ChevronWP7, Microsoft team on new Windows Phone unlock tool

The ChevronWP7 team surfaced again on Friday with news of its long promised, officially sanctioned Windows Phone 7 unlock tool in ChevronWP7 Labs. Its solution will give developers and hobbyists a way to run apps without having to sign up for and publish to the Windows Phone Marketplace. Both they and Microsoft's Senior Product Manager Cliff Simpkins saw it as a way of safely experimenting without either breaking Marketplace rules or running afoul of another developer.

The new version will require a PayPal fee to the ChevronWP7 team, but mostly to cover development costs.

ChevronWP7 arrived just weeks after Windows Phone 7 arrived in the US as a reaction to the limitations on what apps were available on the new platform. Microsoft cracked down and demanded it stop, but it decided soon after to collaborate with the team of Windows enthusiasts to make an approved solution in return for taking down the original copy. The bridge is partly a necessity since the $99 fee normally has to be paid whether or not an app is available in Microsoft's store.

Electronista

Microsoft making it easier to port iPhone apps to Windows Phone

One of Microsoft’s problems in attracting people to write Windows Phone 7 applications is that the user base is much smaller than those of the iPhone or Android, so app developers tend to focus on those platforms. Now, Microsoft is trying to make it easier for people to take the apps they’ve developed for the iPhone and make them work on Windows Phone.

With the iPhone/iOS to Windows Phone 7 API (application programming interface) mapping tool, released on Friday, developers have a new online resource for doing this conversion.

Essentially, the API mapping tool works like a foreign-language dictionary, said Jean-Christophe Cimetiere, Microsoft senior technical evangelist for interoperability. Developers can go through the code of their iPhone app and find the equivalent API calls for a Windows Phone 7 app.

“For this first round we focused on identifying the one-to-one mapping when it exists,” Cimetiere wrote in a blog post. “In the following versions we’ll expand the scope and anytime the concepts are similar enough, we’ll do our best to provide the appropriate guidance.

“Of course, this is a work in progress, coverage will expand and more iOS APIs will be mapped soon.”

Seattle PI