Microsoft-powered phone to debut. The company's wireless phone software will make its first appearance later this year in the United Kingdom, a spokesman for mobile services company Orange confirms. [CNET News.com]
God help us, this may be the future. Microsoft code in your desktop, laptop, PDA, phone, car, stereo...It's pervasive computing, but it's not where I wanted to end up. We need a powerful, successful alternative OS, especially for non-PC devices! There are lots of good candidates, but so far no one has stood out from the pack.
I don't often bother to disagree with analysts, but this one strikes me as so very wrong. David Legard's main message is that the unorganized, no-SLA nature of current WLANs will somehow hurt consumers and the industry (again). That's bunk. All you have to do is go back to the early 90's and remember the Web. It was exactly that - distributed, unorganized, unreliable. And strange and wonderful and new, too - just like WLANs (public) today. There's a demographic called "early adopters" who thrive in this space, and over time sorts out all the bad designs and business models, readying the technology for "the rest of us". That's what's happening now with public WiFi, and I say let the kettle boil fiercely. I have little doubt that within 10 years net access for all of us will be via a WLAN derivative, one that's evolved/survived the current tender stage.
