Nice post, Peter. And your dry wretch on the carpet imagery kindly saved me the trouble of having to eat breakfast.

I suspect that by the time this comes around, many former Windows Mobile users will be jumping to iPhone or WebOS…or Android, Blackberry, Symbian 5…

It is a crowded field right now and MS simply does not seem the understand that they need to cater to the needs of their users right now. I am sure there is some good reason for this limitation, but there are much better reasons for making the app store accessible to everyone (especially since it has already been made known that Windows Mobile 6.5 will not be issued as an upgrade for most Windows Mobile 6.1 phones.

This coming from the company that just released ads attacking Apple for costing too much…

I want Windows Mobile to succeed, but it seems like Microsoft does not. As a starting developer, there is no way I would start with WinMo even though it is the main platform I use. If Microsoft isn’t really going out of their way to push their own product, how can devs be expected to want to create for it?

As to reasons behind this…one word: Vista. They do not want to get into a “capable of running Marketplace” thing where they code the program for next-gen hardware, but it will limp along on old tech. My guess is that this is their way of washing their hands of the people that install it on current hardware but find it lacking in performance.

I see your point, Brett. But isn’t it basically a web app? I mean it isn’t like we are talking about the whole OS, just an interface to an app store. And there are at least a dozen app stores currently interfacing with my device right now (Sprint store, Handango, Pocket Express)…so I am not really sure why there would be a concern about it not working.

This is one of the biggest complaints most people I know have about gadgets/tech in general. You come out with a minor software upgrade, and all of a sudden I have to buy a new $500 device to replace the $500 device I bought 6 months ago in order to use it.

I wish WebOS would hurry up and get here.

Tell me again how Palm’s webOS is going to keep you from having to buy a new $500 device? And do you think Palm won’t play the whole “upgrade for dollars game”?

This one sort of bugs me… But I can see the logic “if” there’s a native application (like on the iPhone) and it requires 6.5 and some API in there that handles the actual installation process. I’m assuming here that they’ll use some kind of wrapper like Apple does.

I’m not really sure why everyone is jumping on Microsoft over this issue. As an upstart developer this in’t a bad thing in my honest opinion.

There has been a LARGE change in Windows Mobile hardware in the last year. Just look at any HTC device, for instance. The RAM alone in these new devices is up to 4x as much as was standard 2 years ago. Processor speeds have improved, GPS has become standard, ROM sizes have doubled or tripled.

Offering the app store by default on WM 6.1 or lower would add a large number of variables for developers to contend with initially. We don’t know how deep into Windows Mobile the app store goes yet either.

It also will keep MS from outright killing established distribution channels like Handango…

Brandon, I agree with you. If there is some Windows 6.5 specific API, then it kinda makes sense. But only if there is something unique to Windows Mobile 6.5 that is not found in previous versions, which is required for the market to work. Otherwise, they are really just losing opportunities because I think a lot of people are going to skip WinMo 6.5 and go straight to 7.

as for the Pre…yeah…I have already earmarked that money.

@ Frazell, I suppose my question is whether WM 6.5 is that significantly different from 6.1 that a lot of programs would not run on both. Such as was the case with Windows Mobile 2003 to Windows Mobile 5. But most of teh upgrades since Windows Mobile 5 have been mainly cosmetic, and all of the same apps are pretty well able to run the same on Windows Mobile 5 as they are 6.1

My initial thought was a money maker for MS, if there is an API restriction, that would actually portent some new native apps added to 6.5, but I doubt that the stop gap it seems to be will include any major updates other than MIE6 and some interface options. and I’m being really harsh. One really good point is that winmo devices are gaining larger processor speeds and significant RAM upgrades!. Which eases up the pressure on the devs to find the memory leaks in their applications, and as such gives them a larger window of time to optimise them!

“Which eases up the pressure on the devs to find the memory leaks in their applications,”

Not so fast. There’s still a lot of pressure (at least on the iPhone side) to be as efficient as possible. Some small leaks are there (it seems no matter what sometimes), but leaking large objects in an app can kill performance really fast. We’re not talking about multi-core, multi-GB ram devices…

I’m giving the benefit of the doubt here that WinMo devs aren’t just tossing out apps that don’t have good memory management. If they are they won’t be selling many apps because they’ll be crash-tastic.