As you know, I’ve been in Redmond for the past week, and have spent a lot of time with a Windows Phone device. I can’t write about a lot of that experience yet, but I did interview Microsoft’s Charlie Kindel and Greg Sullivan on the record, and much of that appears in this article this morning on the SuperSite. (I’ll have a bit more from this interview in the Windows IT Pro print magazine as well.)
I sat down with Microsoft partner group program manager Charlie Kindel and senior product manager Greg Sullivan to discuss some of the Windows Phone issues that have come up publicly since Microsoft unveiled the system in February and then expanded on that at MIX in March. And this, at least, was on the record.
As an aside, I’ve known both of these guys for a long time, and their moves from other parts of Microsoft to join the Windows Phone team has done much to stoke my excitement about this product. And while I can’t really discuss many things I learned this week, I have yet to encounter anything about Windows Phone to quell the enthusiasm. So far, this thing just continues to impress.
But there are questions.
Why in the world is Charlie Kindel dodging the question about copy/paste again? That’s what worries me. For some things they acknowledge that they didn’t have time and are looking at how to implement things. But every time copy/paste is touched, they start talking all this generic stuff about “we’re listening to users”, “feature set will improve” and, most annoyingly, repeat this smartlinking mantras.
Smartlinking isn’t a replacement for copy/paste, and it’s nothing new either. I have it in HD2. If anything, it will be much more limiting in WP7 because third party applications can’t become destinations from smartlink actions.
I have really bad feelings about this.
Allowing access to more of the native code (for developers such as Mozilla and Skype) is something that could be pushed out with software updates to ‘gen 1′ phones, correct?
IE – there would be no hardware limitations in the first generation of devices where this could not be addressed in the future…
Right.
Just one more Paul:
While I know it does not relate directly to Microsoft’s end of the equation, have you heard any additional details regarding the phone models that will be available at launch?
I’m really hoping that there is at least one model that has a screen as large (and nice) as the HTC EVO coming out soon for Sprint.
Screens with that size should become more popular IMO.
Nothing that I can talk about, sorry.
i know this is a little early and there will be a lot of factors to worry about but do you have any idea what kind of google voice integration we might expect down the road. I use my gv number as my main number and apple tries to make that as hard as possible for me.
No, but if you look at what they’ve been able to do on iPhone with just a web app, you have to think that’s the baseline. I’ve not heard anything about Google working specifically on Windows Phone apps.
@vangrieg Look what happened originally when it was reported that there was no copy and paste. That is all that was talked about. I’m sure they are trying to avoid repeating that situation again. Instead of giving a direct “No” answer, they are saying they are listening because it is probably something that will come in a future update. Easier than saying no directly.
That’s exactly why I have bad feelings about it. I suspect that they are dodging the issue because they don’t want to say “No” but made a decision to not implement it. Because for other issues they say “it won’t be in this release, but it’s on the radar” or sometimes even say a feature will come in future. They try to position smartlinking as a replacement, which is totally lame.
I wouldn’t look at it that way. (And don’t.)
They’ve made a very calculated decision with this release to get several core experiences done right. And these experiences are, in many ways, exactly what Windows Mobile got wrong. It’s a big bet to simplify and to explicitly not do certain things.
But they’re going to improve the platform over time. And while there are questions still about the speed at which these updates will appear, they will happen. So I look at copy and paste, as with many other things as, they’re not doing it in v1. But it’s in the cards. And the reason they’re not doing it is simple. It’s just not a huge usage case. It’s the same reason Apple didn’t do it in v1 on the iPhone: They, too, wanted to get several core things “right.”
So don’t overthink this. The (temporary) lack of “true” copy and paste isn’t a strength, but it’s also not a deal-breaker. And I know this now–which I didn’t before this happened–because I used an iPhone for a year without it too. Life goes on. Don’t sweat this.
I look at it from my personal perspective. Copy/paste is certainly a deal breaker for me – I tried using the iPhone when it didn’t have the feature and it was a pain. Not everyday, but in the cases when I needed it. I won’t list examples here but they were numerous.
So yeah, I can see why they did it, but obviously for me it doesn’t matter because I’ll have to pass on this otherwise excellent OS.
For whatever its worth, the way copy\paste is implemented on Android is very “computer-like”, its like using OSX except your finger is the mouse; you hold it down on the screen and a pop-up menu comes down and blocks everything you see on the screen. Obviously Google doesn’t value design because Android is a very obvious rip-off of the iPhone’s UI (in terms of that tired, old shiny chrome in the UI and how you operate the UI of apps).
Windows Phone 7 represents a fundamental restart for Microsoft, one that will pay off big time in the near future, as it matures. If they just kept on incrementally improving Windows Mobile, it would remain a huge joke and things would be worse. If theres anything Microsoft has that will help keep them in the game, its patients and a whole lot of money.