Why Windows Phone 7 Doesn’t Multitask

When I heard that Windows Phone 7 did not support multitasking I thought the same as most people, “here we go, Microsoft spent all this money on getting a new phone OS to market and they are already making the same mistakes as Apple”.  This view point was shared my many people however today I stared watching the Windows Phone 7 Jump Start and they also mentioned the lack of multitask support for non Windows Phone apps and this this why………

Put yourself in Microsoft's shoes, think of the money the fame and fortune…are you there?  Good.  Now think about spending millions of dollars on a crating a new OS for mobile devices then you force all phone manufactures to provide good hardware or go home, then you look at the competition who seem to be beating you hands down, but you see a strategy to beat them.  You also look at the people who hate you and are waiting to pull your OS and any device apart and expose you for the fraud they think you are.

When you take all that in you suddenly realise that making your phone succeed is going to be hard and you will do everything you can to stop it falling at the first hurdle, and in this case battery power is our hurdle.  If you let any old app on your device continue to run in the background, what is stopping it from buzzing away making network calls or just continually talking to the OS and every one of these calls requires a little bit of battery power.  The issue is, how do you protect the image of your new phone for crappy developers?

In the mobile world not only do we all want an amazing experience with everything popping out of the screen we also want to keep using our phone for longer than a day, and cutting multitasking for non-MS apps is Microsoft’s answer.  As we all know your average user won’t think “oh I had all these apps running that's why my phone only lasted an hour” they will just slate the phone and bang Windows Phone 7 dies.

IMHO I am sure like Apple multitasking apps will come in the future.

If you want to learn more about Windows Phone 7 check out these 12, 1 hour long presentations @ here

Free Microsoft Online UK Tech Days Training – 8th October

Everything you need know about the Windows Azure Platform ­– 9.30am to 3.30pm, 8 October 2010

You’ll have access to three virtual rooms full of the information you’ve been looking for on the Windows Azure Platform, SQL Azure and a lot of other great cloud insights.

· Cirrus Room - A high-level summary of the key technologies in the Windows Azure Platform such as App Fabric from Microsoft UK experts

· Altocumulus – Hear from companies who have already developed for Azure including myworldcup.com

· Stratocumulus – Get down to the low level clouds in our deeper technical sessions

Register now

For other resources and information on the latest introductory offers with 750 free hours, visit here:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ukmsdn/archive/2010/09/17/training-and-resources-to-help-you-do-more-with-windows-azure.aspx

DDD9

The DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper committee have released their times scales for the next DDD event at the Microsoft offices in Reading, as usual it will be a great event with a huge number of people attending and its all free.

• Agenda is announced 25 Dec 2010 00:00
• Registration opens 01 Jan 2011 00:00
• The event begins 29 Jan 2011 09:00

My only issue with these dates is that it seems the DDD committee is trying to reduce the usual attendee surge by opening registration on New Years day.  Obviously the DDD committee are not invited to any NYE parties ;-)

In between drinks at my NYE location I will still be finding time to register, good luck!

More info @ http://developerdeveloperdeveloper.com/ddd9/Default.aspx

Pro ASP.NET MVC Framework By Steven Sanderson

I know Steve so you may say that this review is bias however I think I can still be objective even when I say this is a brilliant book.

I have read many technical books which cover other frameworks and although this book contains alot of the content you would expect, it does give you alot of nice takeaways which makes this book special.

As you can guess from the book title it covers ASP.NET MVC version 1, as Steve walks you through creating your first MVC app you get the feeling of being guided by a great master.  By the time I finished the introductory section of the book I already felt I could get struck in, but Steve still has more, in the following section of the book he carefully takes the framework apart bit-by-bit to reveal the beating heart of MVC then gives you the knowledge to make your own extensions to the ASP.NET MVC as you see fit.

This book stands out because it not only gives you in-depth ASP.NET MVC knowledge but also shows you real world knowledge of how to do TDD, something which I have read very little of, this is expertly introduced in the introductory section.  So not only are you learning MVC you are also getting a taste of TDD.

Steve also has an amazingly dry wit which he conveys throughout the book.

I like techie books but I like them even more when I can learn and be entertained.

Steve recently released the 2nd edition of this book updated for MVC version 2, buy it @ Amazon

P.S. I am not sponsored by Steve or Amazon, I just like the book.