Windows Phone 7 Series gets Timotei rinse
Microsoft gets crunchy
Agentless Backup is Not a Myth
Microsoft has airbrushed the Windows Phone 7 Series into a Timotei-style web commercial that glosses over the operating system's limitations.
The company has delivered an ad on YouTube featuring the Anthropologie family of Anna, Miles and Luca - plus the babysitter - smiling, taking photos, playing games and casually flipping through endless screens of messages and Facebook pages on phones that all run Windows Phone 7 Series. You can see the ad that played at Microsoft's Mix10 here.
The ad comes complete with strumming guitar, because nothing says earthy and wholesome like a guitar - right?
Unfortunately, the capabilities of Windows Phone 7 Series are about as far removed from reality as the solar-powered 30-something family Microsoft has manufactured to hype the phone.
The local storage capabilities and ability for applications to run in the background as the user juggles multiple actions implied in Microsoft's ad will be missing "in this release".
Meanwhile, it seems, Microsoft has sacrificed Adobe Systems' Flash that powers so much online content on the phone in order to get Windows Phone 7 Series out the door for its first release. Let's hope Anna and her post-nuclear, nine grain–munching family weren't hoping to catch any YouTube videos on their Windows phones.
As for the ad itself, it follows Apple's iPhone and Palm's earlier Pre ads, the latter of which played up the scrolling screen idea using the scary bun-haired woman in an ever so slightly surreal, bright but sunless orchard. The use of large displays floating over the top of the handset, meanwhile, borrows from Verizon's TV "There's a map for that" attack on AT&T in the US.
Let's hope the phone's capabilities catch up to the ads while the ads do more than say Microsoft is offering what everyone else already has in ways that don't copy others. ®
COMMENTS
Weird.
iTunes and Mail run in the background just fine on my iPod touch. (I have a Nokia 2630 for phone duties; I don't make a lot of calls.)
OS X—which the iPhone OS is derived from—is a *BSD Unix OS, so it has no problems multitasking. Apple therefore aren't "working" on it: it's already supported. Apple have merely *disabled* it for 3rd-party apps. There's a good reason for this: it makes testing said apps a bloody sight easier, cheaper and quicker as they have far fewer combinations and permutations of software to test against.
As for Flash: that'll appear on the iPhone the day Adobe can make version which doesn't kill battery power and crash every ten minutes. Oh, and a 64-bit version would be nice too. It's a terrible piece of software, and every single one of its features is available through other means.
Just because something is "popular", that doesn't mean it's any bloody good. VHS was popular. Ryanair are popular. Popularity doesn't say a damned thing about quality; it's a reflection on marketing and PR, not engineering talent.
Unity Technologies' eponymous 3D game web-player plugin is more solid than Flash. And there's a 64-bit version. And the development IDE is pretty damned cool too. Seriously, if you've never checked it out, take a look. (Disclaimer: I used to work for 'em back in '07.)
RE: Get the facts right
"Regarding cut/paste, it's accurate, but misleading to say that winphone7 doesn't support TRADITIONAL cut/paste."
Are they implementing "cat and pooste" instead? How does a non-traditional cut and paste work? You "cut" (or copy) and later on you "paste". How can you do that in any way that doesn't involve "cutting" and "pasting"?!?!?!
"MS apps will immediately support multitasking, while 3rd party apps will be suspended when the user switches app."
Oh, you mean the same type of multitasking that the iPhone has then? I've heard that described as "not multitasking" a large number of times (usually by MS fanbois). Frankly, given MS track record in software, I'm surprised it multitasks at all.
"Not saying that MS are a fault free organisation, but they don't deserve the constant stream of attacks they get from certain members of the press either."
I would disagree. They're very smug about having leading market share for their desktop OS. Their own ads are always so saccharin-coated they make me want to vomit. I could understand it if their OS and other software was great but it isn't. It's second rate in every way and riddled with security holes... (do I need to go on?!?)
RE: Ummm....
"I like it. Much 'fresher' than the now dated looking iPhone OS."
You're supposed to mark your post as a joke if you're going to write stuff like that.
It is "fresh" in the same way that things that fall from dogs behind can be considered "fresh" when there's still steam coming off and the dog is still straining...
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