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On the fence: Scary emails from DavidK edition

I wanted to let you all in on some of our email chaos amongst the staff.  I think it represents the departure of a great deal of what constituted many user’s reasons for choosing Windows Mobile.  We were discussing Android fragmentation and it made me a little uneasy with what he said about the new Windows Phones that will be coming out this holiday season.  He started with this little gem:

“can’t wait for WP7 so 100% of it’s users are running the latest build:)”

This is what scared me.  I got glimpses of forced OTA updates that brick my phone (because MS has def F’d my PC royally with those).  That as well as the fact your basically allowing MS to have admin rights on your phone!  When Apple did it I said it was a bad idea.  I’m no fanboy and I’m not going to be some wishy-washy douche bag on it either.  MS you suck for doing this.  I don’t want you to decide what apps should go on my phone.  I don’t want you to have the priviledge to revoke things remotely from my phone.  I’m an intelligent person that likely knows anywhere from 10-20x more information about the phone than the monkeys you’ve probably got pushing the “screw the consumer” buttons over on your server side.  All this rage is coupled with the fact that your fancy-schmancy metro bullshit can’t do anything but change colors.  DavidK’s sense of customizability is limited to the following in scope:

I’m sure you’ll find a way to do something fancy with WP7. I bet there will
be a way to change the UI to some degree – probably smaller tiles so there
are more per page or something. Ultimately the UI is part of the OS so it’s
not going to be easily replaced. It’s not an app launcher – the live tiles
are all integrated so any replacement UI would need to hook into all of the
same things. It can easily be done if a real developer takes the time, but
no one on XDA will build anything that good and the real developers won’t
spend their time cause they won’t be able to sell it…
You’ll get over it when you get updates to your phone and don’t need to
flash your ROM cause the manufacturer is too lazy to upgrade your device…

Double no bitches!  That is not customizability.  That is the facade of choice.  Marketing bullshit as gold is as old as religion itself and this is no different.  I understand what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.  I just don’t know if I want to participate in trying to out-douche Apple.  And saying that dev’s won’t be able to sell a UI?  Tell that to SPB, makers of the best selling WinMo app for at least 3 or 4 years.  Those guys have been stomping ass all over the place selling a 30.00$ app, and Microsoft, in all of Apple’s infinite wisdom,  have decided to remove the bread and butter from one of the most polished and quality app makers they have.  It’s getting harder and harder to hold onto the fence between Android and WinPho7.  My dreams of off-the wall linux based phones are going vaporware so I’ve only got a few questions left for making my decision on phones and only one that can be answered at the moment.  So Doug Simmons, how you living buddy?

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