Interface Windows Phone 7: Microsoft beat Apple

Cupertino, you surely excuse me, but Microsoft beat you. Windows Phone 7 looks like an iPhone from the future. The user interface (UI) is just as simple and elegant as Apple's iron design, while the iPhone interface is just like the painted Palm Pilot ( Palm 3 picture ).

This does not mean that user experience will be better than with Apple products. Because The two interface concepts, information-oriented and function-oriented, are very different from each other. And each of them is very different from what the user had dealt with before.

With the iPhone, Apple laid an incredibly simple interface that suits people of all ages and directs their actions in the right direction: "This is a device that adapts to various functions and gives me access to the necessary information depending on which icon I clicked."
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This simple idea is an incredible success. Therefore, Apple is betting on this model not only for mobile phones, but also for the future of computing in general. And for the same reason, Android, Palm, and Blackberrie follow this.

From scratch

Microsoft has a completely different approach. Instead of creating another “similar” mobile phone, like Android and Co., the Windows Phone 7 team came up with their own vision of what a mobile phone could be. In the development process, they created a beautiful interface in which information orientation is defining moments for user interaction. Not applications with specific functions, but with information itself. In fact - information is the interface.

In the final form, the information is divided into areas called "centers" (hubs), which are focused on user tasks. Available through “live tiles” from the home screen, “I” (user profile), “people” (contacts), “pictures and video” (media), “music”, “games”, as well as always available search, through panoramic flow of perception, hubs literally interweave a multitude of data sources, both local and from the "cloud" (Internet).



Instead of: go to the phone book to select a number and call the person, open another application to read his twitter, and open another application to read his updates from Contact, and another application to read his mail, and one more, to view photos with it, the “People” hub (contacts) of Windows Phone provides us with a seamless view of all this, in a very simple and logical way. In functionally oriented interface models, like on the iPhone, when the user thinks “I want to call”, he switches the device to the call mode by launching the desired application, selects a contact and calls. When a user thinks “What's new for Vanya Petrov?” He switches the phone to the “mode” of the vkontakte client, twitter, mail, etc.

Microsoft also organized “centers” (hubs) in the form of screens, flashed with columns grouped by information in the form of a single screen panoramic landscape, which, although larger than the screen of the phone, can be scrolled by your fingers. And complementing this all with a minimalist aesthetic interface with a seemingly elegant, not overloaded animation - they do the work just great.

What about other apps?

Instinctively, I like the approach from Microsoft to organizing the core of our digital life: people + social services + multimedia + communications - everything is divided into centers (hubs). I like this more than Apple’s approach - “this is a phone, this is an email client, this is a browser, this is an iPod”. It is less rigid than the model in the iPhone-e or Andoroid-e, offers a more convenient perception, invites to explore and offers information from different points of view on a faster and clearer path. It looks more human, and this is exactly what Apple and their followers are taking care of.

Does this mean that the function-oriented model is worse? As I said earlier, not a fact. Especially because the information-oriented panoramas are not suitable for each simple task, the performance of which is expected by users of the same iPhone. And when I say, every simple task - I mean the hordes of programs that inhabit the Apple app store. Of course, Microsoft can do whatever it pleases with the hubs, but if their new devices are without an app store, they will again lose out in the competition with Apple.

Fortunately for Microsoft, the Windows Phone model is not only information-oriented, but also function-oriented. According to Joe Belfiore, the gran jefe of the Windows Phone department at Microsoft, applications will not necessarily be embedded in some kind of hub or interface panorama. When the developer’s tools come out next month, it will encourage the appearance of apps that already exist on the iPhone today. In other words, Microsoft understands that one approach (interface building models) is just as important as the other.

They hope that hubs will be better, more wonderful, and will be a more intuitive way to provide and contribute to our digital life, which most consumers actually want. Looking at what they showed today, I think they are on the right track. But, as with the Zune HD, it may already be too late.

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From me :)

Translation is certainly not the best, but I tried very hard :-) If something goes wrong, please treat it condescendingly, for the first time I translate for Habra.

And my thoughts on the new platform

For starters, watch this video:


In this video, I recognize my iPhone. Of course, the integration of social networks into the phone is not Microsoft's know-how, we saw very similar things only on Palm in WebOS, while the rest of the attempts in the form of widgets on the homescreen were not very impressive. Anyway me.

But imagine, here is the hub for Office:


Now imagine a hub from Yandex or Google. Of course, for these companies it is better to integrate into the “factory” hubs, but, behold, what if not a small part of your life is football, or cars, or it? And imagine that if you can install on your device a hub from Sport Express, or from the magazine Behind the Wheel, or a hub? :-) It seems to me not a bad idea.

I'm not saying that you can create your own hubs, but IMHO, it would be very cool :-)

As for multitasking

On the same Gizmodo there is an article "Applications for Windows Phone 7: What we know and what does not . " Its main leitmotif is that everything will be known on MIX2010 , there will be 12 sessions dedicated to application development. And all the answers we get there. But there is some encouraging information.

For third-party applications, we will tell more details on MIX, but we have several possibilities to deliver the necessary information to the user when the application is not running. As an example - "live tiles" on the homescreen, or "data streams" in the hubs, as another example.

This is said by Joe Belfiore in an interview with a journalist.

What can I say - yes, it is not familiar. This is a partial rejection of the existing paradigm. People who have tried the iPad write: Gentlemen, photos and words are worth nothing, you need to touch the device.
Maybe the platform of Windows Phone 7 series is the same? We will wait for real devices to evaluate the new philosophy.

Link to the original, because parser habr did not miss "+" - gizmodo.com/5472010/windows-phone-7-interface-microsoft-has-out+appled-apple