The Mac Sucks!

As Ars Technica and other sites have reported, Microsoft has made a step toward pushing its employees away from competitors’ mobile phones. Reportedly part of its cost-cutting measures, Microsoft has begun denying employee reimbursement for cellular data plans unless they’re using phones based on Windows Mobile. That means Microsoft will no longer be paying for iPhone and Blackberry data plans.

In the short term, this will no doubt help Microsoft save a few dollars. In the longer term, it’s likely to benefit Microsoft in a lot of other ways. For example, if its employees are “coerced” into using Windows Mobile phones as a result of this shift in policy, that should help the company understand where it can improve Windows Mobile in the future. Users familiar with the Blackberry will undoubtedly put pressure on their peers to develop for Windows Mobile the things they perceive to be superior in the Blackberry platform. Users familiar with the iPhone and other smartphones will put pressure on the developers to enhance the Windows Mobile experience in other ways. In the end, it may make Windows Mobile a much better competitor than it is today. As Ars Technica notes, “Windows Mobile 6.5 may include tons of improvements, but it’s still a long way off from putting Microsoft back in the game (not to mention it’s still not yet available), so even with the incentive to move to Windows Mobile, I doubt many Microsoft employees will make the switch anytime soon. Maybe next year, when Windows Mobile 7.0 is expected, Microsoft employees will start switching.”

In my recent post on the Palm Pre, I suggested that Microsoft needs to get its act together with respect to Windows Mobile if it wants to remain in the market for long.  Reader “Joshua” commented that I did Windows Mobile a disservice in that article, and he may be right.

Windows Mobile is a very functional OS.  Microsoft provides some great development tools for Windows Mobile, comparable to those offered for the desktop version of Windows. 

As one simple example, the iPod Touch has a decent web browser, but it doesn’t allow you to download software or media files onto the device from the web sites you visit.  Windows Mobile allows that.  I don’t have to use a special sync software from Microsoft to get files onto the device.  I can put music or a movie on the phone without an “iTunes equivalent”.

My Windows Mobile phone incorporates a micro SDHC slot, which the iPhone and iPod Touch do not.  This makes it easy to shuttle pictures and other media between the phone and computer.  There are ways to do this with the iPod Touch and iPhone, of course, but there’s no SD slot.

But Windows Mobile has some significant issues.  Microsoft has addressed some of this in the upcoming Windows Mobile 6.5 update, though my phone as it is right now exhibits all the issues I describe below.

First, every Windows Mobile device I’ve ever used periodically wakes itself up.  I remember reading that it does this to perform maintenance activities, check calendar appointments, etc.  Why it has to activate the screen when it does this, I don’t know.  Worse, why it can’t always remember to shut off when it’s finished is inexcusable.  On the day I visited the Sprint store to look at the Pre, I pulled my HTC Mogul out of my pocket and it was completely dead.  It had been charged the previous day, so there was no reason for it to be dead, yet it was.  I’ve seen this on non-phone Windows Mobile devices going back several releases.  I’ve never seen it happen on the old Palm Pilots, the iPod Touch or iPhone, or Blackberry.  I recognize that this might be a hardware issue, but why isn’t Windows Mobile smart enough to realize that no one is using it and shut itself off before it drains the battery?

My Windows Mobile phone requires me to remove a “hidden” stylus in order to interact with some applications because their interface elements are too small to touch with a finger.  There’s no reason a modern smartphone OS should need a stylus.  This is addressed somewhat in Windows Mobile 6.5, but I suspect Microsoft will need time to sort out issues with this. 

Then there’s the mobile version of Internet Explorer.  Functionally, it’s at about the same level as the Windows (desktop) version of Internet Explorer was at version 3.0 (as opposed to today’s 8.0).  Apple has been making a killing in the consumer space with the iPhone because its browser is genuinely superior to Mobile Internet Explorer.  Don’t get me wrong.  I don’t really like Safari compared to Firefox, but “Mobile Safari” is way, way better than the crappy version of IE bundled on my phone.  The Skyfire browser for Windows Mobile is far better than Mobile IE, but even it isn’t as easy to work with as the iPhone browser.  (Skyfire is better in several ways, but not as easy to work with.)

While Windows Mobile does look “dated” compared to the iPhone or Pre, I don’t need the eye candy.  I’m more interested in having a smartphone that doesn’t randomly go dead, doesn’t require a tiny little stylus to be kept in it, and can display relatively modern web pages properly.  My current Windows Mobile phone fails those criteria.  In the end, I don’t much care which mobile OS my phone uses, as long as it works well.

In his article “Microsoft still has no iPhone answer“, CNET’s Matt Rosoff talks about the recently debuted Windows Mobile 6.5 OS for smartphones. As Rosoff indicates, WM6.5 is supposed to be friendlier than earlier versions of Windows Mobile, and as someone who carries a Windows Mobile phone around, I would say that it is… but I will also admit that’s not saying much. To me, Windows Mobile is pretty much the same OS it was when Palm Pilots were still all the rate. It’s nicer looking, but it’s basically the same.

I believe Microsoft introduced Windows Mobile primarily to compete with the then-market-leader Palm OS. At first, the Windows Mobile devices were larger, more expensive, and less-friendly than Palm’s offerings. Over time, Microsoft improved the operating system and its hardware partners produced devices that were smaller and lighter. Today, it’s more common to see a Windows Mobile device than a Palm device – by far. So, say what you will about Windows Mobile (and I’ll likely agree with you) but Microsoft succeeded in what it set out to do – bury Palm.

Windows Mobile was as successful as it was because Microsoft understands the needs of business customers. Development tools were made available for free for Windows Mobile soon after it was introduced. Those tools allowed corporate customers to port existing apps to the platform using familiar tools and languages. As a result, corporations were only to happy to adopt Windows Mobile as a platform and discard their Palm Pilots.

Because Windows Mobile has, at least until now, been primarily focused on business customers, it is nowhere near as friendly as it should be. If it was, I doubt Apple would have ever bothered to introduce the iPhone. What we’re now seeing in the industry is a clash of philosophies that, in the end, should benefit everyone.

Having to compete with the ease of use of the iPhone, Microsoft will be forced to put more emphasis on the development of Windows Mobile and more effort into making it as friendly as possible. This is good for both corporate and private customers of Windows Mobile devices. Perhaps Microsoft will even adapt its “Surface” computing technology to Windows Mobile, resulting in a more iPhone-like device.

Apple, meanwhile, will be trying to make in-roads into corporations with the iPhone. In order to do this, however, Apple is going to have to re-think a lot of its business practices. It’s going to have to take security more seriously, and provide corporations with a way to centrally manage a fleet of iPhones. Corporations will need ways to delete sensitive data from an iPhone if it’s lost or stolen. They’ll need in-house application portals like the App Store, so that they don’t have to make their sensitive internal applications available “to the world”. And if Apple wants to be truly competitive with Windows Mobile, they’ll have to share product roadmaps with their customers and perhaps even license the iPhone OS to third parties so that businesses have multiple hardware sources.

In the end, we should have a “more serious” iPhone for business and a “more friendly” Windows Mobile phone for consumers (and business).

I live in the USA and use a carrier other than AT&T, so the iPhone isn’t an option for me.  A Windows Mobile phone, however, is available.  I purchased one earlier this year.  As a phone, it’s at least as good as any other I’ve used.  As a Windows Mobile device, it behaves as good or better than any I’ve used (and I’ve used quite a few).  But therein lies the problem.  Windows Mobile just isn’t enough anymore.  I give the iPhone credit for raising the bar.

To start with, there’s the less-than-mediocre Internet Explorer in Windows Mobile 6.  While it’s far better than earlier iterations, it still sucks as a handheld browser.  Many (maybe even most) sites don’t render properly on-screen.  It’s like using a web browser made back in the Windows 95 days on the Internet of today.  Microsoft really needs to work on this.

The Minimo browser does better, but is a severe resource hog.  I can’t run it on my phone without killing every other application, so I eventually removed it.  There’s a new browser on the horizon called Skyfire that looks very promising, and I hope to check it out soon. 

The on-screen keyboard in Windows Mobile is tiny, but usable in a cramp-inducing kind of way.  Fortunately, my phone does have a built-in keyboard, which makes typing considerably easier.  On the unfortunate side, Windows Mobile can’t be navigated entirely by this keyboard, and it’s necessary to constantly switch between the stylus and the built-in keyboard to get things done.

The built-in Outlook client and office applications are “adequate” from an “I need to quickly email this person” or “I need to get the gist of this document” point of view.  They don’t rival the desktop versions, which is probably a good thing.

One issue I’ve had with Windows Mobile from the beginning is that periodically it turns itself (and the display) on for its own reasons, then shuts itself back off.  My device in particular is annoying in a dark room because it alternately like to blink its green and blue LEDs for reasons I haven’t taken the time to figure out.

Another issue I have comes from carrying the phone in my pocket. Several times, it’s gone off on its own and called people for me, made noises as something in my pocket brushed a button, or otherwise done things I didn’t expect.  Often, when I take it out of my pocket, I find that it’s opened up some obscure application and thinks it’s in the middle of doing something for me.

The one thing the phone does extremely well for me, however, is serve as a Bluetooth modem.  I’m able to put it into connection-sharing mode, fire up my Asus Eee PC, and get on the Internet in places where I can’t get a WiFi signal.  This was fairly easy to setup and use, though it does place quite a toll on the batteries.  It came in handy during the recent multi-day power outage in my area.

I “like” the phone OK, but I definitely don’t “love” it.  It meets my basic needs, and then a little more, but is far from my ideal mobile device.  Microsoft has quite a way to go before Windows Mobile hits that level with me.

We received this short but sweet gem from a reader we'll just
call "Justin" to avoid him getting a lot of hate mail from
Apple fanboys.  Justin sent us the
following:

Apple sure does like to reinvent the wheel,
don't they?

href="http://www.techeblog.com/index.php/tech-gadget/video-iphone-vs-windows-mobile">http://www.techeblog.com/index.php/tech-gadget/video-iphone-vs-windows-mobile 

What
Justin's referring to is the fact that pretty much every feature
Apple brags about in the "iPhone" product is actually already
shipping in Windows Mobile.  All Apple has done is remove a few
buttons and add a prettier interface, the same basic thing they did with
UNIX and OS X. 

Bravo to Justin for seeing this
and pointing it out to us!