A few days ago, I posted my own thoughts and experiences with iOS 5. At the end of the article, I conclude that Windows Phone 7 would probably appeal to me, because it gets rid of the endless sea of icons and apps, and replaces them with dedicated “hubsâ€.
Well, way before that post – last year, in fact – I wrote an article about hubs, and the problems such a system has.
Well, here’s the part that worries me. While this concept is incredibly cool, it puts the responsibility on Microsoft to keep things up to date and fresh. What the App concept buys you is that when new social networking services crop up (for example), people can write Apps on top of its APIs right away, and before you know it you’re linked in to the service.
With Microsoft’s hubs, how long will you have to wait for Microsoft to integrate a new social networking service?
Now, today, I see that Paul Thurrott has posted an article on what Windows Phone 7 still lacks, even with this year’s Mango update.
The first is a topic I’ve been meaning to address for some time now, which is a serious issue with a facet of Windows Phone that Microsoft has trumpeted, correctly, as its primary advantage over iOS and Android: The integrated experiences that, in many ways, obviate the user’s need to find, download, and then use a myriad of different apps to accomplish common tasks. When the Windows Phone–integrated experiences work, they work well. You can very easily share a photo to Facebook or Twitter, without having first installed and configured a dedicated app for either service, for example.
But in many cases, these integrated experiences don’t offer as much functionality as do the dedicated apps. So depending on your needs, the existence of an integrated experience might simply be obviated by the fact that it doesn’t do what you want.
Paul goes on from here to describe a scenario, using Facebook, that can’t be accomplished properly because Windows Phone’s implementation of the Facebook API is limited. And it isn’t the only example.
There are holes like this in all of Windows Phone’s integrated experiences, from the Twitter integration that doesn’t understand hash tags to the photo integration that doesn’t understand Flickr and is unable to upload full-sized versions of your photos, automatically, to the service of your choice.
Go read the article – it’s essential if you’re considering a switch to a different mobile platform, like I am.
But this point is of particular note, because it is the core of what makes Windows Phone different, and worth considering. I noted in my original article last year that if Microsoft opens up hubs to third party developers, that it will help keep things current and fresh. So far that hasn’t happened, and my guess is that when Microsoft does finally do this, it’s going to be limiting.
There’s no final answer here. But if Microsoft wants to stay in this game – and wants to tout the benefits of hubs – it needs to keep this stuff updated. Ignore this, and you can watch your platform die in a sea of obsolescence.