A few days back I posted a comment on this computerweekly.com article about Windows Phone 7. I had some positive feedback about my comments via twitter - including the following from the author of the article:

"how long have I been doing this - 15 years? Quite the longest & most powerful comment I have ever seen. Thanks VERY much!"

I thought I'd repost some of it here:

Is Windows Phone 7 going to be popular enough to be worth considering developing apps for?

Obviously no one knows the answer for sure yet, but as you've probably guessed, I think they will be popular enough to invest my time learning about and developing applications for.
But why?

• They are amazing devices. Please don't write them off till you've used one.
• Microsoft knows this industry. Windows Mobile was really good back in the day and while they've drifted off course in the last few years all the evidence seems to be that they've been carefully watching the market change around them and learning from it. And they've also been learning from their own experiences. (Arguably, while Android re-make a lot of the mistakes which were made with Windows Mobile.)
• Windows Phone is designed specifically for mobile use in a way that we've not seen on other devices before. Plus it's not trying to be something it isn't or shouldn't be - a PC on phone hardware.
• Microsoft has spent the last 5 months trying to convince developers to build apps for the phones. And developers have been responding. There will be a lot of high quality apps available in the marketplace when the devices launch.
• There are also a lot of desktop and web developers who are currently using Microsoft technologies who are keen to build for mobile as it
• The (fully transparent) marketplace policies Microsoft are putting in place will ensure the quality of applications and avoid data security issues which are notorious on some other platforms.
• Despite all the criticisms of a lack of hardware variations there are a lot of manufacturers signed up to produce devices. The fact they think they can make money selling devices which many think will be hard to differentiate from those of a different manufacturer should be seen as a string endorsement.
• The email and calendar integration puts almost all other devices to shame. I've heard lots of people who have used actual devices say that they'd get one for that reason alone.
• Xbox Live integration is a strong selling point for a lot of mobile gamers.
• Microsoft is not afraid to try new things. And learn from them and move on if not successful. (Cough-Kin-cough)
• Microsoft can't afford not to be successful. Mobile is the future and Microsoft needs to be there if they are to survive long term.
• Plus I've heard from trusted sources what the ballpark marketing budget is. (My lips are sealed though.)
• I've also noticed that a lot of the people who are panning the phone are the same people who said the iPad was pointless and no-one would ever buy one. ;)

You may remember that previously I mentioned that I was looking at setting up a User Group focused on Windows Phone development.

The good news is that the group had it's first meeting last week. You can read all about it at
http://wpug.net/2010/07/31/the-first-meeting/

There seems to be some confusion about hubs and panoramas, in Windows Phone 7, as many people think they are the same thing. They're not, but let's see if I can clear things up a bit.

Firstly a panorama or panoramic tile. (Please don't further complicate this by confusing this with a live tile though.)

This is the very wide display (typically 4 screen widths wide) that the user can swipe from side to side to navigate. Vertical scrolling is not supported. The background is typically a single picture.


A built in control will be provided for developer use in the next/RTM version of the SDK. But, for now, a very good alternative (and very similar to what will actually be shipping) can be found at http://phone.codeplex.com/.

So that's a panorama. It's simply a display and list control for use within an application.

So what about hubs?
Hubs are special applications which come on the device and serve as a central point for collating content, information and applications which are all focused on a single area.
The phones come with 6 built in hubs:

• People: for contacts and social media update integration, etc.
• Pictures: for photos taken on the device and synced from facebook or live.com
• Office: for OneNote, Word, Excel & Powerpoint
• Games: for all games (unsurprisingly) and including XBox LIve integration.
• Music + Video: no prizes for guessing what goes here
• Marketplace: for buying lots of lovely apps, games, music, etc.

As an aside it may be useful to note that only the 'Pictures' and 'Music + Video' hubs offer any level of third party application integration.

So why the confusion?
Because all hubs use panoramas in their main screens.
I strongly suspect that as developers couldn't make their own hubs, nor have they been provided a panorama control, this has no doubt led to the grouping together of these two things in peoples minds.

Anything else?
Well yes. It seems that developers may be able to develop their own hubs in the future after all...
  Windows Phone 7: Developers can build their own hubs
  Windows Phone 7: Microsoft explains and expands hubs



Has that cleared things up now?

If you haven't seen the photos posted on Facebook or elsewhere then here are a few:

When people hear that (in addition to live.com) Windows Phone 7 only currently supports Facebook as an integrated information store. They often wonder why there's no built in Twitter support/integration with the people hub.

I'm not aware of an official reason, but as the question seems to come up so frequently I thought I'd document my thoughts on possible reasons.

1.  To preserve battery life
This is the most obvious reason I can think of. If you're following hundreds of people all around the world and they're tweeting regularly that can be dozens of updates every minute. (If not more!)  All those updates will soon add up to lots of network traffic, processing to handle them and space to store them. Then there's the issue of propogating the most important ones to the users attention. These are issues that I think are better solved by third parties, thereby leaving Microsoft free to focus on other parts of the OS.

2. Because everyone else is doing it
My next thought is based on the fact that everyone and his dog seems to be building a twitter client themselves. For many this seems to have become the new "Hello World" app. With so many other apps already in existence and each offering different features, having something built in at best would lead to duplication or at worst could stifle innovation by causing people to not create something new when part of the functionality is already on the phone. Having to deal with the moving target that is the Twitter API can also be an issue.  If it introduced any new breaking changes or major changes it'd be tough


All that aside, I have heard reports that Microsoft are talking with Twitter about how integration could work in the future.