.. about Windows Phone 7

I visited Microsofts Tech Talk in Berlin about Windows Phone 7 last week. And now after some days as more as I think about those 4 hours the more disappointing I am about it.

Why?
They copied from all 3 successful platforms: iOS, BlackBerry, Android. Just look at the featues and you can tell where they are from. That does not have to be bad, you can copy and make it a great product. But only if they would have copied the best. But they copied a lot of bad thinks, too:

- no shared file storage (incl no changeable SDcards)
- no interprocess communication
- no multitasking (no services, no background processes)
- application can only be installed via marketplace
- no copy&paste

You can do these things to your developers and users if your name is Apple and everything you say will be handled as religion. But if your name is Microsoft and you have lost a lot of developers with Windows Mobile? I don't think so.

Also I did not saw any bluetooth on the OEM restrictions or APIs and because the OEM can not extend the API's there probably won't be any bluetooth for developers soon. And the list goes on: there is no access to the videostream, this means no augmented reality apps!

Somethimes I thought they talk about MIDP 1.0 from the year 2001. Why? Mostly because of:
- no socket connections!! Only HTTP(S) is allowed

I know it's hard starting all over again and they promised a lost of things will come later but aren't they already too late?

I also think MS copied a big mistake of J2ME: developers are getting frustrated if native apps can do much more, if your app looks like a native app but is always slightly different. They made the same now again: developers have to use Silverlight3/C# apps but the apps on the device are not implemented that way (you can tell because the icons for app must be in 2 resolutions as pixel graphics but all icons withing your app will be vectory SVGs). If the apps itself would be programmed with the same language and APIs any problems or restrictions will be found before the release of the platform but now they will be detected by us and it will take long to get them into the platform.
That's why I like BlackBerry: nearly all apps are implemented in Java, this is how they developed a lot of tools they needed and provided them to the community as well. But if your 3rd party API always will be a VM layer on top of your's you don't care.

But MS doesn't seem to care about development community. Another example is their marketplace: As an app developer you can only upload 5 apps within a year for free (if your app is free). And it seems (the MS guy did not know for sure) this is not 5 apps but 5 uploads even the one that failed the MS tests. Didn't MS realize that free apps is what makes appstore successfull?
It's the apps stupid!