“Invasion”

Windows Phone 7 will be a miserable failure.  There are many countless reasons why it is going to epic fail, but here are some of the most important:

1) Microsoft doesn’t know mobile phones from a hole in the ground.  Just look at the current state of Windows Mobile.  It’s built on the Windows CE platform, created in 1996.  Yes.  Let me repeat.  Windows Mobile is based on a platform created in 1996.  Sure, the platform has seen updates, but it’s still based on a world created 13 years ago.  Back when Windows 98 was nothing but a dream.   Windows Phone 7 is based on Windows CE.  Yup.  Microsoft’s newest “cutting edge” Phone OS is STILL based on Windows CE.  They just couldn’t get rid of it.  Thanks Microsoft.  The same bullshit you’ve been jamming down our throats for the past how many years that has NEVER worked right is your platform for the next Windows Phone?  EPIC FAIL.

2) The Kin is a disgusting failure.  The Kin is running a hacked down version of Windows Phone 7.  Don’t believe me it sucks?  Here are a few quotes regarding the Kin and it’s abilities:

“…Lofty goals indeed for a product like this, and unfortunately for everyone, Microsoft misses the mark by a long shot. It’s not even close.”

“…we also take issue with the browser, which is abysmally slow and buggy (it consistently crashed while trying to load any complex web pages like Engadget), and the email client, which seemed to have trouble displaying even the most rudimentary HTML messages”

“While using the One and Two we found ourselves consistently confused or surprised by how many bad little interface problems there are. Not only does the phone make it hard to do simple tasks — and not only are the social networking features poorly implemented — but the handsets are often sluggish, hiccupy, and downright crash-prone. We were told by the devices on more than one occasion that we needed to restart (while performing basic tasks), and often it would just throw us a blank screen while we waited for the device to come back from whatever tragic internal situation was occurring”

That’s enough of that.  If you want to read more though, you can head over to Engadget’s review of the Kin One and Two.

3)  Microsoft does not care about the mobile market.  Microsoft is simply doing this so they can say “us too!”  Windows Mobile 6 SUFFERED from multiple issue that have existed in the Windows Mobile/CE platform for literally a decade now.  Simple fucking tasks like the built in alarm have never worked right (I know I have bitched about this before, but it’s such a shockingly easy feature to fuck up, I can’t believe they have never gotten it right).  Microsoft can’t even code a proper alarm function, nor do they care about EVER fixing it.  What makes you think that Microsoft is going to give a rat’s ass about building a competent useful device and keep it regularly updated?

Which brings me to my next point

4) Microsoft has no sense of time frame in the mobile market.  This market is an incredibly FAST paced arena.   If there is 1 thing Microsoft is definitely not, it’s fast and agile.  Let’s just take a look at some quick time frames:

The Windows Mobile 6 line was released in February of 2007.  They are on Windows Mobile 6.5 right now with nearly zero improvements aside from MAEK BUTTONS HUEG!  Windows Mobile 6 was nothing more than a skin over Windows Mobile 5, released in 2005.  Like I said, WM6 was released in early 2007.  In the 3 years since it’s release, it has seen 1 very very minor update from Microsoft.

In that same time frame of 3 years, we have seen:

• Original iPhone (2007)
• iPhone 3G [With it the launch of iPhone OS 2] (2008)
• iPhone 3Gs [With it the launch of iPhone OS 3] (2009)
• iPhone 4 [With it the launch of iPhone OS 4] (2010)
• Android 1.1 (Feb. 2009)
• Android 1.6 (September 2009)
• Andriod 2.1 (January 2010)
• Android 2.2 (June 2010)

That is 4 seperate iPhones with 4 seperate iPhone OS versions, each one substantially better than the one before it.

4 seperate major Android releases, each one substantially better than the one before it (don’t let Androids weird number versioning system trick you up, each release is pretty substantial).

Windows Mobile, 1 minor release.  The other big players, 4 MAJOR releases.

5)  The Windows Phone Marketplace is a joke.  Microsoft has created a costly CLOSED platform.  You can’t install non-marketplace apps, and developers have to PAY to release $0 cost apps.  How in the fuck is that going to ENTICE developers to your completely fucked platform when there are already other infinitely better and cheaper platforms out there to develop for like the iPhone, Android, and Blackberry devices?  Windows Phone 7 will have no developer support.  Current Windows Mobile has no developer support and it’s been around longer than iPhone and Android.  Don’t believe me? I dare you to download a properly functioning Pandora app on Windows Mobile.  You can’t.  Because developers don’t care about a shit platform and won’t develop for it.

It doesn’t take a genius to clearly see and understand that Microsoft doesn’t care.  They don’t care about making substantial releases and they don’t care about making progress, and they certainly don’t care about mobile devices..  This is even shown in the current version of Windows Phone 7.  They have made no progress other than throwing an interesting skin on top of Windows CE, the same broken piece of shit from before.

It’s pretty pathetic.  I used to be a Windows Mobile fan.  I was using Windows Mobile doing things the iPhone couldn’t even do at launch for 2 years before.  Microsoft could have owned the mobile market, they could have controlled it.  But they don’t care.  They didn’t care about it then, and they sure as hell don’t care about it now.  Thinking anything else is foolish.

But there was one “link” missing.  If you spent time entering birthday information for as many of your contacts as possible, they don’t show up in your calendar.  Even my girlfriend’s Blackberry does this, surely Android can.  I had downloaded an App from the market call EboBirthday.  While the app worked, it still had a flaw.  The birthdays didn’t show up in you calendar.  If you wanted to see what birthdays were coming up, you had to actually open up the EboBirthday app.  And on top of that, if you added in any new birthday information, you had to manually resync the EboBirthday app.  Rats… this isn’t the best solution.

Well, last night I was playing around and Google Calendar, and there is actually an option tucked away, built right in to Google Calendar, that lets you show your contact birthday infromation right on the Calendar!

Here is how you add it on:

Go to the Google Calendar web interface on your computer (google.com/calendar).

1) Click the settings button in the upper right

2) Click the “Calendars” settings tab

3) In the Other Calendars section click “Browse Interesting Calendars”

4) Click the More tab here

5)  You should see an item labeled “Contacts’ birthdays and events”, click the Subscribe link. (While you’re in here, you might want to poke around.  There may be some other calendars you’re interested in adding in to your own as well, such as holidays and stuff!)

That’s it!  In a couple minutes, all your contact birthdays will show up on the Calendar in your phone.  How cool is that?

While this is a nice feature to have available, it highlights one of the issues with Android and Google integration right now.  When you’re looking for a setting, it’s not always in the most obvious place, and some times you can only change it on the web.  However, I do expect as Android matures, we will see a lot more features and options added directly in to the Android OS.  I love Android and I suspect will be sticking with it for a long time to come!