One thing that annoys me more than Apple fanboys are Android fanboys.
Merely pointing out the functional differences between iOS and Android does not automatically make somebody an "Android fanboy".
Merely pointing out the philosophical differences between iOS and Android does not automatically make somebody an "Android fanboy".
To generalize this, merely pointing out things that can be perceived as negative about one product/company/person does not mean that the person expressing such ideas automatically supports some competing product/company/person.
To make my point more clear, why on earth would you or anyone care about how much money the manufacturer of a product you use (or has similar OS to the product you use) make or by how much money its beating its main competitor in this quarter?
I can think of three possibilities:
- You are a market analyst.
- You are an investor.
- You are fanboy.
I am going to go with fanboy.
- You are a developer that has to make some bets about where to focus resources and learning time.
I would also probably categorize this in to "investor", in the sense that your business is investing on that platform, so profit margin of that platform in a relevant information for you.
I am a user concerned with long-term investments into ecosystem: apps, purchases of DRM-d content (as bad as it is), compatibility with peripheral devices (external batteries, fitness and medical etc). I've been burnt before (Palm devices anyone?) so now I pay a great attention to market share, third-party ecosystem, opinions of developers about the platform etc.
- You are randomly interested in the world.
- You are bikeshedding, following Sayre's law
Merely pointing out the functional differences between iOS and Android does not automatically make somebody an "Apple fanboy".
Merely pointing out the philosophical differences between iOS and Android does not automatically make somebody an "Apple fanboy".
To generalize this, merely pointing out things that can be perceived as negative about one product/company/person does not mean that the person expressing such ideas automatically supports some competing product/company/person.
Goes both ways.
The only thing that sucks is it doesn't have a decent ssh client but that is remedied by the fact it works as a tether and I can use my laptop with it. I don't like running root on a touch screen device either due to the massive danger mistyping as root and shooting something.
By the way, how do the privacy policies of Windows Phone and Microsoft Live services compare to those of matching products from Apple and Google? I have tried and failed to find a systematic comparison (i.e., a table) of how much data about the user the three mobile OSes and their vendors' apps collect and what they say about redistribution the data to third parties. I'd rather not try to perform this analysis myself (IANAL).
Perhaps there's a market opportunity here.
That problem with outlook.com is not related to the phone itself nor the mobile platform so that is moot. I don't use outlook.com - I have an IMAP Server and work exchange server and they bot work perfectly on the device.
WP8 does play well with Linux i.e. it doesn't require Zune any more to access the device. It doesn't however mount any disks on the device if you plug it in though, so I tend to yank out the SD card and poke it in my laptop. Apart from that it is an entirely self-supporting device that doesn't need machine connectivity at all so it's good enough for me.
As I said, I don't use Windows Live services at all. We have a Microsoft Exchange 2010 system at my company. It talks to that perfectly fine.
I did use it for a bit a while ago but SkyDrive has numerous problems where they delete your files so I can't rely on it.
I would disagree that the problem with Outlook.com is not related to the phone itself or the mobile platform, though. It certainly does seem to me that Windows Phone is intended to be used with Windows Live by its average user. For example, using Outlook.com is the officially recommended way of getting Outlook contacts on your phone if you don't have an Exchange server [1]. The camera app is tightly integrated with SkyDrive, too.
I understand that you cannot blame the developers of Windows Phone for this (given the sheer size of Microsoft the teams behind Windows Live and WP may well not share any personnel) but my initial experience as a user makes me wish they had paid as much attention to it as they did to the mobile OS itself.
My wife uses a Lumia 620 with outlook.com with no problems. As a casual user it's pretty good. She manually added contacts to the people thing and they appear on the phone when you next get a sync with outlook.com. I've not heard her complain at all about it so far.
Edit: just spoke to her and she actually used contacts transfer from Nokia to use BT to transfer it from her (drowned but still working well enough to get stuff off) Asha 302 that she was using before. You can also import contacts from the SIM with it but she didn't know that until afterwards.
This is mostly preaching to the choir anyway.