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bad news about WM 7

Hi People,
Here is an extract from smartphone mag that has some bad news in it, It seems M$ is starting a fresh and non of your programs will run on WM7. Plus there will be no updates for any current phones, so I dont see much prospects for cooking WM7 that will be of any use for us. Anyway I shall let you read it yourself
Jay
Jim Karpen,
your Web Guide
Read New Windows Mobile Content Every Week day at Smartphonemag.com
Web Guide: Windows Phone 7 Won’t Run Old Apps, Won’t Work on Current Phones
Shocking news this past week about the forthcoming Windows Phone 7 Series. Not only will it not run current apps, but also current phones such as the forthcoming HTC HD2 from T-Mobile may not be upgradeable. This week, I'll point you to more information about this, as well as additional detail about Windows Phone 7 and videos of this software in action.
Current Phones Won't Run Windows Phone 7
windows Phone 7 Series Won't Run Current Apps
The other bit of news was somewhat expected, but still something of a shock: none of your current software will work on a Windows Phone 7 device. According to a post by a Microsoft executive, making a clean break from the past will allow the new phones to be as powerful and user-friendly as possible.
What does that mean? That the developers will need to rewrite their software to work on the new phones. The exec did say that Microsoft will continue to work with partners who plan to deliver Windows Mobile 6.5 devices, and that it will continue to support these products.
The big question is, Will developers bother to rewrite their software? Given that so much of the smartphone action is in the Android and iPhone arenas, they may simply choose to focus on those platforms rather than rewrite their software for Windows Phone 7. An indication of the declining interest in Microsoft's platform may be the recent announcement by Skype that they were pulling their Windows Mobile version of Skype and have ceased development of it.

It is known for quite some time, just say goodbye to our clients to finally kato no one wants their products, they are great clowns of silent men like this Seventh, very ugly and totally sure that will become famous shows blue screen, as gathered from XP

How to develop an App for multiple mobile-OSys?

Hey there folks,
after reading these forums for quite a while and having several smartphones during the last years, I reached the point where I want to start creating my own apps. I tried to google around a bit and found some interesting tutorials on how to start creating apps. I also found several SDKs for different operating systems. But exactly that is the point leading to my question.
Before starting to code: is it possible to choose a platform from where my app can be delivered to each winmo, iphone, blackberry or android?
Or is that just plain impossible? I mean, those are all touch based devices Should'nt be that much of a difference? Originally I wanted to start developing an iphone app, but that would leave out all the android users and so on. I don't want to rewirte everything from scratch for an android device after having finished the iphone variant. And that did not even consider the advent of windows 7.
So, is there any way of coding for all the operating systems, keeping the effort of switching between operating systems low?
greetings and thanks in advance for your help,
your unexperienced coder-in-spe,
joker

While all four of the devices mentioned all use ARM processors of various flavours to do the work, they are four completely different operating systems, each with their own IDE and programming models.
Even considering Windows Mobile, you have to decide whether you are programming for a SmartPhone/Classic or a Pocket PC/Professional device. In this case it is possible to write code that will run on both WM platforms, but you will have to make that decision at design time, before you even think of writing a single line of code. Your application will then have to act accordingly, depending on the machine on which it runs.

java apps for symbian often works ok on wm using a midlet manager
not sure about android and blackbarry but being java not too much code would be required to port it I suppose
mind you java on wm work pretty poorly
and iphone got rules that you can only make apps using objective-C/c/c++ and their SDK
which is only available if you own a mac computer

Thank you for your answers. Looks like starting to code is not that simple as expected. So I will try developing for iPhone only :/

[Q] Native code, dead or just waiting?

As far as my stock quantum goes, I really can't complain about wp7. Great features, flows great, everything I could ask of a marketplace based OS. I got the phone knowing it would be locked down, but hoping the possibilities would grow. I do miss the seemingly endless capabilities wm offered though. Access to all resources, running native apps without the need to sideload.
I noticed a month or so ago a few guys in the forum were discovering ways to gain higher priveledges within WP7 and with the little knowledge my noob self has, have looked into the differences between wm6 and wp7, new kernel, beeing sandboxed and whatnot. And im curious, are we waiting for m$'s release of limited native code execution to oem's to be exploited, or is there an update in the privilege adventure?
With the amount of wp7 devices released and soon to be, I doubt I can look forward to an exploited bootloader to run a custom rom on my first gen wp7 quantum (such as a tricked out wp7 or possibly wm support...?), but a ported version of haret to run xdandroid as I did on my diamond would be exceptional, and from what I understand not too impossible considering wp7 uses ce7 (not sure if there's backward compatibility for ce6 though). We would just need a new UI, and an understanding of the device specific hardware for support in android...?
Where do we stand on any of these options, are they likely or if so, nearing?

I can understand your frustration with the restrictions on WP7 but for most scenarios, access to native APIs isn't that essential in my opinion (and I have been developing on WM6 myself). WP7 uses WinCE 6.0 R3 and not CE7. The Windows Phone team do recognise that they have been quite strict with the exposed APIs and I am sure that was a combination of fear of what developers write (in terms of crashing your phone) and work need to be done with Silverlight for WP. Mango brings new low level functionality and should be made available soon - Sockets been the first that comes up in my mind. Is something wrong with sandbox solutions? I believe not

For any other reasons I probably wouldn't have much to say on the subject, but I've always been one to tinker with my Xbox, psp, router, anything fun. If I can get more functionality out of it, I look for a way. Unfortunately I am not skilled enough to make it happen, so I look upon the gurus. In this case I consider dualbooting wm or even starting android from within the current OS as expanding possibilities. Which is why I look for answers to my question. Any answers?

[Q] Mathstudio (Space Time) for Windows Phone 7

Hi everybody, I am an engineer and I think that windows phone is perfect for my needs..so fast and efficient, office integrated, easy to use and many other qualities..the only thing that I can't find for this OS is Mathstudio.
For those who don't know what's this, it's like having a graphic calculator always in your poket. This program doesn't make everything, of course, but many of the most common things can be done with mathstudio.
I was wondering if somebody could port this program from android/iOS to windows phone 7. Otherwise I must always go around with my mobile and with an ipod touch only for this program. I remember that the previous version of mathstudio (called spacetime) exsists for windows mobile 6.5, an other way could be a porting from windows mobile. I wrote to the official developer but he said he won't realse a windows phone 7 version of his program.
Thank you for listening

Porting WinMo apps is technically possible (though hard unless they were written initially in .NET). Making an unmodified WinMo app run on WP7 is very hard and usually requires a custom ROM to run it (the stock ROMs have very restrictive permissions policies that most WinMo apps can't work with). Porting iOS or Android apps pretty much requires re-writing them, which is an expense that some app authors don't find worth doing.
There are a number of graphing calculator apps available for WP7, and the built-in calculator works pretty well for non-graphing functions, but I can understand wanting access to a specific tool. Unfortunately, since I've never used the app you describe, I can't tell you how well any of the WP7 alternatives compare.

I've got an HD7 and I've made on my own an Y-cable to downgrade it, so now I use the DFT's Deepshining ROM..I didn't know it was even possible to run some old WM6 apps on WP7, such a grat news I'll try to find out more about it Can you give me a list of alternative graphic calculators for windws phone 7? I wasn't able to find anywhere Thank's a lot!!!

I just did a search on the Marketplace for "graphing calculator" and got a number of hits.
If you look at the Opera apps for WP7 custom ROMs, those are actually wrappers around the WinMo Opera apps - the wrappers just put the files in the right places and then launch EXEs.

Thank you so much for the help , I had a look on the marketplace and I found different graphic calculators (Graphing calculator, PoketPi, Eval Graph, Grapher Calculator), but none of them can replace mathstudio for the following reasons: they are only in 2D, they don't support the CAS (computer algebra system, the same present in Matlab), you can't write and save scripts or even one algorythm. I will find out more about wrapping for the moment, but I hope it will come a better solution

Unfortunately, MathStudio will never ported on WP7 platform (according to this: http://www.mathstudio.net/forums/discussion/164/platform-requests , check the last post)
The only hope is upcoming Apollo. WinRT (Win8 API) will have C++ compiler and (probably) will support native code, so MathStudio developers can (also - possible, it's not too easy) port their app to Win8.

What behaviour in the mobile operating system market could be described as anticompetitive?

I am a retired programmer with too much time on my hands; as such, I wrote a complaint to a regulatory body about how I can't install the operating system I want on my device because it will render it unusable (if I can't call for help on a phone because of drivers, what good is it?). I received a response requesting an interview with an officer who specializes in anticompetition cases and I would like to make sure I have my eggs all in one basket.
The current mobile phone market I liken to the desktop OS market of the 90s, where you had companies like Xerox, Microsoft, IBM, and so on; in the 90s, there were antitrust lawsuits where a particular company was accused of intentionally creating barriers to customers seeking to install software by other companies on personal computers. Obviously, that was settled in the 2000s, but IMO it did appear to make a positive change even if we are still fighting against IE. This may not be relevant, but that's what my mind went to when I realized I couldn't uninstall the Play Store.
Nobody uses "cellular telephones" as telephones anymore; instead, they are mobile computers. Computers in the 80s/90s had plenty of OS options (you may recall using OS/2 or BSD), but you can't do that with mobile computers... is that a good thing?
In my retirement, I'd like to develop and build a mobile phone operating system that is not android (nor lineageOS); this would either be Linux or BSD-based with a simple package manager, but the user would have the option to compile their own software also. This would ideally *not* hinder the underlying function of the device (i.e. telephony), but I don't see how manufacturers could be compelled to provide binary drivers. The current mobile market makes it obviously a very high barrier to entry for any who want to develop new operating systems for mobile computers. Is this anticompetitive? Perhaps not, but I'd like to hear some opinions and if you would kindly point me towards some resources I would appreciate it.

IMO the OS is not the problem - a command line based OS can be written by any talented student nowadays - preferably in C++, yes there are enough templates on the Internet, it is the device drivers what have to fit the hardware that make the whole thing difficult. I know that some OEMs put their device drivers' source code to the public.

jwoegerbauer said:
IMO the OS is not the problem - a command line based OS can be written by any talented student nowadays - preferably in C++, yes there are enough templates on the Internet, it is the device drivers what have to fit the hardware that make the whole thing difficult. I know that some OEMs put their device drivers' source code to the public.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
To install a new OS on a phone, the phone must first be booted into a bootloader such that the 'image' of the OS can be loaded. The image for the OS should be built with the drivers present such that when booting, the OS kernel can load the relevant drivers as it probes the hardware in the phone, and then the software installed on the user layer can access that hardware through the relevant system calls. How possible is it for the bootloader to load a custom OS in the general sense? The majority of instructions I find are on enthusiast/developer websites with the actual manufacturers giving basically no input (that is to say, I haven't seen on manufacturer's websites or instruction manuals where they give instructions for booting your choice of OS).
Would it be fair to say that mobile developers, like Google/Samsung/LG/Amazon/etc are restricting users from being able to install their own OS on their device? Is driver access a reasonable thing to ask for?
Again, I'm retired, so I have time on my hands, but I'm old and there's realistically not a lot of that time left. I don't want to try developing my own BSD-based mobile OS if there's no way for me to install it on my own devices; that effort could go into another project if it is otherwise wasted. I suppose it is worth asking whether I should bother returning the bureau's request for an interview.