un "relanzamiento" de Windows Phone 7? — Sun, 29 May 2011 09:37:21 +0000

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 08:45:30 +0000

[...] [...]

By: ericf3

ericf3 — Tue, 11 May 2010 21:05:38 +0000

Really an excellent article Paul!!!

You are right on all here!!

By: vangrieg

vangrieg — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 12:27:07 +0000

The problem is more complex than just the UI. If you want to extend the People hub, you need to give programs access to the PIM data (they need to read the contact database, write changes etc.). Obviously, SL as a web technology doesn’t have anything of the sort built in. The severe sandboxing and lack of methods to interact with native code is another example of SL’s web heritage. Gone with the legacy windowing system are all methods for applications to interact with each other (which again isn’t needed in most cases for web). Therefore you simply can’t make a hub that will aggregate data from different applications, and thus you have to do everything via the cloud (which is fine to a certain extent, but there’s stuff like international roaming charges that makes it much less attractive). Another web-ish thing – it doesn’t make any sense to run a service on a server that will activate or somehow modify a UI application. Therefore the whole SNAPI (System Notifications API) is gone, and we can’t even make an alternative alarm clock on WP7. Or take C&P – on the web the clipboard is taken care of by the client, so there’s no C&P support in Silverlight. And so on. Apparently, SL 4.0 is focusing on out-of-browser experience now, but it’s only starting to do so, and it’ll take a while for new features to be ported.

I find this all somewhat disturbing. I still see a lot of promise in WP7 but I also see the long way it will have to go to become a mature and fully functional OS. And, what’s worse, many of the hurdles are not technical but political (i.e. different departments at MS will have to work towards the same goal to make it work).

By: gpsarakis

gpsarakis — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 11:39:38 +0000

The SL team and the mobile/WP7 team are working together. It’s been said that WP7 uses silverlight, as is, not silverlight lite or silverlight mobile. Any changes made to the desktop silverlight version will also find it’s way into Windows Phone.

The thing is, at the moment, that most of WP7 uses Silverlight 3 with some stuff from Silverlight 4 backported. You’re right in thinking that SL3 doesn’t have clipboard support, BUT SL4 does. So this just shows that C&P is coming, it also helps that SL4 is going final soon as well. Then they can go in and update/add things to WP7 as well.

There’s no need to make their own phone specific APIs or w/e, all MS has to do, and what it will probably do, is keep adding things to SL, like with v4 that adds in direct access to webcams, mics, printers etc. If SL can access hardware directly why would a dev have the need for any native code to do the same task? Sure right now things are limited (in the race to get a new OS out that’s been in dev for around 18 months, things aren’t all going to make it in), but they’re coming.

Look at the competition, Android didn’t get worth it till around 1.6, many would say v2.0 and up is the only version worth going with. Likewise with the iPhone, it only took off in the market with v3.0 as far as I remember.

MS knows they have to move quick, and being based on SL they will, SL is one of the projects at MS that has been moving very quick, so it’s a smart move, not only for good UIs, but for overall development. MS is forced to move quick by Apple and Android, so they’ll be silly not to. I expect, if the first phones come out in Sept, that we could get updates as quick as Dec or Jan.

By: gpsarakis

gpsarakis — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 07:31:44 +0000

That’s what I think is the case, same with C&P. You can just tack those on and call it a day but how would multitask (true multitasking) work/flow in the metro UI?

I suppose if you hold the back button maybe you could get a list of tiles for apps that are running? Or hold the start button, either works imo.

I think MS is looking at different ways of getting it done but isn’t ready to show it off or talk about it. They’re more hush hush about things these days.

By: vangrieg

vangrieg — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 07:16:26 +0000

I don’t doubt things will be added, the question is when. I suspect that most limitations are there simply due to the fact that they are the limitations of Silverlight. This is a cross-platform technology primarily aimed at web, so there’s obviously nothing there to support multitasking or native code or interaction between applications or what not – I don’t think that the current SL version even has clipboard support. Microsoft chose between what was available, and the choices were GDI and SL. The latter won because the former wasn’t built for compelling user interfaces; yet together with attractiveness we got a very limited version of an already limited .Net CF. So yes, it’s of course possible to make APIs richer, what worries me is that SL development isn’t controlled by the mobile team. They could make their own APIs for SL, but then you’d have the issue of compatibility with future non-mobile versions on desktop, web or wherever SL is used.