Ex-Microsoft Employee Likens Windows Phone 7 To Vista
In a Monday blog post, Scott Barnes, a former Microsoft product manager for Windows Presentation Foundation and Silverlight, and now a user experience specialist with Melbourne, Australia-based development firm Readify.net, said Windows Phone 7 is an example of Microsoft trying too hard to create a device that is the opposite of the iPhone.
While the simple Windows Phone 7 user experience will let Microsoft react quickly to mobile market conditions, the delays along the road to Windows Phone 7, and the urgency that Microsoft faced in getting it out the door are reminiscent of the situation that existed before Vista's launch, according to Barnes.
"For me, this is the Windows Vista launch, as after some code resets and downward pressure from above, this is almost exactly the same internal conditions Windows Vista team had before their launch," Barnes wrote in the blog post. During this time, the message from Microsoft management was "get it to market, get it fast and we'll come back around for the bits we wanted to put in place," Barnes wrote.
In light of the repeated delays that both Windows Phone 7 and Vista encountered on their way to market, Barnes' analogy makes sense. But the situation Microsoft faces with Windows Phone 7 is also similar to the one it faced with Windows 7: In both cases, the new releases followed unpopular products that frustrated partners and customers and led them to consider alternatives.
With Windows 7, Microsoft was able to show that Vista was an aberration, and company officials have taken full advantage of the opportunity to talk about the great things that happen when Microsoft and its partner ecosystem are communicating closely.
With Windows Phone 7, Microsoft will have a chance to show it's capable of developing a mobile OS that's vital and fun, something that consumers will crave. But that's actually a far greater challenge for Microsoft, because these are the last descriptions that come to mind when describing Windows Mobile 6.5.