Over at Infoworld, Galen Gruman has written a blistering critique of Microsoft’s forthcoming attempt to fight back against Apple’s iPhone in the mobile market, Windows Phone 7.
Gruman attended a detailed demo by Microsoft representatives, and left feeling “appalled, flummoxed, and stupefied.”
Windows Phone 7 is a disaster in the making, Gruman says. Worse than that: it’s a pig. A lump of coal. It’s awkward. Unsophisticated. It’s outdated and hamstrung. It’s a clay pigeon. Those aren’t my summarized versions of what Gruman wrote, they are the actual words used.
I’ve read some fierce critiques in my time but this one is one of the fiercest. It pulls no punches and offers Microsoft nothing in the way of kind words – other than “Microsoft needs to kill Windows Phone 7 and avoid further embarrassing itself by shipping this throwback.”
It turns out that the Windows Phone 7 UI is “obtuse” and will leave people confused. There’s no support for copy and paste, inter-app communication, or multitasking. The browser is a slightly updated version of IE7, for goodness sake.
Gruman writes:
“Microsoft has not only just made an imperfect copy of an old iPhone, it has not kept up with the current mobile OS crop nor moved ahead of any of them. I can’t tell you how much Windows Phone 7 feels like the early 1990s’ Windows 3.1, a clunky attempt to copy that era’s Apple System 7.”
And:
“The iPhone is well-established and entrenched, and Android is fast becoming so. Microsoft is nowhere, having essentially pulled out of the mobile market last year after spending a decade being stagnant during an era of ‘cold peace’ against the equally stagnant BlackBerry OS. Microsoft has no establishment advantage in mobile today, so delivering an outdated, hamstrung mobile OS and hoping to fix it later just won’t fly. I’m still shocked that Microsoft isn’t showing any smarts or competitiveness behind its mobile OS. “
Microsoft’s Kin mobile project has only just been killed off. With first impressions like this, how long can Windows Phone 7 stave off a similar fate?
Giles Turnbull is a freelance writer in England. He also writes for the Press Association and The Morning News. You can find out more at his website, and follow him on Twitter @gilest.
19 responses to “Windows Phone 7: “The Pig Behind The Gloss””
Infoworld is at best an inflammatory piece of trash that skewers anything it can get it’s hands on to drum up pageviews while linking back to its own articles for reference. I am frankly disappointed that CoM linked to it and listed it as a source and unbiased review.