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Thanks Tyler, MastrMeatWad, and Benjamouth for the fine comments!

Also:

Shuffle Party coming to WP8 this week

That was a really good article, Paul.

Microsoft's support of the WP is quickly becoming a fiasco, and it's a shame because I think if they just showed some real initiative, it could be a real contender against the iPhone.

Thanks DrunkAgain!

Flight Control Rocket Review

Wow, would it kill them to throw us a DOTW ??

Originally Posted by benjamouth Wow, would it kill them to throw us a DOTW ??

My thought exactly.

Finally, a deal of some sort!

Skulls of the Shogun for Windows Phone and Windows 8 gets special launch pricing

Who here is familiar with TVShow? I just asked about this on the article about the latest update, but the article is a few days old so I don't know if anyone will see:

I've heard that this can only hold so many shows. Is this true? If so, how many? And do they take up much space on the phone? For instance, would there be a significant difference between tracking 10 shows and tracking 100 shows?

I'm trying to decide between this and Prime TV, so I would like some input before I spend any money. And I only have about 50 MB to work with, so disk space and memory usage are a bit of a concern.

I'm so jealous of people with SD slots.

Originally Posted by eastx Finally, a deal of some sort! Skulls of the Shogun for Windows Phone and Windows 8 gets special launch pricing

Very refreshing to hear.

I'm still hesitant to pay $5 for a phone game. I know that makes me sound cheap, but that's why I'm here.

Microsoft responds to concerns over the Xbox release drought

Originally Posted by eastx Microsoft responds to concerns over the Xbox release drought

Vaguely positive response from Microsoft is better than nothing at all. Colour me relieved.

Great article, Paul.

We saw many publishers push hard to deliver new or updated titles for Windows Phone 8 launch and holiday sales, which creates a bit of lull in the weeks to follow. Others are updating titles for Windows Phone 8 as we speak.

Anyways, good stuff Paul. Nice to see MS at least respond.

Originally Posted by nCogNeato Vaguely positive response from Microsoft is better than nothing at all.

Any response is better than nothing as far as I'm concerned. Even if it was bad news, I would feel better at least knowing that are being acknowledged. The fact that it is relatively positive news just makes it that much better.

And of course, thanks to Paul for keeping us updated throughout this whole thing!

Originally Posted by nCogNeato Vaguely positive response from Microsoft is better than nothing at all. Colour me relieved.

Having worked before within Microsoft's spin machine ... I'm not relieved at all, and here's why:

• There's no other bellweather apps on the horizon but "SotS". Seriously, the only apps coming to WP8 (and even Win8-specific) are those where MS freely tosses money at them to simply get included in a release, much less platform-exclusivity. The debut of "Wordament" and "Tentacles" on iOS is proof that the Interactive Entertainment Business division needs legitimate sales.
• The ecosystem is saturated with developers not making profit off a skant 2% of all mobile device users. With Windows Phone breathing neck & neck against Symbian flip phones & old dinosaur Blackberries, there's little to no incentive for retailers to stock or push the limited selection of phones. Even at my local T-Mobile store, there's an island in the middle of the store with 8 Android devices, while WP8 is on 2 devices, and 1 of those (the Nokia Lumia 810) is a model from early 2012. Which calls out point #3:
• All the WP7.5 owners are getting royally burned with no upgrade path for 1-2 years (due to 2yr contracts with their cell providers). I dropped my HTC Radar 4G on the ground 3 days ago, and frankly, I barely miss it. I don't miss a phone incapable of handling 2 Hotmail accounts (without the phone being confused about which calendar to display). I don't miss having to remember app-names, in order to find them alphabetically. I don't miss apps having permission to run in the background regardless if you disable them or not, nor do I miss apps having access to all my phone's data, contacts, location, photos, and call logs when all I wanted to do was download & try it. And last, I don't miss running a dinosaur OS that was still "new & barely supported" last April, but already sunsetted in October.

Think how all those WP6.5 and WP7 phone owners feel with no apps to run, but still stuck on their "old" device. Now explain to me how they'd purchase a WP8 phone with no remorse, and meanwhile, all their Apple/Android friends enjoy free & discounted USEFUL apps ALL THE TIME.

MS has already shown they're 100% reliant upon new devices, and that means they're quite happy to start from 0% market share with each & every WinPhone OS release.

Originally Posted by eastx Thanks Tyler, MastrMeatWad, and Benjamouth for the fine comments! Also: Shuffle Party coming to WP8 this week

You are welcome. Great articles Paul!

Originally Posted by Cornelius Having worked before within Microsoft's spin machine ... I'm not relieved at all, and here's why: There's no other bellweather apps on the horizon but "SotS". Seriously, the only apps coming to WP8 (and even Win8-specific) are those where MS freely tosses money at them to simply get included in a release, much less platform-exclusivity. The debut of "Wordament" and "Tentacles" on iOS is proof that the Interactive Entertainment Business division needs legitimate sales. The ecosystem is saturated with developers not making profit off a skant 2% of all mobile device users. With Windows Phone breathing neck & neck against Symbian flip phones & old dinosaur Blackberries, there's little to no incentive for retailers to stock or push the limited selection of phones. Even at my local T-Mobile store, there's an island in the middle of the store with 8 Android devices, while WP8 is on 2 devices, and 1 of those (the Nokia Lumia 810) is a model from early 2012. Which calls out point #3: All the WP7.5 owners are getting royally burned with no upgrade path for 1-2 years (due to 2yr contracts with their cell providers). I dropped my HTC Radar 4G on the ground 3 days ago, and frankly, I barely miss it. I don't miss a phone incapable of handling 2 Hotmail accounts (without the phone being confused about which calendar to display). I don't miss having to remember app-names, in order to find them alphabetically. I don't miss apps having permission to run in the background regardless if you disable them or not, nor do I miss apps having access to all my phone's data, contacts, location, photos, and call logs when all I wanted to do was download & try it. And last, I don't miss running a dinosaur OS that was still "new & barely supported" last April, but already sunsetted in October. Think how all those WP6.5 and WP7 phone owners feel with no apps to run, but still stuck on their "old" device. Now explain to me how they'd purchase a WP8 phone with no remorse, and meanwhile, all their Apple/Android friends enjoy free & discounted USEFUL apps ALL THE TIME. MS has already shown they're 100% reliant upon new devices, and that means they're quite happy to start from 0% market share with each & every WinPhone OS release.

So I just threw 7.8 on my Lumia 900 (the AT&T variants just recently showed up on Nokia's servers). In addition, I've recently upgraded two lines on my account to iPhone 5's.

There are some things that annoy me as well about WP, first and foremost the ongoing issue of not being able to rename MS account emails. I've been wanting to do this since google announced phasing out Exchange push on gmail. I REALLY wanted to do it at the same time as the 7.8 update so I would only have to hard reset once.

I'm not terribly bullish about the platform's market share going forward either.

But I just have to say this: coming from previous Android experience, and setting up and supporting iPhones for the rest of the family, I would still absolutely choose WP for my personal phone. WP 7.5 and 7.8 are still _vastly_ superior usability wise for, you know, actually productive smartphone scenarios. I of course am referring to the killer "apps" of Phone, SMS, calendar, and E-mail. Your dual hotmail issue sounds very annoying but also more than a little niche.

As for Apps... all I can say is the entire App zeitgeist of the post-iphone era is mostly a load of utter crap. The app junkies would have you believe that four or five apps on their preferred platform have somehow substantially improved their quality of life and/or productivity to the point that even thinking of their life before 2006 would drive them to drink. Usually, they are also missing one or two from their previous platform the way someone maimed in an industrial accident misses a limb.

WP7 is now _deprecated_. Some people are clearly more upset/impacted by this than others. But if you want to see a "dinosaur" OS, pick up an iphone. Better yet, pick up 90% of the android devices out there and once you have reoriented yourself to the OEM UI, prepare to ride the wayback machine.

On a side note, anyone who bought a WP7 device last Spring on contract with most US carriers, is actually due for an upgrade in Dec/Jan. So eleven months of living with the "hell" of WP7.

Originally Posted by ERROR SUCCESS The app junkies would have you believe that four or five apps on their preferred platform have somehow substantially improved their quality of life and/or productivity to the point that even thinking of their life before 2006 would drive them to drink. Usually, they are also missing one or two from their previous platform the way someone maimed in an industrial accident misses a limb.

Dude, I need to use all of that material. My writing is usually way too serious because I'm always either running up against a deadline or sleep deprived.

Also, nice defense of the platform! They need to get their act together as far as music players and independent volume control, but otherwise the basic smartphone functions do all seem to be well met.

Ok back to complaining then while we are feeling up :P. I've never used Bing local searches (eg finding a business from Maps) in Lake Jackson, but they suck in most of greater Houston. Misplaced pins, pins for shuttered locations, missing locations, etc. Having said that, they are getting better steadily. And it's not like google is perfect in this regard. Don't even get me started on ios6 defaults though :P.

Also, a native Skype app would've been killer for 7.8. Although, if I really needed background Skype availability, I wouldn't have bought a WP7 handset. Still, it's kind of sad that the app is more functional in ios than in 7.

EDIT: of course if you live in bustling metropolis of Lake Jackson I doubt very much you would ever need Bing to tell you where the Home Depot is :P.

New to WP8, as well to this thread (great article, Paul!). Not even two weeks have passed, and my HTC just died. Hope this isn't a bad sign. Regardless, missed out on the awesome Pac-Man discount, so I'm hoping to find some cheap and easy games to pad the gamerscore.

Any word on AlphaJax patch that's rumored to be released sometime this year? I've got the 50 games played achievement pop and 10 games not popped, supposedly they're in talks of fixing it... but ya never know... Thanks!

I still don't know what to think when it comes to WP7 and xbox live branded games. I think we'll get some more Deals o the Week come the middle of February and by then, I'll have FINALLY grinded out the Carcassonne 200 match achievement. Slowly but surely......

Originally Posted by cancermatt Any word on AlphaJax patch that's rumored to be released sometime this year? I've got the 50 games played achievement pop and 10 games not popped, supposedly they're in talks of fixing it... but ya never know... Thanks!

I would think it's worth it to just try uninstalling, reinstalling and doing another 10 games. Should be quick.