Definitely agree about it being the right move for the long-term; Microsoft tends to have a bad habit of sacrificing performance and features for the sake of supporting old systems, glad to see this is changing.
As for all us ‘early adopters’, I for one don’t mind at all. There are some features of the new OS that simply aren’t supported by current-generation WP hardware or just wouldn’t perform well on it. I’d rather not get an update than get one that compromises the performance of my device (which I love as-is anyway) or one that seriously fragments the platform.
And, the way I see it, if WP8’s future is one of greater integration with W8 and Xbox, and Microsoft can really deliver on their ‘3 Screens & The Cloud’ vision [1], and this decision is integral to that (which it seems to be), then I’m fully on-board with it.
Also, they just announced that all existing Windows Phone 7 devices will get an update, to ‘Windows Phone 7.8’, which will bring all the UI changes and many of the new WP8 features. Most importantly, they’ve stated that all non-native code WP8 apps will work on WP7. I think that's the most important thing anyway and this approach makes for a good middle-of-the road solution. It allows developers to focus on just one platform and gives (the admittedly few of us) current WP7 owners continued access to new apps and features.
Moreover, applications for Windows Phone 7.x will automatically run on Windows Phone 8 with little or no changes to the code of the app. Apps coded on Windows Phone 8 will conversely run on Windows Phone 7.x as well, so long as they don’t use native coding (apps coded with native C++ won’t run on Windows Phone 7.x since they use different APIs).
As for all us ‘early adopters’, I for one don’t mind at all. There are some features of the new OS that simply aren’t supported by current-generation WP hardware or just wouldn’t perform well on it. I’d rather not get an update than get one that compromises the performance of my device (which I love as-is anyway) or one that seriously fragments the platform.
And, the way I see it, if WP8’s future is one of greater integration with W8 and Xbox, and Microsoft can really deliver on their ‘3 Screens & The Cloud’ vision [1], and this decision is integral to that (which it seems to be), then I’m fully on-board with it.
Also, they just announced that all existing Windows Phone 7 devices will get an update, to ‘Windows Phone 7.8’, which will bring all the UI changes and many of the new WP8 features. Most importantly, they’ve stated that all non-native code WP8 apps will work on WP7. I think that's the most important thing anyway and this approach makes for a good middle-of-the road solution. It allows developers to focus on just one platform and gives (the admittedly few of us) current WP7 owners continued access to new apps and features.
[1] http://blogs.msdn.com/b/stevecla01/archive/2009/05/21/three-...