I somehow only just realised that Windows Update was blinking at me indicating there were updates available. I’m usually pretty good about installing all the important ones but this time I noticed there was an optional component titled Zune Software 4.2. I had to ask…”why am I getting an update for Zune software when I’ve never installed the Zune software”. Not thinking much about it I proceeded with the download and subsequent install.
Now it occurred to me that I’d heard that the Zune software is going to be used by Windows Phone 7 to sync media, which seems logical since all Windows Phone 7 series devices are a Zune device. Having downloaded the developer tools (see http://developer.windowsphone.com if you want them) I figured that it this update must have to do with some component that was part of those tools. Spinning up a couple of my VMs I tested this out – sure enough on the VM that had the dev tools installed, there was the update but on the other VM, without the dev tools, the update was missing.
Unfortunately just because there appears to be a relationship there, doesn’t mean that you can start syncing with the Windows Phone 7 emulator. I tried both with the emulator that ships with the dev tools and the hacked emulator image that’s floating around. I’m sure there’s probably a magic unlock code/flag that you can set to enable syncing but at this stage I’m just waiting for the next official drop from Microsoft where we’ll hopefully see more of what’s going to be available in the platform as part of the emulator.