Microsoft follows in Apple's footsteps

At the recent MIX10 event in Vegas Microsoft put some more flesh on the bones of the Windows Phone 7 operating system and they're moving towards a closed application approach like Apple.

All applications will have to be sold from the Microsoft Marketplace store which wont be pleasant for existing stores like Handango. MS are also restricting 3rd party apps from full multi-tasking and they cant use MicroSD or other storage.

As well as the new sleek interface, MS will support Silverlight and their XNA runtime environment. There's also a new Microsoft Location Service which introduces a unified interface for getting location information (i.e. from WiFi, GPS, CellID etc) and Microsoft Notification Service for 'pushing' info to applications that aren't running.

Microsoft are releasing free tools for developers (Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone), a plug-in for Visual Studio 2010 RC and Expression Blend for Windows Phone Community Technology Preview.

In some ways it's a backwards step, but Microsoft has seen the way the Apple app store has worked and having a single store allows greater control of the apps and where people can find them.