I attended Microsoft’s TechEd 2010 conference in New Orleans a few weeks ago, and the most notable moment was they keynote presentation on the first day. During the presentation they had one of their head dorks come up and give a quick demo of Windows Mobile 7. It looked great! They’ve got some great ideas for usability as far as layout and organizing the different functions, I was really impressed during the keynote and I wanted to see more.
So, I hit the WinMo booth in the vendor hall. They had a slew of WinMo 6 and 6.5 devices on pedestals (fucking lol@that) for people to mess with, but no WinMo7. A quick conversation with one of the booth dorks and we learned that they couldn’t even let us touch it, but they would show it to us. A demo ensued and questions were asked, and I found myself walking away from the booth mid-demo with my nose up. Not only is it a laggy piece of shit like every other WinMo device in recorded history, but they’ve followed Apple’s approach to multitasking. Apple’s approach to multitasking is bullpoopus. That’s right, I said bullpoopus. There isn’t a more ridiculous way to describe how ridiculous this concept of multitasking is. I’m serious.
Ok so multitasking is doing more than one thing at one time, i.e. simultaneously doing two or more things. Yes? We’re in agreement on that, unless you’re a moron. Right, and Apple has come up with thier own version of this concept (fucking surprised? no.), where when you switch applications, the app that just got sent to the background essentially gets paused. Wait…what? That’s not multitasking. Microsoft has adopted this same approach and because of this I am convinced that every person on the WinMo team is an idiot. I can’t think of a bigger mistake than botching multitasking. Oh wait, yes I can – putting out another version of a laggy bullshit mobile OS that’s still laggy bullshit. But other than that, I can’t think of anything worse than botching multitasking.
What I expect from a multitasking capable device is that when I’m using Pandora and I want to look at my email, I can look at my email while still listening to Pandora. I run Viigo, Twitter, Google Maps with Latitude, and a handful of other apps that I’m not always running in the foreground, but that I always want to be updating and active when they are in the background. If a device can’t do this, I don’t want it. That leaves me with Blackberry and…..uh….what? Android? I’d kill for an Android phone but since I get my Blackberry for nothing…well you know.
Anyway, WinMo7 is bullshit. That’s all I’m saying. I have no doubt that it will sell like hotcakes despite its flaws, as the iPhone has done since its initial release. It’s flashy and hip. People dig that.
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