Since the release of Windows 7, contemplating the release of Windows Mobile 7 has been pleasant.  I thought we’d be getting capacitive touch goodness in a slick interface that was currently missing from Windows Mobile on top of the good things about the system like removable storage, direct access to the file system, the ability to side load applications, and the ability to replace core apps with anything you like.

To say the revelations of the last several days have been disheartening would be an understatement.  MS has revealed that apps will only be available through an MS run app store, that there would be no removable storage, no Flash or even Silverlight in the browser (despite the fact that Silverlight is a core part of the apps on WM7), that the applications would be heavily sandboxed, there will be no access to the file system, and applications duplicating core features will not be allowed.  Then the coup de grace; no copy and paste.

Really?  Why the heck would anyone buy this thing?  Its an iPhone without the Apple magic; with Ballmer instead of Jobs and a non-replaceable version of IE instead of Safari (that really hurts).  If MS wants to sell me a phone they need to be clearly better than iPhone both in terms of capabilities and openness.  This is not nearly as good as the iPhone is today and there will be an additional iPhone release in June/July before WM 7 phones hit the shelves.

Windows 7 lead me to expect better but this product will be late to market and not as good as the phone I currently have in my pocket.  That’s too bad because I’d love to ditch those control freaks at Apple.  I just can’t see replacing them with the Redmond version.

Its really bad when Google looks like the last, best hope for sanity in smart phones.

Epic fail MS.