Now Microsoft is in that market, with a device [platform] that does everything the iPhone does and some things it doesn't.But from pure developer standpoint, I think in general, especially for people new to mobile development, it will be easier to build apps for Windows Phone.

Why?

Mainly because development is lower-level on the iPhone than on Windows Phone 7. For example, memory is not managed for you on iPhone but it is for WP7. So there will be inherently less crashes, and developers [therefore] can spend more time on what they want their app to do rather than tracking down memory leaks.

Because of Silverlight [Microsoft's interactive Web application environment] and XNA [for developing games on Windows and Xbox], of all these available [application] design tools, including Microsoft tools that let you import directly from Photoshop and Illustrator, all of this means that people can go directly into a WP7 development cycle. You don't get the same kind of design experience from the iPhone

As you indicated, all WP7 applications must execute in either the Silverlight or XNA runtime environments. Why is that a benefit?