No PIE 6 On Current Hardware? Failure, Microsoft…Pure Failure
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Microsoft has stated that there will be no update for any current hardware to add Pocket Internet Explorer 6.
Regarding making IE Mobile available as a separate download or update, the rich media experiences that IE Mobile 6 enables require more powerful, advanced devices. That is why it will not be available as an upgrade or direct download for current phones, but rather will be made available on new phones.
Why? What in the world could be the excuse? Does Microsoft know of some new hardware breakthroughs that are coming over the next few months that nobody else knows about? Is my Fuze going to be outdated soon by a new fleet of phones with 1 GHz processors and dedicated GPUs? Is Pocket IE 6 going to be the Vista of Windows Mobile that only runs on hardware that has not actually been designed yet? Microsoft…how is it possible that you fail so hard that you cannot upgrade your own web browser to run on current hardware? There is absolutely no excuse for this.
Honestly, this is almost enough for me to want to stop using Microsoft products outside of my job…
…if it wasn’t for the Windows Mobile community. It is sad, but true, that Microsoft is the weakest link in the Windows Mobile ecosystem at this time.
Why do I love the Windows Mobile community? Well, because it is easily possible to use any Windows Mobile device without ever running PIE. Maybe Microsoft just realizes that there is no point updating PIE on current hardware because there are so many browsers out there already that are better than what PIE 6 will be.
You want a fast browser that handles both full and mobile websites? Check out Opera Mobile 9.5 beta…it’s free! Install Adobe Flash Lite 3.1, and you can even get some basic Flash support.
You like mobile websites, but you need to check out a full website that uses Flash or Silverlight? Check out Skyfire…it’s free too! VGA is only partially supported at this time. The graphics are formatted for QVGA, so there is some pixelation on my Fuze.
Your friend has an iPhone and you saw a website he was using that you really wish was available on Windows Mobile? That website was probably written just for mobile Safari, but since Safari is based on Webkit, there is a good chance that you can download Iris Browser from Torch Mobile (guess what, it’s free too) and try out the same website. It may be a little bit slower, but it should be pretty close and hey…you can actually use a physical keyboard to type in the URL and even *gasp* copy/paste to and from the web browser.
[via Lifehacker]
And finally…what if you are a Firefox user and you really wish that you could have the same experience on your Windows Mobile phone…well there is actually nothing we can offer you right now. But…Mozilla is working on Fennec, its mobile web browser, and Windows Mobile is one of their test platforms for Fennec, so chances are 2009 will bring us a Mozilla browser running on Windows Mobile.
Is it that hard to see why I like the Windows Mobile community? Where Microsoft fails, others are there to succeed. The one thing that Microsoft has done right is to provide developers with the tools and platform to create web browsers that are starting to provide near-desktop experiences. Even better, each browser is going about this task in its own way. I appreciate the fact that the Windows Mobile community takes it upon themselves to fill in the blanks. I still think it is the best mobile community to be a part of.
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I totally agree. It’s not Microsoft that makes Windows Mobile a great platform, it’s the developers that do. Without them, WM would not be the powerhouse that it currently is.
Why would you want PIE on your device? I’d do anything just to remove it PERMANENTLY on my device. I’d rather use Skyfire, or Opera Mobile, or Firefox Mobile or any other, as long as its not PIE!
Google Reader for the iPhone works just fine with Opera 9.5 as well. I am sure the community will create a cab with new PIE 6.0.
As far as what makes WM great? Its the versatility. Its the openess and power of WM. Try to create SPB Mobile Shell on an iphone. On twit I heard this week oh wow the iphone can download podcasts ..wee.. Glad apple has caught up in that regard. The question is: what would one leave WM for? Only android when it matures I would think.
While I agree that MS should make PIE 6 available to at least the current OS I personally would not install it anyway. The other offerings are much better IMHO and I wouldn’t want to give up the storage memory.
FF for my FUZE would be awesome. Maybe in 2009.