Jobs I'd Like To Have: Windows Mobile

As regular readers of Mobile Industry Review will know, I delight in discussing (nay, ripping-to-shreds) the merits of the Windows Mobile experience with people who should know better.

It’s such a thoroughly cathartic experience, it really is.

The red-rag-to-my-bull is somebody sitting in front of me and passing Windows Mobile off to me as something that’s efficient, smart or well put together.

I can move from annoyed to apoplectic within seconds if this random person then pulls out a bollocks Windows Mobile device and proceeds to tap-tap-tap with their stylus before exclaming, “See! It’s really pretty good!”

My party trick is to take these unsuspecting morons — because, I’m afraid that’s what you are if you buy Windows Mobile — and take their argument to pieces within 15 seconds.

15 seconds is all it takes.

Here’s what you do.

You ask them to run MSN Live. Or Windows Messenger. Or whatever the hell they’re calling it this week. Run that. Let it connect.

Then you ask them to run Inbox. And do a send-and-receive on their IMAP account. This is simply fantastic because of the resources it demands.

Then you get them to open a few other applications — Word / Excel or one or two independent apps.

Then get them to fire up Internet Explorer and visit www.yahoo.com — or the full-size MSN.com.

If the device isn’t already fucked by the operating system, it soon will be.

The pièce de résistance is this: You get out your phone and call them at the same time.

Watch their smiling face descend into confusion, alarm and outright annoyance as you explain, “It’s ringing… it’s ringing… Oh, now it’s your voicemail…”

Meanwhile their handset won’t even ring. That’s because the operating system is about 5 minutes behind reality busy trying to open a ‘tick’ sound file and re-draw the screen for one of the apps you tried launching back at the beginning of the exercise.

I did this, yet again, on Monday. And after the chap bowed his head in submission to my “Windows Mobile is Bollocks” position, he asked, “So, what would you do to fix it?”

Which brings me to this series I’m introducing today: Jobs I’d like to have. I’m going to explore the possibility in my mind — and share my thoughts here with you — about actually being in a position of control or influence at some of the companies we often write about here at Mobile Industry Review. I’ve already got quite a list of companies where I’d ‘like to work’ from the inside to fix. If you’d like to participate too, then get involved. Pick a company you’d like to work with and tell me — and the rest of the MIR audience — in about 500+ words, why. What you’d do. What you’d like to do. And we’ll publish it. (Mail me: ewan@mobileindustryreview.com)

So Windows Mobile.

How would I change it?

Goodness me.

I think they’ve had their chance. They’ve had their opportunity — indeed they more or less had the ‘smartphone’ segment to themselves for ‘decades’ (A year is a very long time in the mobile industry).

Is it too much to completely re-write it? I don’t think so. Version 6.5 made it look a lot nicer. But under the hood, it still seemed to manage memory extremely poorly. The hour-glass (or that thoroughly annoying little whirling circle) is just seconds away at most points. I think I’d want to get a mobile operating system genius — or team of geniuses — to either fix the slow and sluggish responses, rapidly and quickly, or to completely re-create it.

Many will be reading now, shaking heads, thinking that this cannot be done. You can’t just re-write an operating system in a day. Agreed. But maybe two days. A week to be safe? 😉

Ok… but get some very, very talented people in a room, give them all the resources they need (and right now, Microsoft has a TON — if slightly dwindling — of resources), implement some flippin’ good project and process managers, get the right can-do culture moving and make it happen. I reckon you could knock-out a beta in 2 months. Get it out to the planet and let folk start installing it on their own Windows Mobile handsets (with the provisio, of course, that it might brick). Open up the development process and bug tracking to anyone who’s interested. There’s a heck of a lot of pent-up love for Microsoft out there (and for Windows Mobile in particular).

Perhaps that’s crazy. Perhaps it’s just too difficult, to silly… perhaps you really do have to polish-the-turd.

If that was the case, then I’d really change around how Windows Mobile is encouraging and connecting with developers. I admire quite a lot of the strategies Microsoft has put in place, but I’d really like to see them do a heck of a lot more to appeal to the end-developers out there who’d like to see so much more done with the mobile platform. The next problem are the hardware manufacturers, chucking out some super-dooper devices that, after you’ve got by the gloss and the one-or-two features that they’ve included, are actually pretty boring.

My problem is that it’s so flipping difficult to do anything interesting with a Windows Mobile handset. You can sort-of do it. But you need the experience to rival and enhance the likes of the plethora of iPhone applications out there. I’d want to see development move from .Net to a framework that lets you, me and anyone on the planet with a bit of HTML experience knock out some really functional applications and services.

But I’d want this now. Quicker. Quicker. Fast.

The more I think about it, the more it’s obviously a heck of a lot easier to sit in the corner and throw one’s opinions about — and let somebody else worry about the actual day to day performance.

Still, I think helping Windows Mobile (or, the next generation) would be very exciting. That’s a job I’d like to have.

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So. What job would you like to have? Got any ideas? What would you like to fix or change? What kind of resources would you like to have?

Knock me over some words on this and I’ll publish (anonymously, if you like). As ever, I’m ewan@mobileindustryreview.com.