Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Windows Phone 7

Lukas Mathis:

At first, it would seem as if the lack of iTunes support for WP7 would be a disadvantage. I disagree. Not having to rely on iTunes for syncing is really, really nice.

[…]

You get to the Start Screen by pushing the phone’s Windows button. Unlike the iPhone’s home button, the Windows button is a truly idempotent reset button. It doesn’t matter what you’re currently doing, or how often you push the button; pushing the Windows button always resets the phone to the same known state. It always opens the Start Screen at the top scroll position.

[…]

This is a much better solution than iOS’s «let’s put custom a browser inside every app» solution. The WP7 browser always looks and works the same, always offers the same features, and always uses the same history, tabs, and bookmarks data.

[…]

I really like the WP7 keyboard. In fact, I think it’s better than the iPhone’s. It does all of the behind-the-scenes things virtual keyboards are supposed to do[…] And it does a bunch of additional things. For example, punctuation keys sound different from regular keys, and it makes yet another sound if it auto-corrects a word. So you don’t have to keep looking at the text, you can keep your eyes on the keyboard. If WP7 changes a word and you have to make sure it actually did the right thing, it’ll tell you.

Great article.

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"Great article."

Wow. That is worth a full read. A very nice overview.

(FWIW, I'd bet on Windows Phone ending up as the iOS alternative instead of Android. Someone will build a viable alternative platform eventually, and Google just seems too autistic to me. I think Gruber is wrong about a lot of things these days, but I do agree with him that Chromebook seems like Google's "natural" platform.)

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