Pocket Informant not coming to Windows Phone 7

News · 19 May 2010 · MTW Editorial Team

Another one bytes the dust? Not exactly: WebIS, Inc CEO Alex Kac clarified the situation regarding a future version of Pocket Informant on Windows Phone 7:

At the moment we do not expect to support Windows Phone 7. Its simply missing too much foundational for us. It could be done, but we’d hit a dead end at version 1.00 and it would be slower than people would like due to having to write all the recurrence/calendar code in C# without a good backend to help speed things up (like on BB).

I find it interesting to note that Resco, who seems to be a similar situation, decided to rewrite all their tools in Silverlight instead of waiting for Microsoft to open up development of native third-party applications unlike WebIS. Alex Kac posted a longer explanation of the situation:

So I’d like to make it official. Based on the current beta Windows Phone 7 SDK, we will not be making a Pocket Informant for Windows Phone 7. This is a huge disappointment to us but comes about because while the OS itself is capable, the APIs available to us developers I believe to not give us what we need to make a Pocket Informant for Windows Phone 7. We could make a calendar. We could make a tasks app. Contacts. Journal, Notes. Yes, all those things are doable on Windows Phone 7 as separate entities. But Pocket Informant is not just a calendar and its not just a tasks app. Its a combination of those things in a way that makes for a cohesive experience. And it syncs. And it alarms. And so on. And because of the fairly major limitations that are in the current beta API, I feel that version 1.00 of PI would be about all I could do. Some people would be happy, but most would not. And I believe it would be slow and frankly just not worth it. People really underestimate what is needed for a good calendar. Its not the first 80% that’s hard – heck, I could write the first 80% of PI for WP7 in the next 6 weeks. Its the last 20% that sets apart PI from the built-in calendar app and others. That’s what I don’t think is possible on WP7 as I have it now.

But we’re not writing off the Windows Phone 7 system. The first release of WP7 is a bare bones system because MS needed to get something out now to get back in the game. Microsoft knows this and they know what they need to bring to the system for it to really get developers on it. I’ve been told in no uncertain terms that the parts that I want to see on the platform before we begin work on PI for WP7 are coming, or at least are planned. So at that point we’ll look at the market, see if WP7 is selling well or became another Symbian type device (i.e. app sales abysmal) and take another look at it.

Windows Phone 7’s development environment is very nice. Its got a great API system – I love C# and I love .NET. But some things simply won’t work well there and having the PIM code native is critical to making PI on WP7. Also having better network support and not just http calls is another important piece for us.

Please note that this was posted on April 22.

Source: WebIS via WMexperts & InformationWeek