Cory Wiles Blog

Being that my passion for development and design are usually centered around mobile apps I am always interested in any new platforms and handsets that poised to make any impact on the current market.  As such I was really interested in the article posted over at Engadget yesterday: Dell Lightning: the ultimate Windows Phone 7 device leaks out. However, my enthusiasm faded after the first sentence and twindled down to zero by the end of the first paragraph.

"Hot damn, people. The mother of all Dell leaks just dropped into our laps, and the absolute highlight has to be the Lightning, a Windows Phone 7 portrait slider."

I can overlook the fact that the device is running Windows and some of the on screen usability issues because I haven't used one, but what bothers me the most is that handset manufactures can't seem to understand handset design.  This phone is presented as having a "revolutionary" device design, but once again you have the same tired, inefficient slide-the-handset to show the qwerty keyboard.  Really?! That is the best you have. That is NO different from all the other handset designs that are offered by ever manufacturer in the world for the past 5 - 10 years.  Dell and Microsoft combined have more money than most European countries.  Why they don't or can't find/recruit/steal the BEST designers and developers to come out with a real competitor to the iPhone is beyond me?  However, what this does mean that within 6 months of this device launching you will see it sitting next to the Dell MP3 player that was supposed to be so great.

Looking over some of the other features that the device offers, once again there is nothing that I can't get, and probably better, with an iPhone or Nexus One.

::NOTE::

When I was attempting to find a link to the dell jukebox from their website it didn't come up.

I read a very interesting article yesterday that ranked the usability between Apple's website and Microsoft's website.  Granted, I am a little biased toward Apple, but I do feel that the author did a great job in their comparison. *spoiler: Apple won.  To add to the critique the Microsoft website does something that is a HUGE pet peeve of mine.

If a company claims to be in the "web" business then they need to create websites that look the same in all browsers.  Microsoft has a HORRIBLE reputation on releasing browsers that are not standards compliant, but are constantly giving non-IE users who visit their websites a second rate experience.  Case in point...their own website.  If you go their website with anything other than Internet Explorer, the visitor is presented with this ANNOYING alert in the upper left hand corner that is asks if you want to "Upgrade your Internet experience".  After few seconds it does minimize, but if you don't click the "Don't show me this EVER again link" the next page you navigate to will show it.

The fact is that I do want to upgrade my internet experience, but not by installing Silverlight, or IE7 or IE8 for that matter.  All of the before mentioned pieces of software are horrible, lack innovation, and do nothing but dumb down the web.  I want to upgrade my internet experience by not being harassed by Microsoft.