LAS VEGAS–Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 Marketplace is sounding more and more like the iTunes Store. In presentations at the MIX10 conference Monday, execs described "sandboxed" apps, a Marketplace with content- and business-based restrictions, and a hardware spec requiring four-point multitouch and 8 Gbytes of internal storage.
Windows Phone 7 apps will be strictly "sandboxed" with "isolated storage," much like iPhone apps are, Microsoft developer liaison Charlie Kindel said. When they're submitted to the Marketplace – which will be the only way users can purchase Windows Phone apps – they will be reviewed according to not only technical criteria, but also "business" and "content" criteria that Kindel said would be explained later.
A blog post on Microsoft's Web site makes the content restrictions a little clearer, requiring that apps "do no harm" and "are legal and of generally good taste," with porn, "hateful/inflammatory speech" and "gratuitous violence" excluded.
"Our goal is to deliver to end users thousands of really compelling applications and games," Kindel said.
To that end, Microsoft is offering free developer tools and promises a smooth approval process and options for both carrier and credit-card billing, Kindel said. All apps will have a "try before you buy" option; free apps will also be allowed.
In an earlier presentation today, exec Joe Belfiore explained that Windows Phones will need 8 GB of on-board flash storage, four-point multitouch screens and five-megapixel cameras. Front-facing cameras and QWERTY keyboards will be optional, Kindel said after his presentation. But user-accessible, MicroSD memory card slots are prohibited. The first phones will have 800-by-480 screen resolutions, and later phones will also have 320-by-480 screens, Kindel said. The phones will be able to locate themselves via GPS, Wi-Fi triangulation and assisted GPS.
Apps won't be able to talk to each other, won't be able to access each others' files, and won't be able to access third-party hardware through the USB port.
The restrictions on Windows Phone 7 developers are similar to some of the restrictions on iPhone developers, although Kindel tried to point out major differences. For example, Microsoft wants to make the certification process "very transparent" with "no surprises at the end" – though how that jibes with there being content and "business" restrictions has yet to be seen.
Just like with Apple, Kindel said that some of these restrictions were necessary to ensure a good end-user experience.
"End users, in order for them to buy a lot of apps, it needs to be very friction free and they need to be safe doing it," he said. "They need to know no matter what app I get or game I get it's not going to corrupt my battery life or use all my network."
Kindel expressed a desire to lighten restrictions on developers as time goes on. For instance, multitasking and SQL database access are both on Microsoft's to-do list. Kindel shied away from giving a schedule for future releases of the Windows Phone 7 platform, other than to say Microsoft is working as fast as they can.
"It's so important when end users get these phones they have a delightful experience that's consistent," he said. "We decided to nail [certain experiences] in this constrained way now, and we have the ability to open them up with time."
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