In fact, that’s probably why I’ve spent so much time discussing it. I’ve seen a lot of “doom and gloom” pieces about Windows Mobile (especially at Gizmodo), and I don’t think things are nearly that bad. (And, yes, I know your piece wasn’t really that negative, as your concluding paragraph stated, but the title of the article makes it sound like it is.)

Yes, Windows Mobile could be made easier, more powerful, better looking, etc. I just thought some of your suggestions were a bit off-base, so I wanted to say why and give my own suggestions.

As you said, though, different people will have different ideas about what needs fixing. Even though we may disagree on a few things, you should be glad that your piece generated this kind of interest.

I hear constant complaints from these users about many of the items which I addressed in my article. These sentiments were also mirrored by the JAMM team when I informally polled them to determine what topics should be addressed.

It was this mix of average and power users, and some of the complaints they raised, which provided me with the topics for this article. And it is this mix of average and power users to whom my solutions and suggestions were aimed. Obviously, not everyone will have the same complaints or concerns, and I welcome your continued thoughts as to hat Microsoft needs to do in order for Windows Mobile to continue to be a viable platform.

Doug

As for the Today screen, you’re absolutely right that could be better utilized. The Calendar and Appointments plug-ins could show more than one or two days and the Tasks plug-in could show a list of tasks, not just a count. However, that doesn’t mean that it’s broken. It does what it says — gives you an overview of what’s going on today (and, if you click on the plug-ins, you do launch those applications).

Also, while it’s true that there’s not a generic program launcher plug-in, I don’t think there was intended to be. As I pointed out, the original Windows CE devices *had* a desktop (which is basically a launcher), and Microsoft specifically moved away from that in Pocket PC 2000.

If you want to launch programs, how hard is it to click Start and Programs (on the Pocket PC, which is almost identical to Windows) or go Home and press the Start softkey (on the Smartphone)? That shows you your programs. If you want to customize that, you can do that in any file browser. It may take a couple of extra taps, but a launcher isn’t really necessary.

As for Word Mobile, I said that the older Pocket Word was more like WordPad and that it was embarrassing compared to Documents To Go (which came pre-installed on many Palm devices). I also said that it was one of the two worst programs on the Pocket PC. How is that a defense?

I did say that it could be used as a decent basic text editor, so it’s not *useless*. One of the biggest complaints about the Smartphone OS was that it didn’t have any text editor (it only has a voice notes program). Now that Office Mobile (including Word Mobile) is included in the WM 6 Standard Smartphone build, that problem is fixed. (Well, sort of. You can edit text files, but you can’t create them for some reason, which *is* stupid. However, all you need to do is copy a blank Word file to your phone, then edit it and save it, so there is a work-around that doesn’t require third-party software.)

Also, I believe Word Mobile in WM 5 and beyond doesn’t lose formatting like Pocket Word did. It doesn’t allow you to create tables and such, though, so it’s still limited in the editing you can do and there’s plenty of room for improvement. However, it *is* evolving (after a long drought). It may not be where you want it to be (and it will probably *never* be equivalent to desktop Word), but that doesn’t mean that it’s junk.

And I think your claim that third-party programs that extend the Windows Mobile built-in applications should be unnecessary is going way too far. Even if Microsoft crammed the equivalent of desktop Word into the Pocket PC, some people would still want more, so there would be a need for programs that extended or improved the built-in programs. Why do you think people create programs that extend the desktop Office programs?

Also, as you mentioned power users before, let me ask how many people that aren’t power users even need the capabilities of Office Mobile?

Finally, what other phone OS includes office applications that compare to Office Mobile? (If you don’t count third-party programs for Windows Mobile, don’t count them on other platforms, either.) If’ the answer is “none”, why are we even discussing this?

I also think you have proven my point about the today screen. It is potentially the most powerful tools on the Windows Mobile platform. Without any third party intervention, however, it is terribly underutilized. I am not saying that what I want on my today screen should be on everyone’s today screen. I am saying taht if I want to launch programs from the today screen, I should be able to do that. If I want to see my calendar or tasks, then I should be able to do that. And it should not require a third party program.

I must say, however, that I am shocked by your comments regarding Mobile Word. I have spoken with Microsoft employees and power fanboys. No one has ever defended Mobile Word with any sincerity. Likewise with the PIM functionality. I’ll give you that it has been hugely improved in Windows Mobile 6, but that is not saying a whole lot. It is still less than intuitive and not particularly easy to use or powerful. If Microsoft is advertising (to the extent it does advertise) that Windows Mobile can do these things, then it must be able to do so an a manner which is intuitive and effective. What we have now is well short of that mark.

Doug

Sorry, but I think you’re missing the point. I didn’t reiterate Doug’s points; I addressed them, saying where I thought he was right and where I thought he was wrong. The biggest part where I think he (or the team, if you prefer) was wrong was the claim that Windows Mobile is broken. It’s not. It can use some work, sure, but what software can’t?

As for the iPhone, I only mentioned it because Doug did. As my post was mostly about Doug’s post and Windows Mobile, I’d say that was more than “sorta” on topic.

As for your question, if there was nothing to compare Windows Mobile to, how would we know *anything* was lacking? It’s a silly question. Besides, my post *did* say what I thought WM was lacking. Focus is important while reading, too….

@ pony, you expended a lot of energy reiterating, quite a few of the points Doug made about windows mobile, interspersed with random interjectional iterations about other OS’s, particularly the comparison of iPhone and WM. I ask you, is the apple focus on creating a UI similair to the Mac UI, so different to the WM focus on creating a UI that relates to their desktop UI such an unrelated strategy?

I’d ask you to remember, or I’ll let you know, Doug has taken a poll of the team and pulled it together into this post. Seriously, if you didn’t have something to compare WM to, what would you say it was lacking. Not considering third party apps either. That’s what this is about. The inevitable comparisons, are rather moot, as you say iPhone, Symbian, Android focus on different users with different wants and needs. I personally think M$ is slacking off on WM development, for the purpose of revenue raising! The revenue they generate from third party developers licensing their products, is overriding their responsibility to their users. Now we have an OS on the Apple that is very exclusive, which seems to be the same strategy only in infancy; an SDK that’s in development. As M$ has always relied on early release and user input to propel their development, posts that focus on the lacks of the basic operating systems are really important, so are focused responses.
Could you sorta stay on topic, please

I know you didn’t mean this as a comparison with the iPhone. I’ve just seen a lot of iPhone vs. Windows Mobile comparisons lately, and was pointing out that the people doing them likely forgot the iPhone wasn’t targeted at the same audience as Windows Mobile phones.

While it does have some superior features, I’m not sure how many users it has taken from Windows Mobile. Have you seen any numbers on that? I’m sure it has taken some, because it was the new kid on the block, but I’d be surprised if there was a wholesale defection.

As for name recognition, BlackBerry, Palm and iPhone are different than Windows Mobile. Those other devices have the OS associated with hardware from one OEM (RIM, Palm and Apple), while Windows Mobile is on devices from dozens of OEMs. However, I bet if you went to non-BlackBerry users and mentioned Research In Motion (the maker of the BlackBerry), most of them wouldn’t know what you were talking about.

I do agree that Microsoft should do a better job of marketing Windows Mobile, though. I’ve seen a few ads that mentioned Windows Mobile, but they were usually from carriers focusing on a device, and Windows Mobile was mentioned as a feature, not the primary selling point.

Regarding programs, I do agree that a bundled program should work reasonably well, and I think most of them do work reasonably well. Just because a program is bare bones doesn’t mean that it fails to work “reasonably well”.

To address the two that you mentioned, File Explorer is very basic, and I’d prefer more, but it is functional. You can do all of the basic functions you need on a day-to-day basis.

Pockeet Word did lose most complex formatting, so round-tripping was frustrating (but I thought they fixed that in WM 5, not WM 6). However, if you were creating an initial draft of a document on your device, Pocket Word was adequate for that if you didn’t need things like tables. That said, it was more of a WordPad Mobile than Word Mobile, and it was embarrassing when Palm OS devices that came with Documents To Go handled Word files better than Pocket PCs with the “official” Microsoft Pocket Word, so I’ll give you that one.

However, I think you picked the two worst programs on the Pocket PC as your examples. The rest are much better and work quite well, I think. (OK, to be fair, Inbox wasn’t good if you needed HTML E-mail before WM 6, but it was adequate for text E-mail.)

Sorry I lost you on my ActiveSync comment. I know you said that you thought they should rewrite it from scratch, but your final paragraph summarizing all of Windows Mobile said “A few tweaks here and there, and a good shine should could have it ready to in no time.”

My point was that you were contradicting yourself. How can things be ready in no time if you want them to rewrite ActiveSync from scratch? Or, for that matter, redesign IE Mobile or make Pocket Outlook equivalent to Pocket Informant/Agenda Fusion, etc. Those aren’t what I’d call “tweaks”; they’re major initiatives. Check out that “I’m Just A Feature” blog post that I linked to and see the effort required to add even a simple feature.

Finally, regarding dialing, I think there are certainly cases where you *can* dial a number you want with two taps — if the contact is in a speed dial, for example — but you said “there absolutely cannot be more than two taps between your Today Screen and a phone call”, which sounds like it applies to every call you could possibly dial (which is what “absolutely” implies).

For example, what if the number isn’t in your contacts? As I said, you’ll have to tap at least seven digits (I’m not counting voice dialing for reasons discussed below).

Even if it is in your contacts, you can’t assume that all numbers you need to dial have been assigned to speed dials. To meet your two-tap (or keypress) requirement, that would mean that you couldn’t have more than 99 (or 100) contacts. That may be reasonable for some people, but I’ve heard of people having 1,000 or more contacts.

As for photo dialing, I think that would take *more* taps (in general) because photos would take more space and force more scrolling. You might be able to dial some of your contacts in two taps, but if the person you wanted to dial wasn’t on the first page or two of contacts, that would take more than two taps.

And while voice dialing certainly can be done in two taps (one to activate it, one to confirm the name or number you spoke), I ignored that option because you said “many people rely on voice commands which seems like a cop-out for Windows Mobile.” As you mentioned driving, I think voice dialing is the best way to dial while driving; you shouldn’t be tapping on a PDA (or dialing a phone for that matter) unless you’re stopped.

Besides, if you count speed dials or voice dialing, Windows Mobile already meets your two-tap requirement, so saying dialing was too difficult would have been a moot point. However, as Adam pointed out, it seems like WM 6 Professional allows Smartphone-style dialing, which is probably the easiest, most intuitive way to dial. It might take more than two taps, but that’s OK with me.

Are you kidding? Dialing contacts from the native Windows Mobile 6 Standard and Professional dialers is easier than any other smartphone. From the today screen or home screen, start typing the name of the person you want to call or enter the numeric digits. The software offers predictive matches based on your input. When the person you want to call appears in the list (usually at the top), press the down arrow and then press the call send button. This is extremely easy to do while driving since you can build motor memory to feel for the letters on the keyboard. Once you’ve typed the name of the person you want to call without even looking at the screen, all you have to do is glance over to confirm you typed correctly, and then press the call send button which you can feel with your fingers on the phone. Of course you need a hardware based keypad to do the no-eyes dialing. There’s no need to activate context sensitive menus. Try dialing with the T-Mobile Shadow and you’ll see how amazingly easy it is to do one-handed without looking.

Also, the Widcomm bluetooth stack was replaced because it couldn’t do voice dialing through a bluetooth headset. It took a very long time for the Widcomm stack to support that, and even then it never worked very well. Furthermore, it never worked with Microsoft Voice Command. The Microsoft Bluetooth stack does do voice dialing quite well and I think this is pretty important. Also, I’ve never had lost connection problems with the Microsoft stack, but I’m pretty sure the reception issues were hardware related. The JAMin had great bluetooth reception as does the Kaiser, and both of those use the Microsoft Bluetooth stack. Furthermore I believe I read somewhere that Microsoft made it much easier for 3rd party developers to interface with their Bluetooth stack than with the Widcomm stack.

The Today/Home screen on Windows Mobile is designed for efficiency. It’s much more likely that when you turn on your smartphone you’re going to want to see basic information like upcoming appointments, unread messages, date/time, tasks, etc. It would be a huge reduction in efficiency if you turned on your phone and only saw a bunch of non-informative program icons which you subsequently had to tap on in order to find the information that you were looking for. The reason it looks cluttered is because there’s a lot of important information there and people who need to access that information need it to be accessible all at once. A cleaner, less functional Today screen would greatly reduce the ease-of-use for power-users who need to access their information instantly.

A few general comments. I think we both agree that the Windows Mobile team has its work cut out for them. We may just disagree on where they should focus that attention.

Also, I do believe Microsoft is an innovator. I do not take innovator and inventor to be the same thing. But Microsoft has taken pieces that may have been created by someone else and created a whole new cloth which results in Windows being one of the most recognizable brand names in the world. That IS innovation. Innovation is as much about how we use it as what we use.

I also never intended this to be a direct comparison between Windows Mobile and the iPhone. There are a few features which I directly compared, such as the interface and Internet experience, but overall, I never intended to directly compare the two or even imply that the iPhone is a superior phone. I just think it has some components which are superior. I do think it is awfully telling, however, that the first generation iPhone has gained a market penetration and taken so many users away from Windows Mobile. And that is even considering it is only available on one network.

I also think it is very telling that although Windows is instantly identifiable on desktop computers, very few average users are familiar with Windows Mobile. Say Blackberry or Palm, or even iPhone to someone and they instantly know what you are talking about. Most of my friends still don’t know what a Windows Mobile device is. They thing it is basically the same as Palm. I blam Microsoft’s poor marketing for that. Look at how Apple and the iPhone are marketed. Then look at how many Windows Mobile ads you see on TV. They just have no mass media market penetration which would lead to name recognition. And when they do get mass market penetration…well, have you see the Zune ads lately?

Also, my main point here was that if Microsoft is going to include a function, then they should give you something that works reasonably well. I am not saying that every third party program should be included. But if they say there is a file explorer, then it should not be a bare bones minimal file explorer. Microsoft Office, at least until Windows Mobile 6, stripped out most of your formatting settings meaning that it was impossible to go back and forth to edit a document. I agree that an OS should be the cord, but if MS Office is going to be included then they should put the energy into making it better.

As for your comment on the Bluetooth, thank you for the clarification on the history there. My Dell Axim did have the Widcomm stack and I did not realize that was unique.

You lost me in your comment about Activesync. Where did I say it could be fixed “in no time”. I said it needs to be scrapped and they should start over from scratch. But I do not recall saying that could be done in no time.

And phone dialing absolutely can be done in two taps. There are dozens of programs which allow you to use voice commands, speed dial, and photo dialing to call your contacts in two taps (maybe three). Dialing your contacts from the native Windows Mobile contacts is too difficult and unintuitive. You need to scroll through very small text and then tap and hold to bring up a context menu from which you select dial. Try doing all of that while driving (or maybe don’t).

Also, thank you for pointing out that there are freeware registry editors available. Good point, and that was just an oversight. Thanks also for the articles you linked. I will have to check those out.

Doug

* For the story I posted about this article on pocketnow:

http://pocketnow.com/index.php?a=portal_detail&t=news&id=4888

* For the WM 2003 comments about Pocket IE and the Bluetooth stack:

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/wireless/2003/07/23/mobile_2003.html

* For my editorial on ActiveSync:

http://thoughts.svpocketpc.com#THOUGHT_ACTIVESYNC_RESOLUTIONS

* For the “I’m Just a Feature” Microsoft blog post:

http://blogs.msdn.com/windowsmobile/archive/2006/09/11/749942.aspx

Sorry about that….