I don't have much to say about the forking issue, but it want to say this: I own and LOVE my Windows Phone (Nokia Lumia 822). I started on android (Droid X) after deciding the iPhone was too small, bought another one (Droid Razr Maxx), and finally ended up at Windows Phone after playing with it on some online simulator.
I wouldn't go back to android or ios. I don't think they're as usable or fit me as well.
Anecdotally, my wife also joined me on Windows Phone recently after dropping her android phone. She started on iPhone, lost it, was gifted my Razr Maxx, then broke it. She liked the UI of ios, but loved Swype on android and said she'd never go back to ios. Then while we waited a couple weeks for our phone upgrade, she played with my phone and ended up really liking it. She now says it is her favorite phone (Nokia Lumia 920). She likes the camera and the excellent apps from Nokia.
Obviously I don't want MS to switch to android. There may be more apps, but so many are of such poor quality that it is entirely irrelevant to me. Same goes for the apple store. It's almost overwhelming how many bad apps there are.
Honestly IE on WP8 is a great experience so I haven't felt the need to look but no, all browsers use IE on the phone.
And for me the key feature is everything just works. Theres no need or feeling that I need to flash a rom (which I felt I has to do endlessly on Android). The integration with the ecosystem is nice, sure it's missing some core features iOS and Android have after years of beating MS to the market but hopefully it'll show up.
The major thing its missing is device integration, my fitbit not syncing saddens me everyday and theres not much I can do about it.
Live tiles, arranging my start screen to show exactly what I want without having to open any apps, I think is the single biggest feature that I love about WP. I also love the text prediction and correction when typing. I haven't seen any other mobile OS do it as well.
Android and iOS are pretty much one and the same for me. They do similar things and they come stock with a very similar UI. I'm not big on the list of icons/folders and multiple pages setup.
Regarding ios7, I don't like the new text-as-button thing they have going. It's hard to find them sometimes. I also really dislike the difference in pre-ios7 apps and ios7 apps as far as UI goes. It's jarring to me. It'd be like having a windows XP window pop up in Windows 8, or an OS9 window pop up in OSX.
I am also not a fan of the all-caps ios keyboard. Windows Phone keyboard displays the characters exactly as they're about to appear, but in ios they are always capitals (just differently sized) and it makes for a good bit of errors for me. I still have an ipad with ios7, so I interact with it second-most of all mobile operating systems.
Do you think an alternative launcher for Android that featured a similar approach to live tiles would capture that advantage? As opposed to all the Newton/Palm style launchers out there.
I suppose they could, but every good launcher I had on android wanted donations or an up-front + theme fee. The best android devices are really expensive, whereas you can get a brand new windows phone for wicked cheap (mine was $50 when I got it, my wife's was free).
I remember the first WIMP computer I had (well my dad had) an A5000, with 4mb of RAM (this had to be soldered on, and was considered wantantly excessive). If I wanted 256 colours, resolution would suffer as it lacked VRAM.
Windows 98 had gradient title bars, I this was a big deal. I remember being impressed by how smooth it looked. I wasn't completely used to high resolution, high colour systems.
Metro shuns this, information is put above anything else, the fact that I only want to see my mobile signal if I've a problem by default, it is hidden unless I have none.
It doesn't take long before this really starts to make sense. I'm tired, I don't want to be bamboozled by information, I want important stuff put up above anything else.
It's exactly the same reason Web Browsers have 'hidden' away the lesser used functions. I type this on a desktop with 2 * 30" of screen real estate, yet I still want my browser to hide the file menu, have no favourites bar, not waste space for the tabs and the title bar. You get where I'm going with this.
I also have a few Android devices, and a iPad, I find it almost tiring to use them in a way, I'm no longer impressed by having a 3d glass effect or similar, it just impedes my usability. I don't like skeuomorphic patterns, I'm an veteran user, I don't need familiarity, I want information presented as effortlessly as possible.
That said, I hate the lack of a notification timeline. I am genuinely saddened to see how Windows Phone team appears to have lost their release cycle momentum (three years ago major features came fast and frequent, now... not much).
I also have a Lumia that I use as a secondary phone. The device is nice, Nokia can surely make good hardware, however my problem is the OS.
The Metro UI is kind of nice, but it gets obnoxious. I've began to hate those animations. And when I do need in-your-face notifications, like for the weather or something, you don't have the nice widgets that you get with Android.
Also, Microsoft is in charge of the Facebook app and I don't get how in the world they managed to treat the login in that Facebook app as something separate than the phone's accounts. I also want to be able to manage what accounts are synchronized or not - because synchronization uses battery, plus notifications are annoying and for many accounts I only want to view the latest messages or whatever only when I open the app - and haven't found an option for doing so, unless you turn the battery savings on. While we are on the subject, the notifications bar is a joke.
The app store is full of crap. Microsoft has played the app numbers game, allowing some genuine crap in their store. Of course, both Google Play and iTunes are filled with crap, but the search and the ratings are usually enough for finding good stuff and both Google Play and iTunes also have very polished, very good apps for everything.
But the above don't really bother me as much as my last point - Windows Phone is at its core as restrictive as iOS. It does not allow installs of apps from third party sources and is basically defective by design ... for example, to do Wifi tethering, the mobile career has to wire you the settings that allow it. And it's been a PITA for me, because my mobile career couldn't wire me the settings automatically, since they don't have my phone model in their database. Isn't that awesome?
I use Amazing Weather hd as my lock screen, which takes care of the weather issue for me. But as far as other live tiles, you can turn any of them off if you want. I mean, you COULD just make a start screen that looked like android/ios with a ton of icons if you really wanted to.
I don't use Facebook so I can't comment on that, but most apps I've used (twitter, linkedin, hacker news, readit) have settings for syncing. I only let readit sync in the background personally.
The notifications bar itself is only there for a few seconds, so I'm not sure what issue you could possibly have with it. Notifications appear on the app tiles themselves, which I prefer (especially for when I add a person to my start screen and they call/text/email me). It doesn't function the same way as android/ios, but I prefer it.
Every App Store is full of garbage, there's no denying it. I've found the windows App Store much easier to wade through, though. It's still far below the amount of apps in the android/ios stores, and the few top rated apps are almost always the official (or best) apps. I haven't found an issue with apps, but it am not a huge app guy. I mostly use twitter and readit (for reddit, obviously).
I haven't faced any issues like your last one either, so I can't really comment. I have verizon and they have next to no support for windows phone, so I could see it happening.
She loves it, but it has had to be taken back to the shop we bought it from twice so far, because apparently everytime Microsoft releases an upgrade, it effectively bricks the device during the install attempt.
It amazes me how badly Microsoft seems to manage its software compared to Apple.
I wouldn't go back to android or ios. I don't think they're as usable or fit me as well.
Anecdotally, my wife also joined me on Windows Phone recently after dropping her android phone. She started on iPhone, lost it, was gifted my Razr Maxx, then broke it. She liked the UI of ios, but loved Swype on android and said she'd never go back to ios. Then while we waited a couple weeks for our phone upgrade, she played with my phone and ended up really liking it. She now says it is her favorite phone (Nokia Lumia 920). She likes the camera and the excellent apps from Nokia.
Obviously I don't want MS to switch to android. There may be more apps, but so many are of such poor quality that it is entirely irrelevant to me. Same goes for the apple store. It's almost overwhelming how many bad apps there are.