Within Windows

While panicking on Twitter to get this Xbox Companion application installed, I mentioned some of my headaches were due to the fact the Windows Phone Marketplace relies on SMS to trigger application installs on a Windows Phone device. (Why they don’t use their own notification framework is beyond me.) As all my friends have smart phones, and have access to either instant messaging, social media, or at a minimum email – SMS makes no sense to use or pay for. I called the carrier and outright disabled it. If I didn’t, I’d have to worry about spam and mis-texts, giving AT&T a wonderful reason to nickel and dime me.

People oft forget they’re throwing exorbitant amounts of cash at their mobile operator for various “packaged services”. SMS isn’t a freebie they threw in for laughs, you pay for it one way or another. In my case, I pay $60.76 a month for what amounts to barebones telephone service and a smartphone data package, for my Samsung Focus. That includes an 18% or so discount as part of some deal with my employer. Justifying that is hard enough. If I wanted to sext Jenny, I’d have to dish out an extra $20/mo.

Fuck that.

Clarification: It was pointed out that the Windows Phone Marketplace uses short-codes, as opposed to a full blown SMS message, if you have Find Your Phone enabled. Unfortunately, those are blocked too. AT&T has only one feature called “Text Message Opt-Out”. This presumably encompasses both short-code and SMS text messaging.

The Xbox can now be controlled via the Windows Phone, adding to an already awesomely long list of submissive styles – the Xbox controller, media remote, web, keyboard(?), PC, and Kinect. For those who don’t allow SMS on their device – like me – use this handy Zune marketplace link. Thanks Nuduaa, I was pulling my hair out there for a second.

Surprisingly, no native code was used in the making of this app.

Corporate vice president Antoine Leblond took to the stage and revealed a bunch of additional tidbits about the new Windows Store.

Revenue model: Successful apps earn 80 percent of every dollar of revenue earned after passing $25,000 USD in total revenue. The first $25,000 USD is paid out at the industry standard 70 percent revenue share.

This means Microsoft takes 30% of your profits, aligning with Apple’s offering. The differentiator here is that Microsoft will ease off when you exceed 25k, which could influence those deciding on a launch platform for their next whizamajig. Or Angry Birds clone.

Timing: Opening its doors at Windows 8 Beta in late February 2012, the Windows Store will welcome developers to begin submitting apps starting today through the First Apps Contest to be considered for the Store’s opening. More details on the contest can be found at buildwindowscontest.com.

The Next Web called the timeframe. The contest looks fun, perhaps enough motivation for me to actually write that Minecraft administration tool. Long Zheng pinged me, wanting to port MetroTwit to WinRT, but discovered Australia isn’t good enough to apply. Poor bastard.

Opportunity: Windows presents the largest single platform opportunity for developers, with 500 million Windows 7 licenses sold around the world to date.

Assuming half of those folks upgraded, that’s 500 million potential eyeball views. Whoa.

Oh, and there’s a new Windows Store blog too.

Back in October, I covered some additions to the “location data” complaint. On November 18, Microsoft filed a motion to completely dismiss the complaint with a heap of reasons why. One of these reasons is that Cousineau, the one who initiated this ordeal, failed to demonstrate that the leakage of location data inflicted any real harm to herself or whom she represents. We all saw that coming, right?

A. Cousineau Does Not Allege Injury-in-Fact to Support Article III Standing.

To establish the “irreducible constitutional minimum of standing,” a plaintiff must allege and prove three distinct elements: (1) injury in fact; (2) causation; and (3) redressability. Steel Co. v. Citizens for a Better Env’t, 523 U.S. 83, 102-04 (1998) (quotations omitted). “[I]injury in fact” refers to “a harm that is both ‘concrete’ and ‘actual or imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical.’” Vermont Agency of Natural Res. v. United States ex rel. Stevens, 529 U.S. 765, 771 (2000) (quoting Whitmore v. Arkansas, 495 U.S. 149, 155 (1990)). Article III therefore requires a plaintiff to allege a “distinct and palpable” injury, Gladstone Realtors v. Village of Bellwood, 441 U.S. 91, 100 (1979) (quoting Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 501 (1975)), that is “certainly impending,” if not already suffered, Babbitt v. United Farm Workers Nat’l Union, 442 U.S. 289, 298 (1979).

If you wish, you can read the 33-page motion to dismiss for yourself. I’ll keep an eye out to see if this motion passes or not.

Since the launch of ChevronWP7 Labs – run by Chris Walsh, Long Zheng, and myself – the service has been collecting various bits of phone telemetry for reporting purposes. With a little under 5,000 phones now in its database, I wanted to share some insight into the variances of make and model names – enough to make you truly appreciate how smoothly that Windows Phone (Mango) update went out.

The ChevronWP7 Labs Unlock Client – Loading screen

The unlock client users download and run gathers a few bits of phone data, including (but not limited to) the make and model of the device and version of running OS. You may remember the screen above – this is the step in which the client gets this data and packages it up for transmission to our service. For the techies out there, this is done via the Microsoft.WindowsMobile.DeviceUpdate component that comes bundled with with the Windows Phone Support Tool. It does a decent job at managing connected devices and grabbing data.

Anyway – let’s get to the more interesting stuff.

Going by a list of Windows Phones on Wikipedia, you’d expect to see a maximum of 20 distinct phone types in our database. (I made a tweak to this list, separating the US-based and EU-based Samsung Focus Flash.) I mean, why would I expect otherwise, right? A phone should report its make and model accurately. But a quick look in the database shows otherwise. The database contains 50 distinct phones and that only represents a tiny group of devices in the wild.

Here’s an example: Samsung currently has 5 phones in the market – the Focus, Focus S, Focus Flash, Omnia 7, and Omnia W. But looking at our database, I saw 10. Here’s a table showing what I expected and then what was actually reported via our software:

Samsung devices on the market vs. actual telemetry data

You may recall that the Samsung Focus was the cause of February update headaches, which becomes clearer with this data in hand. Word on the street is that there were undocumented differences between Samsung’s 1.3 and 1.4 revisions of the phone that Microsoft didn’t account for. Okay, creating a fix is easy enough but from an update perspective – how the hell do you identify and target in this diverse group of phones? I’m not sure how Microsoft pulled it off, but I suspect they re-engineered the February update to look for the critical differences at install time, rather than try to selectively deliver updates based on the phone’s report of its make/model – because it’s unreliable and thus useless. Not the ideal solution but from where I stand – it was their only choice.

Whom to blame is tricky – from this data, it appears while OEMs define one name, mobile operators can define another (or have the ability to change it). This theory is supported via the data. For example, Rogers – a mobile operator in Canada – does just this. Their Samsung Focus phones report a customized model name, including the letter R (for Rogers) at the end of their model name. Cute.

Samsung isn’t alone here, of course. Some interesting tidbits:

• HTC has 7 devices on market, but our data shows 28 actual configurations (plus a bonus HTC Leo configuration missing a manufacturer tag altogether)
• LG has 2 devices on market, but our data shows 7 actual configurations
• Dell has 1 device on market, but our data shows 2 actual configurations
• Nokia and Fujitsu are being good partners with 1 device on market with just 1 actual configuration.

Looking at just a tiny subset of phones in the homebrew community, it is miraculous to me that Microsoft was able to deliver an update like Mango in such a timely and orderly fashion. Major kudos.