Windows Phone OS 7.0 Rumours By: Dwayne Lamb For those mobile developers who are anxious to hear what the new Microsoft mobile developer platform has in store but don’t want to wait until the MIX conference, here are a few leaks to help hold you over. The WMPoweruser site has posted snippets that they claim are leaked Microsoft development documents for the new Windows Phone 7 platform. Here are some of the highlights.. First off, the code environment for developers sounds like it may be a reversal of what has historically been a native-first and managed-second experience for device app development. In the Windows Phone 7 world the approach may now be managed first and native APIs can be made available to developers and OEMS as a fallback where needed based on requests. With any luck this should mean a first class seat for managed code developers and ISVs on new Windows Phone 7 devices. So managed code centric. Silverlight (Ver.?) UI Framework seems to replace Win Forms for UI work. XNA UI Framework is also available to support loop-based game development. Developer environment will included Visual Studio, Windows Phone 7 Emulator, Expression Blend, marketplace services, and cloud based web services. Mention of the 3 Screens + the Cloud concept implies better possibilities for integration of solutions between the phone, PC and TV that have been talked about for a while now, but good concrete examples of such solutions have been somewhat elusive so far. Cloud services will include access to things like Windows Live, Windows Azure and third party services for things like storage, identity, notifications and gaming. Apparently the environment will still multitask and provide rich multithread support. It will be interesting to hear if there have been changes in the way the CLR runs and handles multiple active managed apps to provide better performance and user experience on Windows Phone 7 devices. There is mention of developer co-marketing and evangelism programs that are likely intended to replace the Mobile2Market program. Some questions that still remain to be answered include: Does the new platform include tools for developers to better manage the plethora of device form factors that Microsoft likes to encourage OEMs to innovate on? Or do they somehow think that providing Silverlight for UI work will magically make the issue go away? Lets hope they are building some sort of form factor profile concept or something into the platform and developer tools so that developers don’t need to continually bake there own solutions to the problem. Steve B. says that they finally get that devices are not PC’s. I wonder if they also get the idea yet that differences in form factor often require a different user experience that is targeted specifically to a category of devices with features that fall into a similar range of display size, input options, performance and other form factor considerations. Will Windows Phone 7 finally empower users to upgrade the system software without caving into or using the OEMs and Carriers as an excuse for poor planning and lack of vision. Will new version of the operating system and core components like the Compact Framework be user upgradable with updates made available from Microsoft or will Windows Phone 7 devices continue the legacy that haunted Windows Mobile devices and Pocket PC devices? Eco friendly? Will Microsoft be able to get the eco system right this time? The Bill G Windows empire was built on a clear vision for and strong embrace of the importance of a healthy eco system for partners of all levels in order for their operating system to flourish. A strong argument could be made that the mobile team lost or never quite understood that vision. The track record over the last 10 years demonstrates an occasional win here and there. HTC is probably the best example of the mobile team’s success in nurturing one healthy ecosystem player around their platfrom. However, unfortunately for many ISVs, and partners the Windows Mobile marketplace never became a healthy one like that of the Windows desktop market. How do you feel about second chances? It will also be very interesting to see if the new platform is designed from the getgo to better accomodate the invetitble incarnations of new and unexpected hardware that will continue to evolve over time. Windows Mobile did not have a good story for developers when it came to integration between hardware and software features. I am sure many are wondering if there will be managed code support for hardware functionality like gps and accellerometers. It would seem foolish to not include such things if the API is being redone from scratch. However, the more important questions seem to be what kind of basic platform support will be built in for software to provide interogation of device hardware? Will there be standardized ways for hardware to let the application environment in on things like actual physical screen size, which keys, buttons or input methods are available from the device and other device specific genome? Sure, Apple brought innovation, design and cool to the mobile device space with the IPhone, and Microsoft is finally admitting that they need to up their mobile OS game and do a redo on their mobile strategy. Microsoft has long held, and rightly so, that their main strength is in being a software platform company. Regrettably, their efforts in the mobile space over the last decade have lacked vision, forward thinking and planning. The application development platform was constantly playing catch-up and there was seldom any evidence that serious thought had gone into designing a platform for the future. Instead the teams often seemed like they were scrambling to sew a patch work quilt on a shoe string budget that was doled out quarter by quarter. Does Windows Phone 7 truly represent a new era for Microsoft when it comes to their mobile strategy or have they simply torn and ripped up one quilt to salvage a few of the patches in preparation to sew another one? With any luck, developers and ISVs will get a glimpse of a well planned roadmap and a master design for a new, next generation development platform when they attend MIX. If nothing else there are bound to be some shinny new features to talk about before the end of March. Who out there remembers the funny, yet also insulting, parody by the Windows Mobile team that they presented to us at one of the last MEDC conferences? Surprising the team had enough time and budget to spend on the production of a slick and humorous video demonstrating that they heard the complaints from the developer and ISV communities, but they hadn’t bothered doing anything real about solving the problems that we were complaining about. Will Windows Phone 7 presentations at MIX be more of the same? Lets hope not. See profile of: Dwayne Lamb Visual Byte Inc.