Comments on: Is Mobile Diversity A Good Thing? http://www.appdots.com/blog/2009/03/30/is-mobile-diversity-a-good-thing/ Programming for Mobile Platforms Mon, 18 May 2009 14:56:25 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9 hourly 1 By: Shiraz http://www.appdots.com/blog/2009/03/30/is-mobile-diversity-a-good-thing/comment-page-1/#comment-11 Shiraz Tue, 31 Mar 2009 03:45:41 +0000 http://www.appdots.com/blog/?p=217#comment-11 I believe MS is more concerned with the end user and less so with the 3rd party developers. That is a philosophy that will more than likely change in the not too distant future in light of the success of the iPhone and the App store. As to original design philosophy of Windows Mobile: Think they were trying to extend the standard Windows desktop/server experience to the mobile arena. Would have worked fine if the hardware manufacturers played along. Having all hardware built from the ground up with the OS is novel for a PC. I personally don't think it has done anything other than make Macs more expensive, but when you're limited by the level of hardware you have available building OS and hardware hand in hand winds up benefiting the developers considerably. Of course, if hardware manufacturers worked on standardized drivers for their hardware running Windows Mobile, quite a bit of this head ache could be eliminated from the developer plate. Update the app to work with BLAH set of drivers and in theory, you're good to go. Rambling again. Microsoft tries the clusterbomb approach to market share. Dumb it/Cheap it down to the point where Joe Average can acquire/use your product. Way more Joe Averages out there. I believe MS is more concerned with the end user and less so with the 3rd party developers. That is a philosophy that will more than likely change in the not too distant future in light of the success of the iPhone and the App store.

As to original design philosophy of Windows Mobile: Think they were trying to extend the standard Windows desktop/server experience to the mobile arena. Would have worked fine if the hardware manufacturers played along. Having all hardware built from the ground up with the OS is novel for a PC. I personally don’t think it has done anything other than make Macs more expensive, but when you’re limited by the level of hardware you have available building OS and hardware hand in hand winds up benefiting the developers considerably.

Of course, if hardware manufacturers worked on standardized drivers for their hardware running Windows Mobile, quite a bit of this head ache could be eliminated from the developer plate. Update the app to work with BLAH set of drivers and in theory, you’re good to go.

Rambling again. Microsoft tries the clusterbomb approach to market share. Dumb it/Cheap it down to the point where Joe Average can acquire/use your product. Way more Joe Averages out there.

]]> By: brett http://www.appdots.com/blog/2009/03/30/is-mobile-diversity-a-good-thing/comment-page-1/#comment-10 brett Tue, 31 Mar 2009 01:14:06 +0000 http://www.appdots.com/blog/?p=217#comment-10 Microsoft gives the ODM (original device manufacturer) options and it is up to them to run with whatever form factors they can get the OS on. It is a customer oriented thought process, but if developers are stuck supporting 15 different device formats, customer experience with software may vary from device to device. That is bad for the entire platform in my opinion, but I'm not sure what the answer is. Microsoft gives the ODM (original device manufacturer) options and it is up to them to run with whatever form factors they can get the OS on. It is a customer oriented thought process, but if developers are stuck supporting 15 different device formats, customer experience with software may vary from device to device. That is bad for the entire platform in my opinion, but I’m not sure what the answer is.

]]> By: justin http://www.appdots.com/blog/2009/03/30/is-mobile-diversity-a-good-thing/comment-page-1/#comment-9 justin Mon, 30 Mar 2009 16:39:48 +0000 http://www.appdots.com/blog/?p=217#comment-9 I wonder if Microsoft thinks they're doing us a favor when they separate out everything into 20 different "confusing" versions? I wonder if Microsoft thinks they’re doing us a favor when they separate out everything into 20 different “confusing” versions?

]]>