OneNote on the iPhone

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-20028713-75.html?tag=cnetRiver

With so much negative talk here about Microsoft's speed & direction it's great to see gems like this once in while. I applaud the office team for reaching beyond Windows and providing people what they want and where they want it. With the PC landscape changing I think it's best for Microsoft to start targeting other platforms with their productivity apps. If they'd bring Microsoft development tools and APIs (read: .Net, Silverlight) to these other platforms they could also keep developers in the Microsoft fold. Locking this all into Windows is just shortsighted.

The office web apps are great too but as we saw on the initial iPhone everyone wants native apps. They're faster to get in and out of, are more fluid, and can provide a richer feature set. That said there will always be a place for the web apps as a backup when your principle computing tools are unavailable.

Oh, and of course in talking about OneNote it can't be left unsaid that OneNote ROCKS!

I really don't understand why MS wastes time developing apps for its direct competitor's platform when it should instead spend those resources fixing the apps for its own platform. Why is Bing for WP7 so much worse than Bing for iPhone (missing features)?

Do they want WP7 to fail? Looks like it. Oh well, it was a great idea while it lasted...

58 minutes ago, BitFlipper wrote

I really don't understand why MS wastes time developing apps for its direct competitor's platform when it should instead spend those resources fixing the apps for its own platform. Why is Bing for WP7 so much worse than Bing for iPhone (missing features)?

Do they want WP7 to fail? Looks like it. Oh well, it was a great idea while it lasted...

Take a look at IBM's history and you'll find the answer there. When it became apparent that OS/2 wasn't going to win against Windows, IBM made sure that all their services and software ran on other operating systems. 

Microsoft is unlikely to spread its domination of the desktop to the mobile space, and that is where the future lies. There best bet is to make sure that all their apps run on alternative platforms because operating systems (as proven by Google) are just a commodity.

I don't know if it's a good move, but it's the only move they can make now.

Also, I really doubt that anyone is going to choose WP7 over iPhone based on OneNote alone. If they really love OneNote and it's not available on iPhone, I'm sure they'd rather just suck it up and find an alternative for OneNote than buy a different phone.

Might as well make sure people at least use one of your products.

@Bas: Good point. I think OneNote is facing some pretty stiff competition from the Evernote.

Only available in the US app store.

@Ray7:

Well at least not from the free version of EverNote. I tried it because I needed something for my Evo and it absolutely sucked. I ended up on SpringPad. Still no OneNote but I sure can make a nice grocery list.

Having OneNote on iPhone makes it more useful on PC and even on WP7, because you can edit & access notes in more places.

looks interesting but doesn't work for me. iphone 4... latest os.

error 400 on log-in. i tried a few more times and finally got in. now that i'm in it won't do anything because sync fails error 500.

1 day ago, BitFlipper wrote

I really don't understand why MS wastes time developing apps for its direct competitor's platform when it should instead spend those resources fixing the apps for its own platform.

You realize they have multiple teams. Microsoft doesn't have 5 devs they pass around from project to project.

55 minutes ago, Harlequin wrote

*snip*

You realize they have multiple teams. Microsoft doesn't have 5 devs they pass around from project to project.

Then maybe they should re-org the teams so that one of them can fix Bing on WP7. As I said, apparently they want WP7 to fail judging by their priorities. Which is too bad, since it looked for a split second there like WP7 had a chance. And I say this as someone that owns an iPhone.

@BitFlipper: "Adding more people to a late project makes it later."

6 hours ago, BitFlipper wrote

*snip*

Then maybe they should re-org the teams so that one of them can fix Bing on WP7. As I said, apparently they want WP7 to fail judging by their priorities. Which is too bad, since it looked for a split second there like WP7 had a chance. And I say this as someone that owns an iPhone.

 

You should * at the WP7 developers, you know the people who actually work full time writing WP7 applications. Don't assume everyone in Microsoft wants to work on WP7. They have plenty of enthusiastic Mac developers in their Mac division. I'm assuming that's who made this app.

1 hour ago, Bass wrote

*snip*

You should * at the WP7 developers, you know the people who actually work full time writing WP7 applications. Don't assume everyone in Microsoft wants to work on WP7. They have plenty of enthusiastic Mac developers in their Mac division. I'm assuming that's who made this app.

Possibly, because of their experience in Objective-C and the Cocoa APIs; I don't think they re-used the Messenger code on the Mac though, since the client is 'disconnected' and the real client is remote servers, possibly Hotmail's Messenger client. In which case the work involved in this Messenger client is trivial: it's just a front-end for a preexisting web-service.

No UK availability! WHYYYYYYYY!!!!!