Wow. Part of me wants this to suck, just so there are only iPhone and Android to worry about ever developing for, but this actually looks good enough to consider.
I looked at WP through BizSpark a little, and it looks easier to develop for than iOS or Android, at least for corporate apps. It's possible RIM will lose out in the "corporate owned/managed" market to WP, especially if they can build in equivalent or better security and management tools.
If I were MS/Nokia, I'd heavily subsidize this in ways other than just reducing the retail price; maybe even go for a $799 retail MSRP but heavily discount through the carriers or through channels to $0-400. You want the price to make it seem premium (or at least as good as a high-end Android or iPhone 4S), but they're the new entrant, so using price to promote the product might be a win. Maybe something like "$400 credit for any smartphone trade-in" at retail. Or, bundle "we pay your phone bill for 3 months" or something.
Developing for the platform is definitely trivial, as you mentioned (disclaimer: I worked at MSFT for years, but I've done an iOS app with over 1M downloads, so I've seen both).
Owning the device is a pain, though.
1) Lack of apps. No Pandora. No Bump. No Uber. That trendy new mobile startup? Nope. I sincerely believe that nobody in any YC startup doing mobile even _has_ a Windows VM, except on the test team.
2) Quality of the non-Live experience. It's easy to hook up your gmail account, but then every time you add a contact, it nags you about which to add it to. Plus, when I was just using Live mail (experiment), I'd get ~20 hours of battery life out and about; with gmail, I get max 5. I'm not sure what's going on there, but 5 is not quite enough.
Still, there's always hope. But I'd more heavily consider developing for it than using it as your One True Device.
I suspect Microsoft/BizSpark/Nokia could solve the "nobody in a YC startup doing mobile even has a windows phone" for about the cost of one person's salary for a year.
Maybe it's something else, then, but I don't know what it could be -- I don't have any background apps and I set it to ping for mail every 30 minutes. Maybe my LG does poorly when signal strength gets low? (AT&T coverage is spotty in Chicago, particularly near the lake)
But, I could use my old iPhone 3g for a couple of solid days, even listening to streaming music and doing stuff on it. With my LG Quantum, I'm almost afraid to turn the screen on to see if I have any text messages.
It's what you can focus on for the long term when founders and early employees control enough of the company to ignore Wall Street's quarterly timeline.
I like the data binding stuff but other than that I found XAML a huge pain. Lots of auto-generated stuff mixed in with stuff that I edit as well. It doesn't break but I'd rather have some separation between generated stuff and stuff that I write. (e.g. the generation gap pattern, often useful for models)
Navigation is a blessing and a curse, some kind of modal view or overlay would ease the pain there. I don't know if MS is working on it but it's frustrating that they claim it's an "edge case". Almost every single login or sign up window is a transient thing like that, and you can't navigate in a navigation handler so chaining transitions is a headache.
Other than those 2 issues it was good, but I would develop for iOS and even Android over WP7 any day.
The generated code is separated from code you write. In 99.9% of cases you should never even see the code that is generated. Your code should all be in files you explicitly create. And using patterns like MVVM will mean that you actually barely even touch code-behind files (although its OK if you do -- just it won't be necessary).
I never got into it enough to really understand MVVM. It looks like MVC with a different name to me, which leads me to believe I don't get it yet.
Perhaps I was doing it wrong. When I used the GUI to layout UI it was modifying the same XAML that I was also changing manually. I admit to being ignorant about modern versions of Visual Studio, this one trivial app I created was the first time I used .NET, C#, XAML, and Visual Studio. I left Windows programming with VB6 back in the day before switching to Linux.
OK, I see what you're saying. You're doing layout with the designer and seeing the XAML is changing.
Yes, the XAML is the underlying representation of the layout. i think most people are thinking about the code that gets generated and called via "InitializeComponent". What gets generated after the XAML compiler parses the XAML.
You should view the designer as simply a convenient way to edit XAML. Like using a designer to edit HTML.
MVVM is sort of like MVC, although really closer to MVP. Think of MVVM as MVP that where databinding coupled with the View Model is the Presenter.
I was just thinking the same thing. Wishing this to suck, but knowing that this actually is too good to pass.
I've developed in the past for Samsung's Bada OS, Palm's WebOS, a lot of apps for Android and right now I'm working with Windows mobile. I have to say it is rather easy to develop for, and i love how you can take for granted quite a few specs (similar to the iPhone).
Although i'm sure WP7 won't have the success Android and the iPhone have, it's definitely something worth looking at.
In the UK (and I believe much of the rest of Europe), the monthly line rental is basically paying off a loan for the phone. You can get (just about) any phone for £0 up front if you're willing to pay enough every month.
E.g. if the phone costs £500 out of contract ("pay as you go"), it will probably be free on a 18-month contract that costs £40/month. If you chose a £20/month contract then you'd have to pay about £200 up front.
Same thing further up north, in Norway.
But I get the impression that it's not like this in the US?
More people either buy in without a contract, or 2-year contracts?
The major carriers in the US are all set up for 2 year contracts, which come with subsidized phones. You can - technically - go month to month, but it's not a publicized or promoted feature, and doesn't come with substantial discounts.
There are alternatives - T-Mobile just came out with a $50/unlimited month-to-month plan - and there are some smaller carriers with month-to-month options, but they're the exception.
Until Windows Phone supports an encrypted filesystem I can't really see stealing any substantial amount corporate marketshare. Now that Android 4 is out, it's the only mainstream smartphone that does not have this feature out of the box (and pretty much the most common and sensible requirement in ActiveSync provisioning is encrypted storage).
Set a pass code. It encrypts storage transparently after that. There are ways to force device security using lion server (or iCloud or active sync) too.
Unfortunately there are some flaws in the implementation, but it is at least easy.
Ah, I never thought it encrypted the drive because when I plug my iPhone into my computer it's still password protected but I can browse the photo's on my iPhone.
I looked at WP through BizSpark a little, and it looks easier to develop for than iOS or Android, at least for corporate apps. It's possible RIM will lose out in the "corporate owned/managed" market to WP, especially if they can build in equivalent or better security and management tools.
If I were MS/Nokia, I'd heavily subsidize this in ways other than just reducing the retail price; maybe even go for a $799 retail MSRP but heavily discount through the carriers or through channels to $0-400. You want the price to make it seem premium (or at least as good as a high-end Android or iPhone 4S), but they're the new entrant, so using price to promote the product might be a win. Maybe something like "$400 credit for any smartphone trade-in" at retail. Or, bundle "we pay your phone bill for 3 months" or something.