Categories
Social

Facebook Apparate

Harry Potter, boy wizardWired: “Facebook Home doesn’t even have to be a hit. At least not right away. The important thing is that it’s out there, and it didn’t require a lot of up-front capital or R&D investment in hardware. It’s a better strategy than anything else the company has done in mobile. People who already really like Facebook will also like this. For people who live in Facebook, it may even drive them to buy one handset over another. Sometimes mediocre is all it takes.”

Whether or not you find Facebook Home mediocre doesn’t really matter. They’re going to sell a metric crap ton of these things. It’s beautifully designed and will give most people what they want; instant, always on, access to Facebook. Brilliant.

Categories
Microsoft

Windows Phone

Justin Williams: “Windows Phone 7 doesn’t inherit any of that legacy and really is a whole new experience. It’s so different, in fact, that it doesn’t feel like anything ‘Windows’ I’ve ever used before. Microsoft might have done themselves some
favors by giving it a whole new naming scheme away from the Windows brand.”

A wreathed gas lamp in the snow.A pretty fair review from a man that develops for Mac and iOS. As a developer it’s interesting to see how Justin feels about Visual Studio. It’s how I feel about Xcode. Xcode is super nice, but I just can’t get used to Interface Builder. He also had some words to share about his attempt at Android development, not stellar, but I wouldn’t expect that from someone that’s used to using great tools to do their job. Both Microsoft and Apple provide superior development tools. Android is going to be a bit more work, more hackerish.

On Android: “Truth be told, I had fun with the Windows Phone SDK. Whereas the Android tools and APIs frustrated me to no end, I had little trouble picking up Windows Phone and translating many of the paradigms and lessons I’ve learned on the Apple platform to Microsoft’s.”