Windows Mobile 6.5 does not deliver

Just a few weeks back, Steveb again quite candidly and openly said MS had taken the eye off the ball with WM. Over a year ago he fired the whole WM management group (who have real responsibility for WM) and most of the WM developers and gave the job to serious systems people from the server side of the business, and hired in some smart outsiders. The focus since then has been on WM7. WM6.5 is just a stop-gap update to prettify a spandex granny UI, add some new device support, &c.

BTW, that doesn't mean WM6.5 is rotten, only that the 'Pocket PC' paradigm CE/WM was developed for has moved on considerably from the late 90s as device feeds and speeds ramped up and component prices dropped. WM might be old and the UI somewhat clunky, but for millions of users worldwide it still provides a richer functional set than anything else out there. And better dev tools, better business apps, and a much much much broader base of hardware support. By a very long chalk.
 
ToxicBunny said:
How do you figure WM7 is vapourware?
Click to expand...

This is typical modus operandi of MS.

Back in 1994, Windows 95 touted features which never made it in, then came XP which also bragged of features which never made it in and then Vista which likewise had features which never made it in (such as an improved file system) followed by Win 7. Windows Mobile is a similar situation.

Why can't MS release Win 7 Mobile functionality now in Win Mobile 6.5 instead of d-cking around? Why are they dragging their feet?

Well they either can't or they won't.
 
bex.cpt said:
The issue is not DOES WINDOWS MOBILE DELIVER it should be DOES MICROSOFT EVER DELIVER? :rolleyes:

Microsoft has become the biggest multi-national company providing poor, expensive & unstable software and yet we continue to support them. So lets not be surprised that once again Microsoft has supplied us with a operating system that has bugs and short comings. history just repeats it self.
Click to expand...

Well said. +10000000
 
But that then goes for any concept, or something in development - I've seen tons of concept cars never make it to production... features removed from games during development, etc etc etc.

Not saying Windows Mobile is perfect, but I'd take it any day over Symbian or some of the other OS's on some brands... Can't really comment on Apple as I've never owned one, but probably wouldn't like it because of the restrictions put in place by Apple.
 
Come on man Microsoft is AWESOME!!!!

Serious I'm sick and tired of hearing how crap Microsoft is from people. They are good. Windows is the most widely used operating system, Office is brilliant. You can play all the games on Windows. It's easy to use..........
 
bex.cpt said:
The issue is not DOES WINDOWS MOBILE DELIVER it should be DOES MICROSOFT EVER DELIVER? :rolleyes:

Microsoft has become the biggest multi-national company providing poor, expensive & unstable software and yet we continue to support them. So lets not be surprised that once again Microsoft has supplied us with a operating system that has bugs and short comings. history just repeats it self.
Click to expand...

Which MS products are unusable?

I work in IT - please show me one piece of software that is 100% stable, from any company.

I've seen many other software companies providing software far worse than Microsoft.
 
xrapidx said:
Yeh - MS is useless, useless products, useless staff, useless company - its no wonder they became one of the least successful companies of all time, and went under right after opening their doors in 1975.
Click to expand...

They're not useless in everything. They got their foot early in the door and have choked the personal computer OS market, the corporate server market, server OS market and Office productivity suite markets. Despite that MS has been a failure with the stagnant development of Internet Explorer after it won against Netscape, junk release of Windows Vista and other rubbish products which were touted by MS as better than their competition but have been sub-par or only just on par but not as good as the hype or complete failures - MS Origami, Zune, Xbox, Xbox360, PlayForSure, Windows Mobile, Windows Vista, Windows ME, etc.

Obviously xrapidx the world isn't black and white. Just because a company is successful in a few high profit core segments does not mean they will be perfect in everything - but with all that capital there is no reason why MS can't get things right in more segments and people can stop buying the hype. MS monopolies in the Office suite market, server market, browser market and PC OS market is also not exactly a good thing, they won with good products but they now release mediocrity.
 
Pooky said:
Come on man Microsoft is AWESOME!!!!

Serious I'm sick and tired of hearing how crap Microsoft is from people. They are good. Windows is the most widely used operating system, Office is brilliant. You can play all the games on Windows. It's easy to use..........
Click to expand...

Microsoft bashing is the 'cool' thing to do... :rolleyes:
 
Oh and to add to my previous post.

Microsoft Games are awesome as well!!

Age Of Empires was brilliant!
Flight Simulator!
 
Pooky said:
Come on man Microsoft is AWESOME!!!!

Serious I'm sick and tired of hearing how crap Microsoft is from people. They are good. Windows is the most widely used operating system, Office is brilliant. You can play all the games on Windows. It's easy to use..........
Click to expand...

But MS is not just about Windows. Why can't you just look at the long list of products MS bragged about and sunk good competitors with vapourware only to never release what they promised or release stuff with most of these highly touted features missing. MS tried the same thing with WinMobile vs Apple iPhone and Co. Why can't MS just get it right and release what they brag about in Win Mobile 7 now....? Was Win Mobile 6.1 as good as it was promised to be?
Was Win Mobile 6.5 as good as it was promised to be? What makes people think that 7 will be as good as MS say it will? What makes people think that Android/iPhone OS/Symbian won't get better than they are now in time for Win Mobile 7?

Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.
 
Please, provide even a small list of products that MS have released with missing features that have in and of themselves sunk competitors?
 
ToxicBunny said:
Please, provide even a small list of products that MS have released with missing features that have in and of themselves sunk competitors?
Click to expand...

Oh do your own research man. I'm not going to do it for you. It's all there.

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/1998/12/16974
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/Q4.06/4E2A8848-5738-45B1-A659-AD7473899D7D.html
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com/blog_en/a-bit-of-vaporware

One of the funniest things about Microsoft is how predictable they are. Each and every time they perceive a threat to their cash cows - be it Windows, Office or completely new models of software distribution, they have the power of concocting an underwhelming and barely credible product that is either utterly fictitious, as to damage the sales of their competitors that actually have taken the time to develop real products, or is so infuriatingly flawed that it hampers the credibility of the whole model its competition is trying to steer the market towards.

I first observed it with Windows for Pen Computing, a response to the Newton, to the Momenta and to the GEOS-based Tandy and Casio über-PDAs. Then there was the Cairo/WinFS database/file system that was never delivered, a more generic confusion tool for the times some other vendor promised a better way to manage data. It span decades without as much as a working prototype.

I also remember the flurry of multi-touch things after Jeff Han demo went viral. From Surface to silly interaction on a precariously balanced notebook screen. There was a video of that one here, but Microsoft canned Soapbox as soon as they realized they could not compete with a Google-backed YouTube and the video is toast.

More recently, we saw Project Natal overpromise a sci-fi worthy way of interacting with games, complete with a special-effects covered video, over the more realistic and obviously less impressive offerings from Sony and Nintendo that were actually being launched. Did you see articles on the stuff being introduced at the same show? Me neither. It was all Project Natal.

Milo and Kate is quite impressive, but if Microsoft can do that, I don't know why they are wasting their time launching Windows versions - they could release a notebook version of HAL-9000. Or Skynet.

And now, under the buzz of a gigantic iPod Touch, an iNewton or whatever the Apple tablet may be called, Microsoft shows this: the "astonishing" (according to Gizmodo) Microsoft tablet, with software working so well you can't possibly trace its Windows heritage.

It's like Apple pretending the Knowledge Navigator was to be a real product about to launch instead of a fancy concept.

But, again, that's the Microsoft and that's why we love them.

At least I do. They make me laugh.

And, just to finish it off, the classic video of the Longhorn PDC2003 video. Unless you want to be disappointed with Courier or Natal, consider how this video relates to the actual shipping Windows Vista:
Click to expand...

http://www.dieblinkenlights.com/blog_en/a-bit-of-vaporware

Microsoft’s Basic Vaporware Strategy.

That Windows Mobile roadmap sounds more like a scenic route for Microsoft, which has rapidly lost mobile platform market share (just a few years ago, it could claim a 24% share of smartphones, now it’s down to around 9%) and has been embarrassed by the rapid rise of the last three generations of iPhone.

How can it possibly afford to piss away another full year with just incremental improvements to its crusty old Windows Mobile platform before delivering its promised vaporware panacea? Oh wait, that’s the company’s normal business plan: deliver crap into the market and then float a toxic cloud of promises that kills off superior products until there’s no options left but to buy Microsoft’s crap.

After several years of this, Microsoft’s crap hardens into something that can be used to make tools or start fires, allowing the company to continue selling its crap without competition. This worked well for Windows on the PC desktop and in the server market, but isn’t working well at all in consumer devices. Windows Mobile and the Zune and the Xbox are all failing to kill off their competitors, outsell them, or even make much of a profit after a decade of trying.
Click to expand...

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2009/...tners-and-what-it-means-for-apple-and-google/

Just google "Microsoft vaporware".
 
Last edited:
Tennis!

I love reading these threads ... it's like watching tennis ... back & forth forever!

Now me ...
I use Ubuntu 9.10 beta (64bit) with OpenOffice & love it.
I use Windows 7 RC (64 bit), with MS Office 2007 & love it.

I'm not very knowledgeable about the backend products, except for MS SQL/AS server, because I develop on it & I thoroughly love it too! (but QlikView IS better at rapid delivery of great BI!).

The only MS product I really don't like is IE ... Firefox is much better!
 
Last edited:
you're the one claiming it PeterCH... give at least one example of the nonsense you're spouting please...
 
ToxicBunny said:
you're the one claiming it PeterCH... give at least one example of the nonsense you're spouting please...
Click to expand...
I'd also like to know.

Microsoft Expression Encoder is pretty much the only app from them that I disliked but other than that, in terms os OSes MS have made up for their balls up called Vista with Windows 7.
 
Well I've only been using Windows Mobile 6.1 on my HTC Touch Pro2 for 2 weeks now, but these are some of my thoughts:

  • Windows Mobile is more complex than Symbian
  • It has a lot of useful built in business apps
  • Can interface very well with a Windows network
  • Isn't very finger friendly, icons still very small
  • Seems to be limited to 65k colours only which can cause banding
Overall, I quite like Windows Mobile, and I look forward to playing with 6.5 when the official TP2 firmware is out. I've played briefly with an iPhone, and while it is very nice, the lack of multi tasking and other restrictions on it would annoy me too much.

I haven't used an Android based phone, nor BlackBerry. The latest Symbian is nice but somehow feels very old at the same time.
 
feo said:
I'd also like to know.

Microsoft Expression Encoder is pretty much the only app from them that I disliked but other than that, in terms os OSes MS have made up for their balls up called Vista with Windows 7.
Click to expand...

Did you look up any of those links or are you a die-hard 'MS can't do evil' guy?

I can bash Apple. Apple's removal of ExpressCard slots on MBPs is stupid.
Apple's time machine is not very nice.
Apple's Spotlight needs to be improved.
Apple's Cinema Displays are overdue for a refresh, hence I run a 30 inch Dell S-IPS panel.

I bash both fairly I think. Just that Windows for me sucks more and MS is a very wealthy company. FOr them to charge so much and release such mediocrity is very weak when a much smaller company releases superior products- yes Apple.
 
PeterCH said:
Did you look up any of those links or are you a die-hard 'MS can't do evil' guy?

I can bash Apple. Apple's removal of ExpressCard slots on MBPs is stupid.
Apple's time machine is not very nice.
Apple's Spotlight needs to be improved.
Apple's Cinema Displays are overdue for a refresh, hence I run a 30 inch Dell S-IPS panel.

I bash both fairly I think. Just that Windows for me sucks more and MS is a very wealthy company. FOr them to charge so much and release such mediocrity is very weak when a much smaller company releases superior products- yes Apple.
Click to expand...
Superior products that my wallet can't handle. :sick:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X