Manan Kakkar just blogged about how some of Microsoft's iOS apps are a bad thing for Microsoft, and how the SkyDrive app for WP7 is useless to him. I'd like to use this blog post as a response to some of his remarks, criticisms and rants.
Kinectimals for iOS leaves no USP for the Microsoft ecosystem in the living room
I agree with Manan that there was an implicit promise of Windows Phone working very closely with Xbox and Windows in a way that iOS and Android could not and would not. At the same time, you have to remember - Microsoft is clearly pitching Xbox as a platform. If they want the Xbox to become a platform, they will need many more consoles out in homes. At the same time, the reality is that most Xbox users are most likely users of iOS devices of some shape or form.
Giving a taste of how a mobile device can work tightly with the Xbox gives Microsoft several wins:
Exposes a Microsoft Studio game (in this case) to iOS users. If they don't have an Xbox and they like the game, they may start thinking about it.
Shows how Microsoft can integrate the mobile phone into its console. "With Windows Phone, the experience would be even tighter" could be the carrot.
If the iOS user already has an Xbox, they may be tempted to look at other add-ons for the game, perhaps other games, other content, etc. In other words, fueling the increased use of the console, leading to potential increase in revenues related to Xbox content.
All of these create the vicious circle of creating a bigger market for the console as well as selling more content off the console. For a platform company, is there a better recipe?
Microsoft is at a very interesting stage in its history. For the first time since it became the most dominant company in the world, it is facing a world where its operating system (note: not "software") may not be the most popular system. The world is moving towards smaller, lighter computing devices where so far, we have not seen Windows at all. Until we see Windows 8 succeed, we will continue with the argument that Microsoft is not a player in this new world where PCs will be outsold by smart devices which do not run Windows.
Why should I own a Windows Phone and not an iPhone, if the Xbox integration is going to be so tight with the iPhone?
First, I don't think every game is going to be made available on iOS. Kinectimals is one of those games Microsoft may be toying with, to see if there is any sense in pursuing that market.
So from a user perspective, you can be assured that Windows Phone will continue to have Xbox LIVE games which won't be on any other platforms, it will be the only platform with Xbox Achievements, and if there are games which get on iOS, Windows Phone will get them first for sure. It may not be a convincing argument, but frankly, if it were a convinving argument, Windows Phone would have sold way more than it has already.
Clearly, users don't really care much about Xbox on their phones enough to keep it a strict exclusive.
You bring one game, you have to bring all
I am not sure why they should be forced to bring every game with such tight integration. They chose this game just like EA Games or Pop Cap Games chose to bring one or two games to Windows Phone. I don't see any logical reason to bring every single title to iOS necessarily.
WP7 SkyDrive app is useless
This one confused me. Not because there is no basis for Manan's point. WP7 after all has an extremely efficient concept of Hubs which in fact avoid the need to have separate apps for each service. In that regard, my SkyDrive pics/vids can, and are available in the Pictures Hub. Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote can, and are available in the Office Hub. So I'd call the new SkyDrive app redundant in some ways, but not useless.
SkyDrive app provides a single place to see "your personal cloud". What about generic files on SkyDrive you may have uploaded, like for example, an AutoCAD file? Where would you find that file on the current WP7? Nowhere, actually.
SkyDrive app allows creation/modification of folders and deletion of files. Given that Microsoft is pitching SkyDrive against the likes of Dropbox and box.net, having a "drive" to access in one place would be better than spreading it all over the place.
SkyDrive app allows you to selectively share files/folders via links for read and read/write scenarios. Again, tying this back to using SkyDrive as a cloud storage option, it is easier to have all the stuff in one place.
Hubs are meant to make it easy to see and share stuff that you care about like Pictures, Music, Office docs, etc. The purpose of the SkyDrive app is not to just let you browse the stuff, but also allow it to be selectively shared with others.
Finally, I believe Manan has concluded that the app is useless because it does not serve two of his wishes (more than being really useless) - being able to save an attachment to SkyDrive, and being able to see files on other PCs and devices from SkyDrive. The former is a missing feature of the Mail application and perhaps of the OS itself (not exposing the file system) and the latter is a missing feature of SkyDrive the service. Neither is a shortcoming of the SkyDrive app.
By having an app, Microsoft can also rev it faster than the OS updates, much like Google's apps on Android which are now de-coupled from the OS itself.
I feel bad having the need to write a long response but twitter's 140 characters were just not enough to make my point.
Manan, cheers :-)
SkyDrive app? It's as if the Gods at Redmond have finally heard the prayers of the peasants! Not very useful on WP7 though.
This may be a well-known fact, but I just realized it, so I thought I'd write about it. I was used to a catch-all email address for my domain both from my domain registrar (when I was purely forwarding my domain email) and from Google Apps (when I started using them for managing my email directly).
So it was a bummer when I realized Office 365 actually discouraged the use of catch-all email address. My main purpose of using a catch-all email address was to allow for throwaway email addresses which hotmail (and maybe others) introduced in the past few months. I could sign up for some service with a random email address belonging to my domain and let all unsolicited email from those companies go to this catch-all email address.
So I happened to stumble upon my solution for Office 365. Each mailbox ("license") allows you to specify additional email addresses for which you can receive email at that mailbox. So I could set up abc@mydomain.com, xyz@mydomain.com as additional addresses on my main email mailbox of romit@mydomain.com. That way I can receive emails to those addresses at my primary email address and yet, I don't end up giving out my primary email address to the sites.
The way I did it was by going to Details under Mailbox when you go to "Manage My Organization". Select the E-Mail Options section and enter as many (?) alternate email addresses as you want. That's it!
What I don't know yet: a) Can I reply from those email addresses? I cannot, but I understand there is a way but I don't know it yet. b) Can I set up a rule so that I can automatically move emails addressed to those temporary email addresses to different folders?
Once these are resolved, I will be all set with (virtually?) unlimited throw away addresses on my domain account on Exchange!
I have been using Office365 for about a month now. I migrated from Google Apps and here are my thoughts about it so far.
What I like:
Outlook Web Access: Such a refreshing change from the dull gmail interface. It is not only better-looking but it performs way better than the sluggish gmail. Navigating around the interface is better (although for keyboard-navigation fanatics, gmail may seem better, I am not one of those) and Outlook Web Access seems way more like a desktop client that gmail does.
Real exchange access via Outlook: No IMAP, no nonsense. Pure Exchange connectivity from Outlook. Makes backing up emails to local disk easy. No folders to set up, no headers vs entire emails to choose.
SharePoint: Getting full SharePoint access included in the plan is simply awesome. I am not using Office365 for any kind of business, but I see myself using SharePoint for document management and for intranet-type features (private blogs, wiki-style journaling, etc.) and maybe even photo management?
Lync: I have not used it extensively yet, but the idea of having not only IM and video chatting but also online meetings with anyone, included in the plan, is a huge plus in favor of Office 365.
Mailbox size: With Office 365, I get 25GB mailbox compared to ~7.5GB with Google Apps gmail. I have a mailbox of about 5GB, so I am glad about this quadrupling of my mailbox capacity.
Forums/Support: Forums were sparse and traffic was light earlier. But as more and more beta invites have gone out, I have seen participation increase and I like that a lot of Microsoft folks are active on the forums there and are helpful. This unlike anything Google can boast of.
Works awesome with my Windows Phone 7 (and would be the same on iPhone or Android, or any mobile device that supports Exchange ActiveSync): I had a problem with gmail where if I deleted an email on my phone, it would only be archived on gmail and not deleted. Not so the case here.
Of course, not all is rosy. This is a beta, and there are many things that need to be fixed. Some of the things that I don't like (or am extremely annoyed about):
The biggest annoyance has been some issue with hosting engineering which disables my access to adminstration of the account as well as individual user. This has been going on for a week and I don't have an ETA from Microsoft about when it will be fixed.
The lack of organized FAQ's, especially at the beginning of the process. I could not find the articles I had stumbled upon just before signup (and those were very useful and relevant to my situation). A lot of the help articles linked out to outlook.com instead of office365.com or microsoft.com which added to the confusion.
Lack of step-by-step instructions for adding a domain and setting up accounts. I am not an Exchange administrator so after I signed up with the default user, I was expecting some step-by-step guide to tell me what I should do and in what order. There wasn't. The help was all there, just not organized well. Update: Per Allen in the comments, Microsoft has made available a YouTube video for this exact issue. I thank them for this and I am sure it is going to help a lot of folks in my situation: [youtube [www.youtube.com/watch](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQbdWXFTJfw?wmode=transparent])
Someefficiencies of gmail would be welcome here. For example, when I have to move some email to folder (applying a label in gmail), I can start typing the name of the label and it would pop up the names matching the letters. In Outlook Web App, I can only drag-and-drop or select from recently used folders.
Forwarded emails seem to attach winmail.dat files when opened in gmail. I am not sure if this is an Outlook issue or an Exchange issue or both, but if I forward an email as an attachment (vs inline), the attachment is interpreted as a winmail.dat file by gmail.
My email migration was not so successful. It completed very fast (about 10-12 hours for about 3.5GB) but a lot of older emails did not make it. Now, supposedly, there could be issues with those old emails because even in gmail, I had actually copied those emails via Outlook from the older email program. So I may have lost the message ID along the way and that would make it difficult/impossible to import. Also, related, Gmail has an All Mail folder which essentially duplicates all the emails in the various "folders" (labels). So after migration, there may be a lot of de-duping involved. I am not there yet. Calendar and Contacts had to be imported separately (not supported in IMAP migration method). Both went off smoothly and without any issues.
I have not talked about Office Web Apps (included for free) and of course, the possibility of going with a plan which offers Office 2010 a a subscription download (implying, you can free upgrades when the next version of Office is released). And, I have also not mentioned that this is a financially-backed 99.9% uptime guaranteed product!
I think Office365 is a fantastic bundle of software delivered as a service. Sign up at http://office365.com and try it yourself. If you signed up in the past, you should have already received email about the acceptance into the beta program. If you sign up now, there is a 2-4 week waiting period.
I was not sure about my transition from Google Apps to Exchange but that has been almost flawless. Add SharePoint and Lync and I think this is something huge from Microsoft and kudos to them for creating this bundle. I love it!
I own an iPad 1. I love it. I love it because of three main reasons:
Fantastic battery life: I don't really have to worry about plugging it in for an entire day's use. I really exceeds its rated battery life.
iOS apps, specifically iPad apps: I used to own an iPhone. I bought several apps then. And since I have bought my iPad, I bought several apps which were specifically made for the iPad. My kids love their two pages full of games/apps.
Form factor: Right, it is not a 7-incher that you can put in your jacket pocket or even back pocket of your pants, but it certainly is not as big as a laptop even a thin-and-light version. The iPad is thin enough and light enough to allow me to do casual computing tasks like looking up stuff on the internet (via browser or apps), checking and quick responding to emails, looking at my work calendar, etc.
There is another feature which is huge for the iPad: its price. Having the lowest capacity iPad start at $500 has now become essentially unbeatable at the moment.
Which brings me to iPad alternatives. Today I see virtually no company which can deliver a tablet with the price, the ecosystem and the battery life which will make me reconsider my iPad purchase.
Android tablets at the very low end: There have been several no-name tablets in the $150-$200 range which are good on one point (price) but horrible on the others like battery life or even Google's official support (lack thereof, of course, seen by the absence of Android Market in some cases).
Android tablets at the top: The Galaxy Tab launched via the carriers and required data contract with the purchase. Tablets are essentially not a giant phone despite what the form factor might suggest. Tablets are smaller computing devices which should be available more at stores like Best Buy and Fry's than at at&t or Verizon stores. The XOOM had promise with its super-awesome specs, but it was priced too high and again, launched by carrier. Both of these have now WiFi-only versions now, but even with the price being slightly above or about the same as the iPad, the Android ecosystem is pathetic. Yes, there are hundreds of thousands of Android apps but there are no tablet apps (or to be correct, less than 100 or so). Also, Android out of the box is pathetic for media purchase/rent capabilities. Yes, there is amazon mp3 app and maybe the Samsung Media app may do something but there is no coherent message from Android about the media experience. Maybe the upcoming Google Music initiative will help, but what about TV and movies? What about sports? As a result, Android tablets have a very very long way to go to catch up with the iTunes store.
HP/Palm: I have not seen this thing in person, it has not launched yet and we don't know what it is going to be priced at or what kind of battery life we can expect. Of course webOS app and media ecosystem is also a huge unknown at this point. So I am not going to consider this device in the conversation at all.
RIM Playbook: This one sounds promising at the moment and with their strange move to include a way to run Android apps, they can at least claim the same depth and breadth of the available app catalog as Android does. But again, I am not sure if developers have a clear understanding of what the heck they are going to develop for. There are so many environments to possibly program for the Playbook. Also, the battery life is unknown at this point.
Any Windows 7 tablet: I actually don't mind the full-blown Windows 7 on a tablet but the problem is none of the tablets I have seen are light (3lbs may be light for a laptop but not for a tablet. I am looking at you, Asus EE Slate) and none have the battery life even close to the iPad's. Sure, they can run the full version of Microsoft Office but I don't need that in a tablet ;-)
The mythical Amazon tablet: This to me seems like the big unknown, but the one with the best position to attack the iOS platform. Amazon has been making devices so it knows manufacturing. Amazon recently added the Appstore for Android which from most reviews seems to be a delightful experience (minus the initial setup). Considering they have a large mp3 music store, video on demand and now subscription-style instant streaming of movies and shows, I think they have a decent competitor to the iTunes store. Since we have absolutely no idea on the type of tablet, I cannot comment on the battery life or the price. But Amazon knows retail and it has an ecosystem to support a tablet-like device. Should be interesting. It's not if, it's when.
What about the next Windows (Windows 8 for this post)? Someleaks have startedcoming out, and there were some rumblings earlier about the platform and the application model earlier.
I must say, I am just a little bit excited about how things seem to be shaping up for Windows 8. As I understand, Windows 8 will be running on all platforms (well, just exclude Embedded, Compact, etc.) including phones and tablets along with "normal" PC's. The core will be shared and most of the stuff will be modularized and will be included or excluded in the install based on the device. And most importantly, the UI will be different based on the device on which Windows is installed. The leaks show Metro-inspired tile-based UI for touch-centric devices like phones and tablets and a standard Windows UI for PC's. In this way they have taken the beauty of the Windows Phone UI and put it on core Windows which is good news for people like me who love Metro.
The common core and split UI makes a lot of sense - combine this with the fact that Windows 8 will run on low-power Intel CPU's like Sandy Bridge series and Oak Trail along with the newly announced ARM-based architecture support, it promises better battery life on Windows 8 devices. Already, my 3-year old PC can do instant on when I replaced my hard drive with an SSD drive. So tablets with Windows 8 and flash/SSD storage will have a decent form factor, good battery life and will not take 30+ seconds to boot up. So far, all awesome.
What about the ecosystem? Here's where it gets very very interesting. Windows Phone already has about 12,000 apps and the developer interest is increasing (maybe the Nokia deal has increased the interest, maybe not) and the Marketplace is adding apps at a pretty decent clip. All these apps are written in Silverlight so they should run on Windows 8 with minor adjustments rather than complete re-build.
At the same time, Microsoft is pushing extremely hard (esp. since the availability of Internet Explorer 9 with HTML5 and other modern web standards support) the concept of rich apps in the browser without plugins, even their own Silverlight. This push should ultimately result in a lot of apps that rely mostly on the cloud or webservices to be web apps rather than native apps.
And one last point re:app ecosystem - it would be reasonable to assume Microsoft will have a bridge for their existing Windows developers to port their apps to Windows 8 including enabling those apps to run on devices like tablets and where applicable, on phones. This is an if at the moment but safe to assume that there will be some path provided and enough time given to developers to prepare for the new Windows.
That was just app ecosystem. What about the media ecosystem? Well, they do have (in some countries at least) the much-underrated Zune Marketplace which has a pretty rich catalog of music, music videos, tv shows and movies. That marketplace, under whichever name it takes, should be a huge boost to the Windows 8 platform compared to its non-iOS competition. A media market owned by and fully supported by the platform maker goes a long way in creating a singular identity for the platform rather than having disparate music and movie stores from different providers.
What the big unknown (to me at least) is, is the price. Apple has a lock on some of the crucial components which go into making a tablet. This lock not only ensures that Apple gets a great deal on prices for those components for its own devices but it also puts a squeeze on the market supply, creating a spike in the cost for the same components for the other manufacturers. As a result, I am not sure anyone can truly compete with the iPad on price, given the current supply-demand situation.
Regardless, I feel there is more to be excited about a non-existent Windows 8 tablet than say the webOS Touchpad if it has no app support or a RIM Playbook if there is no music/movie store or an Android tablet because there is no such thing (there is a Motorola XOOM or a Samsung Tab or an HTC Flyer, but not an "Android tablet").
What do you think? @ me on twitter or put your comments here. Would love to discuss this fascinating period in our lives as we move from full-blown laptop PC's to more thin-and-light tablet type computing devices.
The Windows Phone bloggers have been active recently, for good and bad reasons. Just yesterday, the ESPN ScoreCenter app finally was released for Windows Phone so I thought it may be a good idea for me to look back at what I thought were missing features/apps for me going from iPhone to Windows Phone.
The list was something like:
Corporate email: I still don't have access to my work Exchange server and that is the single-biggest issue I am facing. I am completely handicapped without knowing what my next meeting is about and where it is. I am dying to get *some* access to my corporate Exchange server. (note: access to Exchange server is available but my company does not allow it outside of McAfee EMM app or Good Technology's app, neither of which are available on windows phone yet)
Notifications: I was looking for Boxcar type, clean and universal notifications. I did not get that yet, but a lot of the apps are slowly building some sort of indicators (Live tiles, toast notifications) and it can only get better. I am not missing it as much as I thought I would be.
ESPN: Done! Finally, it is here.
Hipporemote: There are many remote desktop apps but since I have my iPad with Hipporemote, I have not bothered to try any other apps. Don't miss this one too much.
Amazon: Done! Came a while back.
In-browser video/Flash/HTML5: Coming in Mango at the end of the year. Or maybe sooner? Who knows. Not there, but coming soon.
Hidden wireless networks: Not resolved and not sure if NoDo is going to resolve it. But I guess it's fine for now.
Now, what I am missing today:
Bank of America app: This has been made visible in public but I am not sure what the hold up is.
E*Trade app: This is not in order, but this is one app that I can use which is not yet in the Marketplace.
Liveshare is one app that was released for iOS, Android and Windows Phone at once. I would love more apps like that, especially the social ones (Instagram, anyone?) so that I can include my friends on other platforms in my mobile sharing life :-)
Not going to look at features that I feel are missing because that will make this a 15-page post :-)
I saw the post over at wmpoweruser.com asking its readers to come up with the dream Windows Phone ad. I have some ideas but I don't want to show my personal information, and I don't want to reset my phone to show dummy data, so here are my ideas.
Theme - to show how adding Facebook account lights up the phone: The shot starts with an extremely happy new owner of a Windows Phone. The next shot should zoom into a shot of the phone with the guy narrating what he is doing. And that is, entering his facebook information. The account setup is saved and he goes into the People Hub and sees facebook status updates and pictures. He then goes on to like a picture and comment on someone's status. And finally, he goes into the "Me" tile and updates his own status.
Theme - to show pictures hub: Again, the ad starts with a new owner excited about his phone. He tells his wife (or the wife tells her husband) that he is going to set up his windows live account which he had already linked to flickr. As he is saying this, the ad shows some screens from a PC showing windows live linking to flickr. Next shot shows the windows phone zoomed in, and him opening the Pictures hub showing all the past albums and pictures (swiping left and right should illustrate the fluidity of the OS). He then tells his wife how he didn't even remember uploading some of those pictures and is delighted to see them. Some sort of tagline should follow, saying how "glance and go" trumps app-in-app-out.
Theme - to show Music and Videos hub: Shot starts straight with the phone zoomed in, a la iPhone/iPad ads. The user goes into the Music and Videos hub and starts playing local music. Then he goes to Shazam and gets a song which has a link to the Zune Marketplace and that is clicked, to stream the song directly. Then show a YouTube video in the history which shows paused and starts from the previous spot. The glance-and-go tagline ends the ad.
Similarly, ads to show the unified calendar (not sure if showing some Google Calendar snippets will help), Lock screen info, XBOX hub (games, including turn-by-turn vs XBOX or PC), Maps, Office, and a general ad showcasing the apps like Cocktail Flow, Twitter, Yelp, etc. should be made.
Basically, I think the "Really" ads need to be extended, to show what comes next. As in, why are people with Windows Phone spending less time immersed into the phone screens.
I have written earlier about how I love windows phone enough to swap my iPhone, what I like about it and what kind of apps and games I have on it. It is time now, after about 2.5 months of use, to talk about what I don't like about it.
It has been well documented how windows phone 7 is neither windows nor 7. Having said that, as a user of a smartphone I still have the right to talk about what I don't like, from a functional standpoint and from a company/communication standpoint. Some of these points are minor, some major. Some are critical, and some not so critical. However, these are all the things that annoy me on a day to day basis, and hence they are listed here:
Marketplace search: It provides results from apps, songs, playlists, etc., and there is no way to filter.
Zune/Podcasts performance/crash: I listen to podcasts on the Zune player. There are times when I want to skip a few minutes forward. If I skip too many times, the Zune player crashes and the only way to get out of it is to restart.
Zune player last played mark: Often, after some type of crash, Zune player forgets where my last played mark was and resets to an earlier last played mark (or beginning of a podcast if it was not played before). That is very annoying.
Answering a phone in speaker mode: I don't like that I have to answer the phone and then click on the dropdown and then switch to speakerphone. Considering that I would do that typically in the car, that extra click on the dropdown is painful.
Live tiles are not really real-time updates. This could be an application developer problem or a Windows Phone restriction, but things like stock quotes need to refresh as close as possible to real time, and they don't.
Not enough Live Tile love. I don't know why, but there are not too many apps with Live Tiles and the ones there are, don't have cool-looking Live Tile updates. My benchmark was set with the Music tile and Pictures tile which updates itself with the last artist played and the last picture taken. Why can't, for example, a Google Reader client update with the favicon of the last feed?
Marketplace crash: The Marketplace crashes quite often and like the Zune player crash, the only way to get out of this issue is to restart the phone.
At-rest encryption, VPN: These are two "enterprise" features which I need to somehow connect to my work Exchange server. I sorely miss the inability to see my work email and calendar from my phone (after iPhone and Blackberry in the past, I am addicted!).
Slowness (or in this case, lack of) updates: Before the launch, I was led to believe that this thing is going to be run nimbly and that updates would be flying left and right. Sadly, it has been almost a quarter since launch and we only hear of the updates "coming in the next few weeks/months". Such open-ended timeframes are not only bad from a customer confidence perspective, but also show that the nimble and agile assumption I made was perhaps absolutely wrong.
Browser: So many things to like about the browser, but this is an annoyance post, so what I don't like is the lack of HTML5 (and related, <video> tag) support and being able to share links from the browser to twitter or facebook. There is a share button but I can only share to messaging but not to twitter.
Capacitive buttons: I cannot remember how many times I have inadvertently pressed the search or back button while doing something else on my Samsung Focus. The buttons should be forced to be activated while an app is open, so that they don't get pressed by mistake.
No universal silence mode. The ringer can be turned off with one button but if I want complete silence, there is no way to do it.
Related to the point above, if I reduce the volume to avoid loud sounds, for example, then my alarm volume also goes down. The alarm should have its own volume, to say the least.
Search in app list. The physical search button is supposed to the context-sensitive, but I have so many apps, that when I go to the app list from the home screen, often I just want to search rather than scroll. Not only does the search button not work there, but also, there are no letters to let me jump quickly from a to b to c, etc. Both, context-sensitive searching and the letter paradigm are Windows Phone's unique UI ideas. Why are they not implemented on the app list, I don't know.
GMail-Exchange-Archive-IMAP: I don't know who is at fault here but for whatever reason, I cannot delete (sent to trash) messages in my gmail account. I was somehow able to get that going on the iPhone but the effect here is to simply archive the message so it is out of the inbox but not from All Mail.
Report Spam: Again, I am not sure who is at fault here but I cannot report to Gmail spam from the mail client on the windows phone. I understand if that is not implemented as a standard EAS/IMAP feature, but I don't know if that has or has not.
(Edit: added 1/28) Screenshots, send link to twitter, etc.: There are so many times I like an app so much that I want to take a screenshot and show it to the world. There is no way to take a screenshot. Also, there is a share app option but it is only by email. I would rather share via twitter along with a link to download. There is no way I can evangelize the platform because the OS limits me in how far I can go with sharing.
(Edit: added 1/29) Videos taken on the phone have this weirdness that the "date taken" keeps getting set to the date when you download the images to the PC. Not sure when this changed, because a few weeks back I downloaded a whole bunch of pics/vids from a trip and those dates are intact. Very strange, which makes it extremely annoying.
(Edit: added 1/29) I may be in the minority here but I just have not been able to get my sync setup correct. I want to be able to sync music, pictures, videos, apps, etc. (everything except podcasts) with my home PC and *only* my podcasts with my work PC. While a guest relationship for syncing is awesome for those times when you need to quickly move stuff in and out of a PC which you don't normally use, the limitation of being in a normal sync relationship with only one PC makes it hard to do what I need to do. iTunes at some point made that change and allowed me to sync different items with different PC's (well, two at least) and it worked quite well for me. Hope Zune desktop changes in some way to allow me to automatically sync podcasts (only) with a second PC. I know I can do it manually within a Guest relationship, and I am going to do that, but it would be nicer if it works the way iTunes used to work for me. Zune sync-ing and the nightmares I faced, is a topic for a different post, after I master the nuances :-)
(Edit: added 1/30, based on input from @aharpaz): Forwarded emails send the original email as an .eml attachment. My note: reminds me horrifyingly, of the outlook express days :-)
I can't think of anything else that bothers me enough to put here. If I remember something else, I will keep updating it.
(I forgot to mention the games I have on my Windows phone in my earlier post. Here is that list (most of the games, I have tried first before buying, but at this time, I only one have trial on my phone):
Assassin's Creed (trial) Bejeweled LIVE Carneyvale Need for Speed Undercover Fast & Furious Adrenaline Flowerz Fruit Ninja Artisan Glow ilomilo Monopoly Oregon Trail Pocket God Project Sunburst Avatar Gadgets XBOX LIVE Extras
Blackjack Metro 21 Hangman (by JPG Solutions) Hearts Hungry Castaway Puzzle Touch Tic Tac Toe by Ximad
