It actually looks like Sony may do this on Android before any WP alternative.
That'll be a definite pass for me, thanks though.
Personally I'll never understand the app obsession. I'm much more interested in a platform that looks good and feels good than one that's app heavy, it just isn't important to me.
Well, if stock applications work great for you then that's terrific, but then I'd honestly have to question why you'd even choose Windows Phone, when iOS looks perfectly good the way it is and I couldn't name a single stock app that's better than something that comes with an iPhone, unless you had to have Office or something.
I'm finding the entire idea of Live Tiles to be quite pointless. If I take one of my email tiles and make it 4x2, then I get a preview of the last email I received. If I make it 2x2, I get no preview and just a label of what the account is with a count. Make it 1x1, and all i get is an icon and a count. That makes it particularly confusing if you have multiple email accounts. Now I have three icons on my start page with no indication of what is what.
But the catch for me is that this is nothing that isn't impossible to replicate on iOS. I can set the mail client to send a notification to the lock screen that tells me who its from and gives me a small preview, and even lets me go right to it from the lock screen, something you couldn't do on WP unless you were there right when the mail came in.
Similar thing with the CNN app. If I put it in 4x2 mode, I get a headline and then a picture, just rotating. 2x2 is just a picture and the CNN logo rotating. 1x1 is just the CNN logo. If I install the CNN app on the iPhone, I can set it so that I get a notification of breaking news alerts that collect on my lock screen if I'm away. And since I can choose to have the notifications show up on the lock screen and not collect in the notification center, I never have to pull the NC down and dismiss anything. I can just walk away from my device and come back 10 minutes later, quickly see anything I missed that might be important, and get on with my life. Windows Phone seems to be made to have you constantly look at it.
I could probably go on and on, but WP's problems have been detailed numerous times by people more versed in the subject than myself. Suffice it to say, I won't be using this device very long before I look to offload it. WP just screams "unfinished" to me. The problem is that I like it more than Android, but would never choose a WP device over an Android device at this point simply because I don't feel like I could get anything done on WP.
That's roughly how they've gotten the big apps they've already got lol.
When's the last time they did this, 2010?