Surprised reactions from WP7 demos at GDGT live event

July 31, 2010 | By rush24

During the GDGT live event last Tuesday, July 27th, Microsoft set up a booth to demo the WP7 devices. As you can see from the above video, the attendants came out pretty impressed even at this early juncture of the OS. The hubs and live tiles concept have the workings of becoming a hit with the population, and it is now up to MS to market it like crazy when the OS launches in the fall. I like this quote from the seattlepi blog

The star of the "gdgt live" gadget show Tuesday in Seattle wasn’t the latest Android phone from HTC, wasn’t the slick Web-TV aggregator Boxee, wasn’t the iPhone-controlled multi-room music system from Sonos. It was Windows Phone 7.

MS will also need to address the multitasking issue. They need to clarify how the native apps do multi-task and highlight the advantages of using the Zune pass over services like Pandora or LastFM (a price cut on the Zune Pass subscription or a family pass will go a long way in making the case) The capabilities present will be enough for most users but they need to blunt the “fear, uncertainty, doubt” effects that will undoubtedly come from the Ad campaigns from their rivals in regards to the issue. I think Microsoft should also continue with these live demos around the country and really ramp them up when the OS launches because I believe, it is the most effective way to attract would be users to the platform.

About Rush24

Rush24 loves everything Microsoft and is fascinated by the influence of technology in everyday life.

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Tagged Demo, wp7

http://twitter.com/peterpulmonary1 @peterpulmonary1

the current marketing of zune (eg: in bing search for music) is intended to expand use of zune software as opposed to zune hardware. the final effect as far as WP7 adoption will be "oh good it comes with zune and can listen while doing something else with the phone" instead of "oh, i can't play pandora while doing something else"
http://www.mobilitydigest.com Murani

Honestly, alot more people use their collection of music to play while during other tasks than they do Pandora.
gggg

WP7 .. Wow .. I cant believe MS made WP7… I mean wow… I want to try this out
Jessica W

The lack of native code API is the major shortcoming.

Microsoft gives itself access to native code development, while denying access to 3rd party developers, leaving them in a disadvantage.

Microsoft is giving itself access to lots of features of WP7 that are denied to 3rd party software developers. I assume that Microsoft wants to give an unfair advantage to its own apps and thwart competition.
iWantMore

'Multi-tasking' is the new fad word for the mobile phone space, even though it's far from a new thing on phones. Whether it's new or not doesn't really matter anyway, it is the fact that it's the current buzz word. For example, I used to program for the Amiga computer, which had true pre-emptive, prioritised multi-tasking right from the word go around 1984/85 and it took Microsoft another 10 years to implement and Apple longer. The Amiga didn't win the market even though it was technical superior. These things don't matter – it's the public perception of them that makes sales.

Right now the paradigm is different/changing – the public are picking up on the word 'multi-tasking' in the mobile phone space and it's turning into such a basic requirement that Microsoft are really shooting themselves in the foot because in the end it doesn't matter whether they think we need it or not – everyone is beginning to think they need it and it is a deal breaker without it widely supported outside native apps. This is going to be a huge hurdle for Microsoft, which is shown in this video because people are amazed at how good the UI is but the lack of multi-tasking is like an impenetrable brick wall.

Ryan

Multi-tasking doesn't really exist on phones. The screens on the phones are too small to have multiple windows open. Perhaps the Android's and iPhone's style "multi-tasking" should be call "backgrounding"

I would rather not have a full "multi-tasking" on WP7, but rather managed ones. Perhaps Pandora can integrate with the Zune hub and run in the background as part of Zune.

iWantMore

Multi-tasking is not a function of the user-interface it is a function of the core of the OS Kernel. So multiple windows has nothing to do with the core concept involved.

I'm a bit of choice freak but I think users should have the final decision regarding whether an application is Tombstoned or continues to run. If the user doesn't understand or doesn't want to make a decision then there should be a default action for the application – most likely Tombstoning.

On a modern prioritised, pre-emptive multi-tasking OS it will divide the cpu time in to slices given to each process, dependent on its priority. (In my example in the post above where Microsoft and Apple were mentioned, they used to use (not nowdays) a 'Co-operative' style, which relied on co-operation between the process and the OS Kernel, which of course sucked huge lemons.) I just can't see why Microsoft can't give the user's more control over their experience – especially with the power of modern hardware, helping to counter the effects of poorly written applications in this environment.

Call me an Anarchist but I'd rather be in control of the decisions that affect me – with defaults for people who don't understand or who are more concerned with looking like everyone else.

Tiger

Lack of multi tasking sure didnt seem to slow iphone sales through their first 3 phones. And btw WM 6.X had multi tasking when the iphone didnt. How did that work out?

http://twitter.com/chmun77 @chmun77

Agree. As a matter of fact, it is the multi-tasking that "kill" WM6.x when everything become so lag and memory leaking everywhere. As of technologies now, I think we prefer not to have real multi-tasking phones yet but rather, the capability to put the running apps on sleep states till we wake them up again when we need it. However, as far as I know, WP7 does not provide a way to navigate between running apps unlike Android / iOS4.
iWantMore

I understand what you're saying and agree somewhat but you are forgetting a couple of things – it's 2010 and we have fast new hardware now and more advanced Operating Systems. It's no longer a matter of dealing with Windows 6.x and slow hardware – things have changed and continue to change. Both Android and iOS support their own methods of running programs asynchronously (Android being the better in this regard). It's no good us keeping our heads stuck in the 'Windows 6.5 sand', so to speak – these are rapidly changing times.

People should have choice. Let each of us decide what is best for ourselves.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1037884169 Martin Horník

It looks like most of the people in the video are not going to switch…