In a bout of self-congratulation as laughably misguided as that of the toothless hobo hanging outside of Albert Einstein’s office claiming that whole Theory of Relativity thing was his idea, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of Windows Phone is now “feeling flattered” that Apple copied so many great iOS 5 ideas from Windows Phone 7. As if.
Citing numerous features that Microsoft has announced as coming to Windows Phone 7 in 2011, Microsoft VP Joe Belfiore tweeted yesterday:
Feeling flattered today. Lots of great WP ideas headed to iOS. (Camera button/above lock, auto-upoad of pics, better notifications … )
Feeling flattered today part 2 … wi-fi sync, built-in twitter, background downlad service, short-messaging chats (though we do Facebook!)
Note that he said WP “ideas” not “features.” That’s because Microsoft has yet to get to market almost any of these “ideas,” even as iOS developers are already playing with the functionality in the first iOS 5 Beta.
Even if Microsoft is capable of realizing these ideas and turning them into features, though, many WP7 handset owners may never get them because of Microsoft’s convoluted relationship with carriers, which has caused WP7’s first patch (featuring copy-paste) to be endlessly delayed for many domestic WP7 handset owners.
So don’t break your arm patting yourself on the back there, Belfiore. Even if you do manage to get some of these features to market before Apple — and we seriously doubt it — you’ll have an even bigger problem actually getting the update in the hands of the poor sods of your customer base. Windows Phone 7 is three years behind iOS’s feature set, and the gap is just growing.
Update: Woops! Mea culpa! As some commenters have noted, I guess many of these features are already live for the half a dozen people who own Windows Phone 7. It’s too bad that merely having an idea doesn’t matter for jack compared to capitalizing on it, don’t you think? If so, we’d all still be using Windows Mobile 6 handsets instead of iPhones.