There are two things you can do when you are at the bottom of the pile. One is to work harder and smarter so that you can fight your way to the top. The other is to talk smack hoping that the people above you will believe you are competent and you can BS your way up a few notches. There are complications with both of these but the latter has more dangers. Unfortunately it is this latter course that the folks over at Microsoft’s Windows Phone division are taking.

Andy Lees, President of Microsoft’s Windows Phone Division sat down for a quick talk with the people over at the Seattle Times and some of the things he said were interesting, but also a little laughable. He calls Apple’s one million unit selling iPhone 4S a missed opportunity and Android Chaotic. These are some bold words for a company that only captured less than 2% of the market in 2011 so far.

It is true that Apple might have missed an chance at putting out a better product, both hardware and software wise, but the market is speaking and it is saying that they do not care. Over one million iPhone 4S’ have been sold so far. That does not sound like consumer disappointment no matter how much you dislike Apple. As for Android’s chaotic development, well one of the things that people like about Android is that they can get the version they like. I personally like the SenseUI version of Android that HTC uses and prefer it over the stock version and the same can be said for many Android owners.

No, the comments sound more like someone grasping at straws and asking you to ignore the obvious. This leads us into the next comment Lees called the Mango UI a “flowing, almost singular experience” however others have called it the Jitterbug of touch screens. The tile layout is eye watering and almost obnoxious. The fact that Microsoft is forcing this on the Xbox 360 and Windows 8 is quite annoying. Having tinkered around with a Windows Phone recently I can tell you that there was nothing flowing or singular about the experience and after a week fighting Windows 8 and the MetroUI I could not imagine having to deal with that on a daily basis. I think that the developers at Microsoft do have a good concept and vision, but they are still falling short of what the Market wants. The tile based UI is not it, they like icons and widgets that they can drag around and manipulate. You would think that Microsoft would have learned this by now and maybe tried to find a way to make their UI more fluid because a bunch of square tiles is anything but fluid.

I think that all we are seeing is a PR push from Microsoft hoping that this gets pushed around enough to generate interest. So far, there really has not been any in Windows Phone, and the disappointment in the developer’s release of Windows 8 has probably caused some concern as the Metro UI with its large and ungainly tiles is the way Microsoft wants to go; now they are just hoping they can convince us that is what we want too…

Source Seattle Times

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