Merely pointing out the hypocritical arguments of some Apple supporters does not automatically make somebody an "Android fanboy".

Merely pointing out the functional differences between iOS and Android does not automatically make somebody an "Android fanboy".

Merely pointing out the philosophical differences between iOS and Android does not automatically make somebody an "Android fanboy".

To generalize this, merely pointing out things that can be perceived as negative about one product/company/person does not mean that the person expressing such ideas automatically supports some competing product/company/person.

Not sure where you are heading with this.

To make my point more clear, why on earth would you or anyone care about how much money the manufacturer of a product you use (or has similar OS to the product you use) make or by how much money its beating its main competitor in this quarter?

I can think of three possibilities:

- You are a market analyst.

- You are an investor.

- You are fanboy.

I am going to go with fanboy.

Or:

- You are a developer that has to make some bets about where to focus resources and learning time.

The original poster wasn't coming from that perspective either. He was basically Grubering for Android, which is about as interesting and insightful as when Gruber does it for iOS.

If you are on mobile business, its currently a duopoly, if you are not investing on both top 2 platform you are doing it wrong.

I would also probably categorize this in to "investor", in the sense that your business is investing on that platform, so profit margin of that platform in a relevant information for you.

Or go with 'investor', if not in the usual sense of word.

I am a user concerned with long-term investments into ecosystem: apps, purchases of DRM-d content (as bad as it is), compatibility with peripheral devices (external batteries, fitness and medical etc). I've been burnt before (Palm devices anyone?) so now I pay a great attention to market share, third-party ecosystem, opinions of developers about the platform etc.

Or:

- You are randomly interested in the world.

- You are bikeshedding, following Sayre's law

Merely pointing out the hypocritical arguments of some Android supporters does not automatically make somebody an "Apple fanboy".

Merely pointing out the functional differences between iOS and Android does not automatically make somebody an "Apple fanboy".

Merely pointing out the philosophical differences between iOS and Android does not automatically make somebody an "Apple fanboy".

To generalize this, merely pointing out things that can be perceived as negative about one product/company/person does not mean that the person expressing such ideas automatically supports some competing product/company/person.

Goes both ways.

Absolutely. Where did I ever say it didn't?

Even more, it's surprising to see this mentality on Hacker News. You'd think that we love technology and try whatever is best at this moment. I have never really used Windows, but I like Microsoft's work on Metro and Windows Phone, so I also have a Lumia (besides being an Apple user in general).

Same for me. I spend most of my time on Linux these days but I have a Lumia (720). Great phone. Just works and can get through 3 days without a charge!

The only thing that sucks is it doesn't have a decent ssh client but that is remedied by the fact it works as a tether and I can use my laptop with it. I don't like running root on a touch screen device either due to the massive danger mistyping as root and shooting something.

Today was my first real experience with Windows Phone (I set up a -- yes -- Samsung device running Windows Phone 7.8, the latest update to the previous release, for a relative). My first impression of it was that the UI and the core apps felt responsive and well-designed. Sadly, I ran into a error whereby Outlook.com refused to import an Outlook 2007 CSV file with contacts to sync with the phone. I soon figured out the reason behind the error was Office 2007's UI language being set to something other than English, which caused Outlook to generate a header for the CSV file with the field names listed in that locale, which in turn Outlook.com refused to parse. Disappointing, particularly in light of otherwise decent localization. Other than that, though, actually using it has more or less convinced me to consider a Windows Phone device as my next phone. AFAIK, WP8 doesn't rely on Zune the way WP7 does. Does it play well with Linux in practice?

By the way, how do the privacy policies of Windows Phone and Microsoft Live services compare to those of matching products from Apple and Google? I have tried and failed to find a systematic comparison (i.e., a table) of how much data about the user the three mobile OSes and their vendors' apps collect and what they say about redistribution the data to third parties. I'd rather not try to perform this analysis myself (IANAL).

Perhaps there's a market opportunity here.

I had a windows 7.8 phone before this one (a Lumia 710). The entire core is wonderfully designed to the point that I only usually install 3-4 free apps on the device. These are currently Adobe Reader, Nokia Here Drive (which is the best app of any kind on any device), RPNCalc and YouTube. I'd go for a Nokia device if you do get one - they are superior simply due to the navigation provided and their build quality.

That problem with outlook.com is not related to the phone itself nor the mobile platform so that is moot. I don't use outlook.com - I have an IMAP Server and work exchange server and they bot work perfectly on the device.

WP8 does play well with Linux i.e. it doesn't require Zune any more to access the device. It doesn't however mount any disks on the device if you plug it in though, so I tend to yank out the SD card and poke it in my laptop. Apart from that it is an entirely self-supporting device that doesn't need machine connectivity at all so it's good enough for me.

As I said, I don't use Windows Live services at all. We have a Microsoft Exchange 2010 system at my company. It talks to that perfectly fine.

I did use it for a bit a while ago but SkyDrive has numerous problems where they delete your files so I can't rely on it.

Sounds pretty good overall. All the more reason to try it. Nokia's map applications have been great since Symbian S60v3 was in its prime, so I'd love to see what their developers were able to do with them on a more capable platform.

I would disagree that the problem with Outlook.com is not related to the phone itself or the mobile platform, though. It certainly does seem to me that Windows Phone is intended to be used with Windows Live by its average user. For example, using Outlook.com is the officially recommended way of getting Outlook contacts on your phone if you don't have an Exchange server [1]. The camera app is tightly integrated with SkyDrive, too.

I understand that you cannot blame the developers of Windows Phone for this (given the sheer size of Microsoft the teams behind Windows Live and WP may well not share any personnel) but my initial experience as a user makes me wish they had paid as much attention to it as they did to the mobile OS itself.

[1] http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2844991

Well you get full offline turn by turn voice navigation now for free! Integrated traffic and commute status as well. I regularly use it to get around the UK and it's never let me down. I get people staunchly defending google maps against it until they are shown exactly how good it is. I tried google's nav stuff but it relies too much on a data connection. Not only that, on the 720, I can do a 4 hour drive with nav on, play around on the phone for ages when I get there and do a 4 hour drive back and I've still got 60% battery! Remarkable!

My wife uses a Lumia 620 with outlook.com with no problems. As a casual user it's pretty good. She manually added contacts to the people thing and they appear on the phone when you next get a sync with outlook.com. I've not heard her complain at all about it so far.

Edit: just spoke to her and she actually used contacts transfer from Nokia to use BT to transfer it from her (drowned but still working well enough to get stuff off) Asha 302 that she was using before. You can also import contacts from the SIM with it but she didn't know that until afterwards.

Yes, who cares, the user decides for an eco system and that's it. I am happy with Apple, they serve my every perceived need and as long as they are not too expensive or too far behind, I am not going to change.

This is mostly preaching to the choir anyway.