A new phone buyer has a ton of options, between the iPhone, Android, Blackberry and hell, even webOS. For Windows Phone 7 to succeed, Microsoft needs to make a strong and compelling case that says "This is why you should buy a Windows Phone instead", but so far I haven't really seen it. The marketing message seems a bit muddled, focusing on the notion that people use their devices too much and that Windows Phone is all about using it as little as possible - an interesting idea perhaps, but not the strongest and most dynamic message. The real question is if there are a lot of people really dying for that - in theory you might think there are, but in practice people seem to be pretty happy with the way things are working.

I don't think the Windows Phone approach is bad actually - there is something to be said for a device that really streamlines the experience - but the question is how much the market wants it. I'd have to see evidence that iPhone/Android/Blackberry/webOS users are really dissatisfied with the current way of doing things (in the way that pre-smartphone users were with their regular phones).

I was wondering about that - read this story in the NYT, and seemed odd to me that the summary talks about the writer writing in "The Hindu" rather than where this was actually originally published.

mud.kp.

Libertines!

Yeah, that's always seemed like the craziest thing to me. Whenever I've been driving with someone with a luxury car and some expensive $2000 nav system built in, I've been kind of blown away that the system seems like something from 10 years ago, incredibly inferior to even the base model Garmin or TomTom units you can get for under $100. It really does seem like the only thing they have going for them is being integrated into the dash rather than a unit you have to put above your dash, but still...

Automakers still seem to charge ridiculous amounts for integrated navigation systems - the fact that you can pick up a GPS unit for under $100 doesn't seem to prevent them from charging $500-2000 for nav systems. Somehow I doubt they'll change anything here either. I figure that the thinking is they can charge a huge premium for the benefit of having a system integrated vs. just a separate device.

You don't need to lift both fingers for a left or right click. For a left click, all you have to do is click the mouse and it will register as a left click. The point is that for a right click, you have to lift your left finger (so that only the right half of the surface is being touched, so that when you click, it realizes it is a right click). To be clear, the Magic Mouse is not like the laptop trackpad (I noticed you mentioned left and right tapping). The whole mouse is still one large physical button, so you still have to click to register an actual click. I think this is why you're asking what you do with your fingers after that, and your concern that when you put your finger or fingers down it will register as a click.

No it wouldn't.

Mass Effect was rated AO?

Seems to run fine enough for me on my desktop - looking at it in both IE8 and Firefox 3, it seems perhaps slightly choppier (the bit with the quarters rolling through) compared to Firefox, but not dramatically worse.