On the Fence: Leaving my favorite developers behind

I’ve been using Windows Mobile now for about 4 years.  In all my time with the Mobile OS and the thousands of applications I’ve been through, G-Alarm stands out as the absolute best of them all.  Its virtues have been extolled by all those that have had the priviledge of using it.  The group making G-Alarm, Ageye, has several other very high quality and independently developed applications that are some of the best available in their respective categories from games to profile switchers.  Check out their website HERE.  When I woke up a day or two ago with G-Alarm I thought about my impending upgrade and how it would affect my ability to wake up in the future.  I decided I would contact my favorite WinMo developer and see what their plans were.  This is what I got back:

Hi Matt,

unfortunately the Windows Phone 7 sandbox is pretty strict and won’t give us the possibility to launch a program (G-Alarm) at a specific time. That’s why there won’t be G-Alarm on WP7. We’re also not sure yet where to go 🙂
The new iPhone is fantastic (as far as I could read about it – I don’t have one) and I also think that the Android devices keep getting better. Currently I wouldn’t buy a WM6.x (HD2) device.

Kind regards / Mit freundlichen Grüßen

Jörg Michel

  I keep getting pushed one way and the other over this upgrade decision.  Whenever I hear about awesome Xbox live functionality I get visions of the most awesome mobile gaming platform since the Gameboy (and yes, I still think the gameboy is better than any DS or PSP out there.)  Ageye and crew have been busting their balls for years developing WinMo software and gave it away for a good majority of its existence and this guy is telling me NOT to buy a device that could run his software.  Microsoft may get a lot of street (and by street I mean obscure mobile tech blogs on the internet) cred for being developer friendly but cutting this function from Windows Phones is about the least friendly thing you could do to these devs.  Now this isn’t some great call to arms or anything.  I don’t expect thousands of loyal WinMo fans to email Microsoft and get this restriction lifted for this company (although it’d be tits) but this makes Android look very attractive if Ageye goes that way.  AT&T still has to man-up and get some decent phones and then break their habit of making phones suck as hard as they can by removing useful features such as headphones jacks and side-loading apps.  I guess it all boils down to the fact that as much as everyone wants to rave about a non-app centric UI like Metro in Windows Phone, it leaves preferential gaps in form and function.