Microsoft Announces Windows Phones 7 Series

"And you're forgetting there are literally billions and billions of dollars of bar code scanners, medical equipment, logistics devices, etc, that run WinMo. There is no clean break. That I can assure you..."

"Though the leak only shows a few documentation screenshots, it already tells us a lot about the Windows Phone development experience. It further suggests that backwards compatibility is almost entirely sacrificed; most current applications use native code, and for most developers that's no longer going to be an option. "

-http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/02/windows-phone-7-series-development-kit-info-leaks.ars

Microsoft are nothing if not consistent:

http://www.thestreet.com/_yahoo/story/10684355/1/exclusive-microsoft-crashes-phone-bash.html

Plays for Sure - anyone?

"This is a very different product from Win MO 6.5. But that is a good thing"

No it's not.... It's a very similar product. The underlying WinCE is very similar too... None of these journalists have apparently asked to see any preliminary SDK.

And you're forgetting there are literally billions and billions of dollars of bar code scanners, medical equipment, logistics devices, etc, that run WinMo. There is no clean break. That I can assure you... On the UI side, yes, but as far as backwards compatibility goes, no. For example, 6.5 is heavily touch sensitive, but it will run older apps written for PDAs that had no touch capability (Pocket PC 2003 apps run fine on 6.5).

Granted most enterprise apps are high volume that should rely on minimal input, for example scanning a thousand bar code labels shouldn't require doing anything other than holding the device trigger. A touch sensitive UI or not is ultimately pointless in those cases.

WinMo is not a consumer platform -- 7 is designed to give it a more friendly UI, that's it. Sort of like XP was designed to be a more consumer friendly version of Win 2000, but ultimately has it's origins in business and was designed to service that market primarily (but be accessible to consumers as well).

There will be no great change in multi-tasking.

Christopher,

I'm not trying to denigrate Windows Phone 7 in any way. Just pointing out that the "true" multitasking does not appear to be part of that OS. His answer is VERY telling. If it did what you think it would, why would that VP not simply answer "Yes, it can fully multitask"?

I have not seen anything that seems to indicate older apps will run on this OS. It appears Microsoft made a clean break from older versions, which looks like a good decision. More info about 3rd party apps are on their way, but I doubt older apps will run right out of the box. They are not able to use any of the modern features of this OS. No touch, no notification as you point out, etc. Probably a whole new API for development.

Everything shown on this OS so far indicates its meant for consumers. Enterprise users don't care about facebook integration, zune music pass or xbox live. Maybe Microsoft will show off more enterprise features in the future, but right now it screams consumer product to me.

This is a very different product from Win MO 6.5. But that is a good thing.

That answer is a non-answer by the MS VP. There is multitasking, as the WM7 experience has been architected as to not jettison app compatibility with prior generations of WinMo apps that require it. The only thing that Joe is saying is that the notification system has been changed -- what used to be in the bar at the top as singular event notifications, can now be functional in and of themselves. And you can link between running apps in a manner differently than the somewhat kludgy task-list drop-down in the upper right corner. What he is referring to is that new apps will need to be written in such a way to notice the new notification system -- running WinMo 6 enterprise apps, for example, won't integrate into this new system. It would appear to be a more functional version of the system tray... Basically, it was like running Windows 3.1 apps on Windows 95. They had no idea what to do with the tray, since as far as they were concerned, it didn't even exist.

Like I said, you mac people are trying to bring everyone down to your level. And suddenly you'll go tone deaf whenever Apple adds multi-tasking to their product and you'll completely forget it couldn't do it for 3 years. You need to remember -- the core market for WinMo has been, for the past decade, enterprise customers. Their software, and their experience will not be jeopardized for potential consumer gains, which I don't think MS believes it will actually capture. I believe their marketing strategy is to remain viable in the enterprise space and have enough spill-over into the consumer sector as to not lose mind-share of IT execs making purchasing decisions.