inspired by “Motorola later this year will become the first of the top five handset makers to launch a mobile phone based on Microsoft software, industry sources said Thursday.” http://news.com.com/2100-1039_3-5053475.html?tag=fd_top
Got me thinking, Microsoft is known for very useful (good), very flexable(good) and very buggy (not so good) software. The Windows blue screen is known world wide and “The server crashed again, everyone shut down” is not uncommon at work sites.
The cellphone is manily a conveinence, but it is also an emergency communication device, one that your very life might depend on some day. I for one don’t trust Microsoft to make a cellphone OS that won’t crash - because if it can, you know when it will crash (refer to Murphy’s law for more details).
In a market where mobile phone software has been 100% bug free (as far as I know) since it started, it would be simply not acceptable (even within MS) to create a phone OS that would ever crash.
That said, I don’t trust microsoft. I expect to see BSODs on those mobiles.
oh. and you can forget intuitiveness!
(incedentally - I am a bit disappointed in my expensive Samsung mobile. It’s stylish and ultra cool and all. But it’s about as intuitive as a space ship control panel from a 1960s Sci-fi film)
Actually I would give them intuitivness they have had years of experence with not only windows but pda’s.
I have had one of the newer audiovoxes which has almost every feature you could (speaker phone, voice dialing, even voice memos, data cable for PC sync) want but the UI is terriable, so much so that it went back about 1 week after I got it. It seems like cell phones need a better UI.
I’m convinced Microsoft wrote the OS thaty controls my cable box, because it will often hang, and it crashes every other day.
Microsoft tends to make very bloated software, with features that will ensure they prevail in checklist comparisons of similar products. More bloat equals an increased likelihood of bad code, and conflicts between different program modules, DLLs, and so on.
well, actually, the Microsoft smartphone is pretty cool. It does have some problems, which I think to be fair generally occurs in first generation devices. However, being able to check email, make short replies and do some web browsing more than makes up for it. BBC has a cool site formated for smart phones and that is way cool. Nothing like being stuck in a meeting yet being able to process those 200 dumbass emails that seem to come down the pipe every day.
now I will duck and run since I’m seeing the blue screen of death mentioned – which only means you’re probably running 10 year old software.
You know, I used to believe that the simplest electronic devices, if well-made, would never crash. Then my HP48-GX calculator crashed, wiping out all the variables I had in memory. I’ve become a bit more crash-tolerant since then; that is, I’ve realized that even “simple” electronic devices these days are more complicated than I may think.
So I’m willing to trust Microsoft on the crashing issue, I suppose, or at least accept the fact that 100% crash-free operation may not be feasible.
The security issue, on the other hand, is a whole other kettle of fish. Has anyone out there had a virus on their cell-phone yet? Does anyone relish the idea of downloading security patches into their phone on a regular schedule?
(And what about “trusted computing”, he muttered sotto voce, but since he didn’t know much about that issue he mostly kept quiet.)
