Apps, part 2

I'm not going to hold your hand through Calculator, it's just that. I am going to comment on Calendar, though. Everything you hated about Nokia's is back. Nah, I'm kidding, look at your faces. It's gone, man, solid gone.

There are tons of calendars, including a birtday calendar. Each calendar site has its own color (remember that hub thing? Yeah.) So, blue for phone, red for birthdays, cyan for Google, etc. Plain. The month view slides up and down through months.

There is no week view, but the day view is infinite, if today slides, tomorrow comes and then the next day. It's easy to get an overview. Unles you want to see that you work Mo, We and Fr from 11 and Tu and Th from 12. That isn't there.

BUT. There's an Agenda view that is widely generous with the time range. And it goes both ways. (there's a she said joke in there somewhere). That is, it shows both the last few "missed" events, then today, then the future. Which is cool, because you get to call the next day and say your battery died, instead of 4 days later, when anything you say is awkward.

Also, To-Do is in there somewhere. Standard stuff, add todo, add a date (optional). Mark as done (Called "Complete"). Also a Delete, which is weird, because Complete takes it away. I assume it makes a difference if you sync with something. Also, "Postpone a day" if you are a lazy, procrasinating, postponing type of guy. All lazy procrastinating people raise your hands in the air and jump up and down! Ha, I know you won't.

Also, it's butter-smooth.

Now, some of the 3rd party apps. There are 4 kinds of VNC. 4 kinds of RDP (hehe, this is Microsoft, it's what they do). There's a TV DB tracker of viewed images, like SeriesFinale. There are paint apps, music apps, BBC player, BBC2 player, BBC4 player, every single player is there, because MS uses Silverlight-based XML programs for WP7.5 and the embedded controls. If you ever developed for Windows you know what I mean. There is no importing code. You can embed a Facebook viewport in your app in 3 lines. And you can build a BBC<whatever> player in a single line. Mediaplayer.OpenStream(<address>) or somesuch nonsense.

So, most of what I missed is here. There are tens of thousands of apps, music and videos on there, no ghost town. Also, with XNA up and running XBOX games start slipping over.

Also, Microsoft included TouchDevelop on their phone market app, so you can just pas the time developing on the phone. No compiler, no fuss, just an IDE with events, actions, scripts, and a few XML files it writes. Complete with several examples.

As a Delphi developer, I can say this is INSANE. A bouncing ball game can be scribbled in 10 lines, with no compile time, on the phone, while waiting for the dentist. With C-like syntax and help. Integrated timer, put sprite at coordinates function calls. All you do is x++ and it slides. Add an if and it bounces. No wonder the app market exploded.

And, even though development is easy, some apps deserve some hats off. MetroTube (Ex Lazytube) is a Youtube browser that is better than Youtube itself. Plays, searches, maintains lists, switches quality, jumps to full screen by accelerometer (tilt), remembers back and forward, pins videos to start, is butter smooth and plays while phone is locked. All for 1 dollar (but the free version is not restricted, the buck is for support of developers).

Other apps deserve a mention. AccuWeather is up and kicking, complete with nice UI and background updates, several other weather sites have representatives. Like I said, Series-finale and VNC along with RDP make an appearance. Several remote-pc controls also exist, complete with a screen for every app you want, including browser, youtube, MPC (-HC), XBMC, WMP, WMC, VLC, Winamp, Hulu and several others, making VNC kind of less important.

Other apps are also stirring up joy. AppFlow is similar to an app we had here, on N900, except this one works right. It's a filter of Marketplace, in which it shows new apps, stars (with an exploding number of downloads), fallen stars (were popular, now almost dead), hidden gems (very high rating, low downloads) as well as staff picks and other manually maintained lists.

Toggle app allows you to toggle GSM, Wifi, BT, Silent profile and the like and, best of all, allows pinning of any button so you can pin whatever you use.

There's a "Where Am I" app that you fire up when lost, it gets position, draws a map, and allows forwarding of the address via SMS or whatever so people can recouperate your sorry, lost behind. It also serves as a meeting point, you can message where you are to a group of people (did I mention you can text groups?) and they can converge on your (sorry) (lost) behind. Also, there's the POI thing that's cool.

Check-ins are here, complete with several services (FB, foursquare, etc).

And the usual tools. Alternate dialers, where's my car, text while you walk (superimposes text over the camera so you don't fall into holes while typing), Internet Radio, network tools (ping, DNS, etc), humor magazines, ebay.

Overall, it's not a bad site to look at. I thought what with it being new, I'll be able to download "tumbling weed". Not so. In fact, it is larger than the S3 market place by a factor of 10 or so.

Which reminds me.

Also in the "good" section, we have: Microsoft software. Why is that good, you ask. What have you been smoking, you ask. Because it starts with a M. And things that start with a M don't start with an O, as in OVI, or with an N, as in Nokia Suite. That's right, no more OVI store, no more clumsy UI, no more bugs, no more jumping lists. No more running Nokia Connectivity service. Free. I'm finally free.

ETA: Almost forgot. The app market has a mandatory policy of try and buy. Each app has a try button, that serves either a time limited version, an ad supported version, or a limited functionality version. There is no buying before looking, and no "look for the free version". See something you like, tap "try". Fiddle. Uninstall or buy.

Unlike S3, it's the same app and same name, so "buy" upgrades you. On S3, you had to download the paid version. Which installed another app.

Oh and, it all installs in the background. No SIS stuff, no wizards, no packages. Tap Try, it goes to menu, app is there, grayed out, with a progress bar. 0-50% is downloading, 50-100 is installing. When done, it's no longer gray.

Also, I noticed I referenced the selective multitasking but never addressed it. So here it is:

There are basically two schools of thought. There's the Linux phone, a la N900, that runs everything in parallel. And there's the iOS (and those obnoxious Android copycats) that only runs the current app.

Well, now there are kind of three. Windows Phone has a whitelist. An app can declare itself as needed in the background, when installed. This adds it to a list, and, once that is done, it is allowed to play in background, say, music, or video.

The whitelist is user controlled, in the sense that user can turn off the background stuff if an app misbehaves. Let's say you see no good reason to allow Accuweather to keep updating every hour. Set to settings, flip it to off and it freezes when closed/locked/whatever.

There is no UI to ADD apps to the whitelist, but frankly, why would you. If the developer thinks it's not a back task, why? I don't want Contacts to keep running when I'm on the phone. Though if you REALLY want, there's a registry setting for that. Get used to that meme.

So, does it multitask? Yes. Does it multitask YOUR app? Yes. Can you play music/radio while browsing? Yes. Can you leave a game running and flip away on the UI? No. You could if you tried really bad, but don't.

And another thing. Updating software flashes it, which is kind of what you expected. It's also a wizard, not a CLI tool, which is also what you expected. What you didn't expect is that the PC that updates your phone makes a backup before trying, so you can back-back-back through versions too, if needed be. This far, all MS versions can be backed to any point in time, unlike some other firmwares I know from people that start with N for phones that start with N.I'm starting to hate N. In fact, from now on, I'm going to pretend it's a Z that's too stupid to walk and tripped over.

And with that, on to the bad.

[v 1.1, added marketplace and selective multitasking and flashing]