Microsoft’s already done a lot right with Windows Phone 7, and it’s not even out until late this year. But after today’s announcements, there’s one lingering question: How can Windows Phone 7 possibly catch up, in terms of apps?

To be clear, the problem is as follows: When Windows phone 7 launches later this year, it will face the same Catch-22 as any new app platform does: Without an audience to sell to, why would developers invest in creating complicated apps? And if a platform doesn’t have these great apps, why would people switch to it?

It’s something I’ve been wondering about since the day we found out that Windows Phone 7, despite a February unveiling and a March developers’ announcement, won’t actually ship until the end of this year, and which I was hoping might be cleared up today. It wasn’t.

We only have to look as far as Palm to see that getting apps off to a slow start can be severely detrimental—even fatal—to a platform. But a comparison to webOS, or even Android, doesn’t do Windows Phone 7’s situation justice. By the end of this year, the platforms WinPho 7 will be competing with—namely iPhone and Android—will be even more deeply entrenched with users than they are now. And the same goes for developers: The 30,000+ apps in the Android Market are trending skyward, and the 140,000+ apps in App Store aren’t showing any signs of slowing down, not to mention the iPad apps that are about to flood the index. Now, I know sheer quantity of apps doesn’t mean everything, but it means something—the iPhone’s got a better selection of great apps than Android, and Android’s got a better selection of great apps than webOS or BlackBerry. So, come holiday season 2010, smartphone buyers will have a choice between phones with a vast library of apps to do just about anything you can think of, and Windows Phone 7.

So what can Microsoft possibly do? I didn’t know, so I asked Microsoft Developer Division VP Scott Guthrie, How bring people to your platform?

It’s a lot easier to build a Windows Phone app compared to, say, an iPhone or Android App now. Ultimately developers are interested in, can I build cool apps? Is it easy? How painful is it? Can I make money?

To a degree, he’s right. Microsoft has seriously lowered the entry barriers for Windows Phone 7 app development, setting development tools free as of today, and demonstrating on stage how simple it is to create an app from scratch. (Guthrie himself created a barebones Twitter app in real real time in front of the audience.) And yeah, the launch partners announced today are pretty great.

I think this event, and this conference, hopefully catapults interest, and based on the success we’ve had in the last three weeks, in terms of getting some of these partners interested… I feel pretty confident we’re going to have a pretty wide range of apps available at launch.

And they will! But you know who else had fantastic launch partners? Palm. Gathering a bunch of high profile names on short notice is a PR coup, but it’s not a long-term salve.

The real question is, how do you lure developers away from established, surefire moneymakers, like the App Store, or increasingly, the Android Market? What do you say to an iPhone developer right now, when you don’t have a product in consumers’ hands? Joe Belfiore:

If I were sitting here face to face with an iPhone app developer now, I’d say, I think we’re worthy of consideration. I think, hopefully, if people have seen the user experience we’re building, and seen some of the reception and reaction that’s happened, with real people in the real world looking at what the story is, that at minimum, it piques their interest and says, this looks like a smartphone platform that’s going to have some degree of success.

This is Microsoft’s struggle: To convince developers that, despite a release date of late 2010, minimal hardware announcements, an entirely new platform and user experience (which most of them will not experience on hardware before launch), they should invest time and money in Windows Phone 7. They’re making the literal act of developing as simple and inviting as possible; they’re giving developers a massive lead time to develop, and get familiar with the tools; they’re garnering as much hype with the public as they can.

But what Microsoft can’t do is will Window Phone 7 handsets into the public’s hands. They’re going to have to earn that, and they’re going to need developers’ help. And as excited as they—and we—might be about this thing, the earliest we could hope for Windows Phone 7 to have the kind of app power it needs to be competitive with the smartphone giants—who, by the way, aren’t going to be sitting still for the next year—is the middle of 2011. That’s the Windows Phone 7 problem—and it’s out of Microsoft’s hands.

Microsoft’s upcoming Windows Phone 7 Series shares one trait in common with Apple’s iPhone: It doesn’t support full multitasking.

While the iPhone does allow some limited multitasking (the phone and iPod apps can run in the background) many critics have knocked the iPhone for its inability to run third-party apps in the background. If you want to write an e-mail while listening to music in the Pandora app, for example, you must first quit Pandora. The only way to enable full background processing on an iPhone is to jailbreak (i.e., hack) the device.

For Windows Phone 7 Series, the story is almost exactly the same: The OS can process Microsoft’s core integrated experiences, such as music and phone calls, in the background, but third-party apps cannot run in the background. And just like the iPhone, Windows Phone 7 Series supports push-notifications enabling third-party apps to send updates and status messages to a phone’s home screen even when the actual application is not running in the background.

That’s in marked contrast to Google’s Android and Palm’s WebOS, both of which support extensive multitasking, including allowing third-party apps to run in the background.

Microsoft’s reasons for not supporting full background processing should sound familiar: It drains batteries.

“We do not allow third-party applications running on the phone to execute in the background,” said Charlie Kindel, manager of Microsoft’s Windows Phone App Platform and Developer Experience program, in a phone interview with Wired.com. “We’re poised to support it eventually, but in order to support great battery life and great end-user experience, we’re focusing on the integrated experiences first.”

In the smartphone world, the definition of multitasking has been widely debated. Technically, the iPhone and, soon, Windows Phone 7 Series, do multitask because they process core integrated services in the background. When critics say the iPhone doesn’t support multitasking, they’re thinking of the traditional desktop metaphor that allows multiple apps to run in several windows simultaneously without pause.

Google’s Android OS and Palm’s WebOS both support multitasking in the traditional sense: They allow you to run multiple third-party apps in addition to core integrated services in the background. Though that allows more flexibility, some Palm Pre users have complained about the Pre’s battery life being greatly reduced because of full background processing capability. The same complaint has been made about Android. For both platforms, users must manually disable settings or apps that run in the background by default to maximize battery life.

Photo: Charlie Sorrel / Wired.com

Microsoft’s driving home the point that developers are going to know exactly what kind of hardware they’re targeting as they whip up Windows Phone 7 Series apps — and naturally, a biggie is screen resolution since that affects how UI elements are going to be placed, how cool they can look, and how small they can realistically be. In a session at MIX10, Microsoft’s Charlie Kindel has laid down the law that WP7S will be 800 x 480 — just 800 x 480 — at launch, a message we heard at MWC last month, but the new tidbit here is that there’ll be 480 x 320 in the pipe for an unannounced later date. All devices will have precisely the same amount of available RAM and the same capacitive touch capability, and as we’ve already know, manufacturers will be able to tack on a keyboard if they like.

Windows Phone 7 Series will be WVGA only at launch, HVGA later originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 15 Mar 2010 17:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

I’ve been skeptical of the big push for 3D in TVs and movies. But I just played the first 45 minutes or so of Metro 2033 on a top-of-the-line 3D-enabled gaming rig and, well, wow.

Playing games in 3D right now requires a lot of work on your part, or at least a lot of money. An Nvidia rep told me that you could get a decent 3d-capable tower for $800-$1,000, but it was telling that the setup they had me playing on at the press preview for the game had a to-be-announced Nvidia GPU inside a 3.5-foot-tall tower with a plexiglass side to show off the water cooling inside. Sure, it’ll work with a slower computer, but if you want a great experience, expect to pay top dollar.

That’s because 3D gaming will basically require a doubled framerate to get video as smooth as we’re used to with 2D games, as it’s processing a frame for each eye instead of one for both.

But that’s fine. Unless you’re a hardcore PC gamer or a serious early adopter, I wouldn’t suggest running out and dropping $4,000 on a tower. What was exciting about this was that it felt like a glimpse into the near future.

PCs, after all, aren’t where the majority of players get their gaming done. They play consoles. The PS3 is getting 3D capabilities this summer through a couple of firmware upgrades; the same is coming to the Xbox 360 sometime soon. In any case, even when the PS3 and Xbox 360 get 3D support you’ll need a new 3D HDTV that supports HDMI 1.4 to run em, so it won’t suddenly make 3D gaming mainstream.

And since 3D requires a doubled framerate, you shouldn’t expect to be able to play the current crop of console games in 3D even when the PS3 gets that ability, because most of them are already pushing the console hard to hit its framerate as-is. Doubling that will not work out very well.

Post-Apocalyptic Moscow in Three Dimensions

The graphics of Metro 2033 are very good, to be sure, but they’re nothing better than any other major release from the past year. What made the experience great was the 3D. It was amazing how much was added to the feel of the game.

Leaving an underground tunnel into a post-apocalyptic Moscow at night, my vision was filled with floating specs of snow and dust in some lights. But closer to me were some cracks in my gas mask, which represented damage to my character. In the middle distance were some other characters and piles of rubble. Off in the distance was a huge tower.

Each level of depth stood out completely and made the screen feel like a window. Aiming was easier, as I could immediately tell just how far off an enemy was, even when I hadn’t seen it before and was unsure of its scale.

Back underground in the subway tunnels that make up 70% of the game, everything was much closer. But I could pass a cracked-open doorway and peer inside at the people sitting there, and it felt like I was really looking into someone’s private room.

When You’ll Be Able to Get In on the Fun

In short, 3D makes games feel more real than ever before. And this is just the beginning. With Natal, Microsoft will be able to do head tracking, which when combined with 3D really looks like the future of gaming to me. A next-gen Microsoft console with Natal and 3D built-in, complete with the guts to make 3D run smoothly, will completely change the way we play games.

And while 3D tech will take a bit of time to become affordable, if you really want to experience it now, you can. Games today are created in 3D already, so it’s just a matter of processing to turn those 3D spaces into something you can see with glasses. Unreal just announced its Unreal Engine will be able to go 3D with the flip of a switch, and it powers loads of popular games. A gaming rig with a good enough graphics card hooked up to a 120Hz monitor can run many games in 3D right now, but Nvidia’s 3DTV Play, just announced today, will let you hook up a gaming PC to a 3D HDTV in your living room. So if you’ve got the motivation and the money, you’ve got the ability to enjoy 3D gaming on the couch right now.

Really, this isn’t going to hit the mainstream until consoles are pushing it. And that probably won’t be for a couple of years, at least for console AAA titles, which is a bummer.

But if you’re an early adopter looking to buy a first-gen 3D HDTV and Blu-ray player, you’d be crazy to not at least think about grabbing a gaming PC that can handle 3D games. Because trust me, you’ll use that a lot more often than you’ll watch Avatar.

The biggest chunk of eye candy we’ve seen out of Microsoft’s MIX10 event so far today has been the unveiling of the significantly-retooled Windows Phone Marketplace that’ll debut in Windows Phone 7 Series — and needless to say, it’s a looker. It’s got support for credit card purchases, operator billing, and ad-supported content — a hot topic right now with Google’s and Apple’s mobile advertising acquisitions — and a try-before-you-buy scheme not unlike Android Market’s policy (though WP7S devs can choose what kind of trial period they want to offer; Android devs have no such option). We’ve been offered some video of the new Marketplace in action, and it looks super polished and well-integrated with the typical WP7S way of getting around — you’re given a “panoramic view” where you can browse categories and titles, see featured items, and get details with ratings, reviews, screen shots, and pricing information. Purchased apps can be pinned to your Quick Launch screen, saving you a couple taps for your favorite and most frequently-used items. Watch the full video after the break — and keep an eye out for the trick “tilting” of menu items based on finger location toward the end of the clip, something we haven’t seen before.

Continue reading Windows Phone Marketplace for Windows Phone 7 Series unveiled

Windows Phone Marketplace for Windows Phone 7 Series unveiled originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 15 Mar 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Microsoft  | Email this | Comments