Windows Phone 8 Having Trouble Attracting Developers

colinneagle writes "Microsoft has promised that cross-platform development across the 8s – from Windows 8 on a desktop to Windows Phone 8 – will be a simple matter, but that's still not enough to get some developers moving on Windows Phone 8 support. The Windows Phone platform has made a remarkable recovery since its reset with version 7. Since then, WP7 has grown to 100,000 apps. But that pales in comparison to the 675,000 in Google Play and 700,000 in the Apple App Store. Granted, there's a ton of redundancy – how many weather or newsfeed apps does one person need? – but it points to availability and developer support. A report from VentureBeat points out what should be obvious: that while developers like Windows 8, they aren't as excited about Windows Phone 8 software because they have already made huge investments in other platforms and don't want to support another platform. A survey by IDC and Appcelerator found 78% of Android developers were 'very interested' in programming for Android smartphones, a slight drop from the 83% in a prior survey. Interest in the iPhone and iPad remained undiminished, with 89% and 88% interest, respectively."

Comments

They will have to invest in carriers

[gtirloni]

Once carriers start pushing W8 phones everywhere and users get to actually interact with those devices then developer interest will follow.

It's the cost of not being the cheapest or the first to market.

Re:They will have to invest in carriers

[Synerg1y]

I can't seem to find anything on google either way, are win 7 market apps backwards compatible with windows 8?

Re:They will have to invest in carriers

[Anonymous Coward]

Or too much churn in the platform.

You should use 2.10 no wait 2.11 no wait 3.1 no wait 3.10 no wait for 4 its going to be out of the park wait thats 5 or is it 6 or the soon to come 6.1.

Oh screw all that use .Net CFW (which does not work on anything bellow 6).

Oh screw all that use 7 oh wait 8...

And very little of what you write will compile on winxp/vista/7/8 and if it does all the apis work 'slightly' differently.

Re:They will have to invest in carriers

[gtirloni]

Looks like it. Since they are saying WP8 has >100k apps. They must be counting WP7 apps.

http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store

Re:They will have to invest in carriers

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand why this is marked funny, it is 100% accurate...

No one has a W8 phone, why develop apps for it? Most still
have there 1 or 2 year contracts with iPhone or some Android device.
W8 will have to wait a little.... if not forever....

Re:They will have to invest in carriers

[timeOday]

Define first to market.

Re:They will have to invest in carriers

[firex726]

Yea, if you recall the iPhone was a big deal and then the App store was released after many people already had the HW.

Much easier to woo devs when you got a large install base, vs. trying to court them when most have not even heard of your HW/SW.

Re:They will have to invest in carriers

[darkgrayknight]

Windows Phone 8 will run all Windows Phone 7 apps (well, 7.1 and 7.5, though I doubt there any relevant 7.0 apps still around).

Re:They will have to invest in carriers

[eexaa]

well, even before carriers and developers they should begin thinking about attracting actual users.

Re:They will have to invest in carriers

[whoever57]

I can't seem to find anything on google either way, are win 7 market apps backwards compatible with windows 8?

You mean forwards compatible? I think that MS is doing a one-time only conversion of apps from WP7 to Windows 8.

Re:They will have to invest in carriers

[Anonymous Coward]

CE is not WP 8. Same company, completely different (yet equally ugly) animal.

Re:They will have to invest in carriers

[Anonymous Coward]

But not vice versa.

WinPhone 7 phones will not run WinPhone 8 apps.

Re:They will have to invest in carriers

[Synerg1y]

Yes I do :)

And... XNA only applies to games / graphics I believe. The jist of the article sounded like "let's hope MS figures it out", which may mean... nooo.

Re:They will have to invest in carriers

[Dog-Cow]

Windows CE is irrelevant because it's not the same platform as Windows Phone.

Re:They will have to invest in carriers

[93 Escort Wagon]

The idea is if apps are there, users will follow - so they need developers first.

I would argue that while having existing apps is a necessary condition for attracting users, it's not sufficient in itself.

Re:They will have to invest in carriers

[Bogtha]

Surely by that logic, BlackBerry would have a thriving app market that developers are very interested in.

Re:They will have to invest in carriers

[tlhIngan]

Yea, if you recall the iPhone was a big deal and then the App store was released after many people already had the HW.

Much easier to woo devs when you got a large install base, vs. trying to court them when most have not even heard of your HW/SW.

Actually the iPhone was a strange situation. Apple at that time (and still does) wanted devs to write web apps (and Apple worked hard to get geolocation, sensor data, and local storage in HTML5). But devs wanted a native SDK, and they kept clamoring. So much so that they hacked together an SDK from MacOS X headers so jailbroken iPhones could easily get apps.

Apple saw this and created an SDK and the App Store. (And still allows webapps to be released with no approval required at all).

It's very easy to attract developers when they're banging on your door begging to develop for your platform.

Re:They will have to invest in carriers

[timeOday]

Well, yeah, that's the problem. Too many false starts. But Microsoft was by no means late to the mobile market.

Re:They will have to invest in carriers

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes and no. Windows Phone 7.x was running Windows CE as the operating system.

It's not until Windows Phone 8 that they dropped Windows CE (it now has the same kernel as the desktop Windows 8, obviously with a different shell).

Re:They will have to invest in carriers

[dudpixel]

and the inverse is also true. There's a bit of chicken and egg there. If there are lots of users the developers will come.

Ideally microsoft needs both so that the number of users and developers grow together.

Re:They will have to invest in carriers

[Kjella]

I can't seem to find anything on google either way, are win 7 market apps backwards compatible with windows 8?

You mean forwards compatible? (...)

Yes I do :)

I saw that but figured it was a subtle hint that windows 8 would be a downgrade, hence backwards compatibility. But I guess this is the one time it wasn't a snide remark about Microsoft on Slashdot, there's an exception to every rule I guess.

Re:They will have to invest in carriers

[davester666]

Unfortunately for Microsoft, back then, Apple had just produced a unique product, unlike what any other significant player was making, and it was evident that if permitted, developers could make wonderful apps for it [as they had reverse-engineered the frameworks, jailbroke the phone and were creating apps for it before Apple came out with an official SDK/program for app creation].

Windows Phone is a several years late 'me-too' OS [even if it works differently than iOS/Android, it's not "Wow, that's great/totally different compared with all these other phones"].

If anything, now you might get in on the early 'gold rush' of native WP8 apps [vs WP7 apps], but it after that, unless you've got some huge hit app on the other platforms that you can port over, you'll soon be lost in the deluge of fast, quick, crappy gold rush apps, except you'll have even less chance of making any money because WP8 is starting out with a market share of 0% today [vs millions of phones that are on iOS6 the day it was released, increasing by millions every day just though upgrades, then millions more when the iPhone 5 shipped weeks later].

I'll bet when WP9 is released, Microsoft will do exactly the same thing again [buy new phone, write to all new SDK/frameworks, started with 0% marketshare for OS again].

Re:They will have to invest in carriers

[sumdumass]

Wasn't there a joke about windows CE and the desktop?

Oh yeah, Microsoft took the best of windows CE and ME on the consumer desktop and combined it with windows NT to come up with Windows CEMENT- hard as a brick and dumb as a rock.

Anyways, you shouldn't be worrying about all these windows versions and just use the Windows RG, the Really Good version.

Re:They will have to invest in carriers

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea, if you recall the iPhone was a big deal and then the App store was released after many people already had the HW.

Much easier to woo devs when you got a large install base, vs. trying to court them when most have not even heard of your HW/SW.

Actually the iPhone was a strange situation. Apple at that time (and still does) wanted devs to write web apps (and Apple worked hard to get geolocation, sensor data, and local storage in HTML5). But devs wanted a native SDK, and they kept clamoring. So much so that they hacked together an SDK from MacOS X headers so jailbroken iPhones could easily get apps.

Apple saw this and created an SDK and the App Store. (And still allows webapps to be released with no approval required at all).

It's very easy to attract developers when they're banging on your door begging to develop for your platform.

I have the exact opposite impression (today at least). Apple actively prefer native app development over web apps, to protect their platform lock-in, and one way of achieving this is how they have limited (not progressed on) the iOS Safari capabilities. The bad performance in iOS Safari recently forced fx Facebook to switch back to native app after having tried the HTML5 approach. This comes particularly clear, and embarrising for Apple, when you see even IE is racing past it - try IE10 on one of the new Windows 8 tablets up against an iPad and you'll immidiately see this.

Re:They will have to invest in carriers

[Luckyo]

It's not really a false start, it had something around 350 of worldwide smartphone market in the golden age of symbian et al. It's just that like the old versions of symbian, it's not really a competitor in a modern smartphone market.

But as it was said above, windows phone is simply a different platform that shares a similar name.

Re:They will have to invest in carriers

[RaceProUK]

Says someone whose obviously never worked with MS APIs.

Re:They will have to invest in carriers

[Synerg1y]

Yep, backwards compatibility is something that's become expected of MS as of late, it's also kind of important for marketing purposes. Either way, I'm thinking pass unless somebody buys me a tablet w win 8.

Re:They will have to invest in carriers

[TemporalBeing]

Says someone whose obviously never worked with MS APIs.

No, they're much worse than that. Yes, I've worked with MS APIs. Yes, there are a good number that haven't really changed that much on the Desktop or Server platforms in a while; but each version of Windows does introduce subtle differences, and Microsoft's mobile platform is much worse in the changes.

Re:They will have to invest in carriers

[RaceProUK]

True, WP7 was a major change (i.e. completely different), but then again, expecting zero changes from major OS release to major OS release is maybe expecting a bit much. It'd be interesting to compare the rate of change in MS APIs to those in GNU/Linux and OSX over similar time periods. My bet is they're not all that different when it comes to subtle changes.

Re:They will have to invest in carriers

[Meski]

Conversely, once there are similar numbers of apps for Win8 phones, user interest will follow. Call it the Heller Principle, if you like.

Re:They will have to invest in carriers

[Meski]

Win7 apps are backward. You can pretty much stop the sentence right there.

Well, Yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

Those of us who've seen what happens when we invest time and money in Microsoft's other pet project platforms aren't about to jump on Windows Phone 8.

Re:Well, Yeah

[Chaos Incarnate]

Agreed. Like Windows Phone 7.

Re:Well, Yeah

[roc97007]

Windows mobile 6.

Re:Well, Yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

Our potential dev project for Windows Phone 8 is roadblocked at the moment since the SDK requires Windows 8 installed (and pro for the emulators). Obviously, none of us have Windows 8 installed on our computers at the moment - I'm very happy with Win7 personally, and leery of 8 from the previews - so getting the SDK up and running is pretty much impossible at this point.

I totally agree with your point, since all the prototyping we did for our Windows Phone 8 project was in Visual Studio 2010, targeting Windows Phone 7.5, on Win7 machines. None of that is actually useful right now. Surprise, surprise.

I guess this is true for any potential development house right now. If they want to develop for Windows Phone 8, they have to invest in a windows 8 computer and phone. I know everyone at BUILD got those for free, but that doesn't really help everyone else.

Re:Well, Yeah

[BLToday]

Totally been there. Not happening again.

Re:Well, Yeah

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Those of us who've seen what happens when we invest time and money in Microsoft's other pet project platforms aren't about to jump on Windows Phone 8.

It will be interesting to see if the way that software is tightly coupled with hardware(hardware that is generally replaced at an alarming rate) in 'mobile' makes this more of an issue than usual.

It certainly isn't news that Microsoft goes through development fads about as fast as it can dream up acronyms for them; but, with desktop and server cases, it has usually been possible to keep the offspring of a now-deprecated fad limping along for years after it is officially killed. And, while it is hardly the most glamorous part of the technology industry, a lot of people pay the mortgage by handling various aspects of keeping ghastly legacy crap that happens to be vital to something or other up and running. And, while Microsoft never seems very happy about it, they generally have caved to demand for legacy support on the desktop and server side.

With phones, though, you can't exactly order a stack of WP8 devices from Verizon and then downgrade them to WM6 to support your line-of-business whatever. You are essentially stuck with whatever version is shipping at the moment, with the possibility that some of your older devices might get updates, maybe. That isn't an environment where you can be nearly as comfortable that you will be able to just-make-it-work even after your chosen platform has officially been killed.

Re:Well, Yeah

[girlintraining]

Those of us who've seen what happens when we invest time and money in Microsoft's other pet project platforms aren't about to jump on Windows Phone 8.

Fair enough... but you're not the only type of agent in the market: There's programmers fresh out of college who can't find regular work and decide instead to download an SDK and make something, and don't know any better.

Re:Well, Yeah

[Shoten]

Windows CE.

Re:Well, Yeah

[517714]

Windows Mobile was a better platform in many regards than Windows Phone 7. 95% of the programs I had for the earliest WM hardware and software ran fine on WM 6.5 (a span of nearly a decade), and they cost a fraction of the apps for Android, iOS or WP7. Microsoft is right to drop legacy support periodically, but they shouldn't have done it between 6 and 7 and again between 7 and 8.

Re:Well, Yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows.

Re:Well, Yeah

[firex726]

I think that's where MS is going wrong on their whole setup, trying to push Devs onto the latest an greatest.

Whereas Apple and Google basically have you pay a small fee and you can get the SDK and app listed in their store. MS OTOH is telling Devs they need to buy a new untested OS to develop for their platform, in addition to everything else.

Re:Well, Yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why the existing 'app stores' are full of buggy, unpolished crud.

Re:Well, Yeah

[AmazingRuss]

Pretty much. The only way I'd make WP8 apps is if MS paid me up front to do so.

Re:Well, Yeah

[Arashi256]

Silverlight...XNA...

Re:Well, Yeah

[Arashi256]

Yeah? How many iOS apps can I develop on my Windows 7 box?

Re:Well, Yeah

[firex726]

IDK, how many workstations will Google force me to upgrade to their Chrome OS?

Re:Well, Yeah

[Serious Callers Only]

Oh come on, what about plays for sure?

Re:Well, Yeah

[SuperMooCow]

PlaysForSure...

Re:Well, Yeah

[Dog-Cow]

As many as you'd like. You'll have to purchase your own 3rd party development environment of choice, however.

Re:Well, Yeah

[21mhz]

I totally agree with your point, since all the prototyping we did for our Windows Phone 8 project was in Visual Studio 2010, targeting Windows Phone 7.5, on Win7 machines. None of that is actually useful right now. Surprise, surprise.

Weren't you supposed to be able to run your WP 7.5 applications on Windows Phone 8 practically unchanged?

Re:Well, Yeah

[roc97007]

Windows Mobile was a better platform in many regards than Windows Phone 7. 95% of the programs I had for the earliest WM hardware and software ran fine on WM 6.5 (a span of nearly a decade), and they cost a fraction of the apps for Android, iOS or WP7. Microsoft is right to drop legacy support periodically, but they shouldn't have done it between 6 and 7 and again between 7 and 8.

I agree with your last sentence, but the problem with windows mobile wasn't the apps, it was the framework. It was maddening to have to reboot two or three times a day, squint at walking menus, and deal with "some unnamed application has done something bad and will now be excoriated" popups. The final straw for me was when the audio driver would periodically get wedged, which meant the phone would not ring. I was regularly on call, and a phone that refuses to ring is a career liability.

Re:Well, Yeah

[dreamchaser]

You're either trolling or had very bad luck. I had a Moto Q (actually two, upgraded to a newer model) for years and ran Windows Mobile 6. I rarely if ever had any of the problems you describe, and I used it heavily. I've happily moved on to Android and iOS phones now, but it was a solid piece of gear in its time.

Re:Well, Yeah

[PolygamousRanchKid]

When I started with Maemo, a while back, I could download a free VMware image from Nokia, with the SDK installed and ready to go. This all before making any hardware or software investment.

If it was that easy with Windows Phone 8, Microsoft might get more developer folks to just download it, and give it a try. If they are worried about "giving away" Windows 8 Pro, they could handicap the SDK VMware image.

Now, how would Microsoft feel about doing that . . . is another matter . . . but it would get folks like me to try to develop for it. And, *gasp*, maybe folks might even like it . . . ?

Re:Well, Yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

PocketPC...

Re:Well, Yeah

[ThatsMyNick]

Are there 3rd party development environments available? I thought only xcode on a mac, can create iOS apps.

Re:Well, Yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

And none will be native apps with the flexibility that most developers/apps need.

Apple required me to upgrade my Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion in order to develop for iOS 6.

Re:Well, Yeah

[tftp]

and they cost a fraction of the apps for Android, iOS or WP7

That would be possible only if you compare apples to oranges. A modern street navigation application for Android is a tad more complex than a calculator for Windows Mobile. If you go for complex software for WM then they were just as expensive as anything else. I know because I still run Alk's CoPilot on one of Windows Mobile devices (Dell Axim XV50.)

ISVs have no interest to sponsor a particular OS. If they port their application to X, Y and Z, the price will be about the same on all of them. Most of the cost is not in tools or in registration with Apple and not in signing keys. Most of the cost is in labor.

Re:Well, Yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

Zune

Re:Well, Yeah

[nwf]

I had a windows 6.5 palm phone, and the audio died on it frequently. And it was VERY slow and the Byzantine settings that were scattered over 10 pages controlling things no one on Earth cared about put me over the top. But, at least it was better than Palm OS.

Re:Well, Yeah

[roc97007]

Palm Treo 750. The ringing issue was a known problem. Google "treo 750 does not ring". or "Treo 750 device driver". I'm told that other WM phones had similar issues, but didn't look into it too hard, as I dumped the Treo after 3 months of frustration and went to Blackberry. (Now Android.)

Walking menus were an integral part of Windows Mobile, and worked about as well as one could expect on such a tiny screen. (Which is why, I suspect, Microsoft went to tiles.) There were aftermarket solutions, some of which looked surprisingly like Windows Mobile 7, but without the tiles dynamically updating. But you were on your own using a third party desktop. The two or three I tried were prone to crashing or hanging.

But even after a full factory reset, running all vanilla software, the phone would still periodically force close a process (often not giving any indication of what the significance of the process was) or slow waaaaayyyy down after a day of moderate use and have to be rebooted.

I think, though, that it was all about expectations. I went from a 650, which ran Palm OS and was relatively sable if a bit inelegant, to the 750 because that's what the company was issuing, it had better specs, and how bad could Windows Mobile be? If one's only experience with smartphones are ones running Microsoft OS, one's expectations may be different.

Re:Well, Yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

Ms-DOS Mobile.

Re:Well, Yeah

[tftp]

Oh come on, what about plays for sure?

We were all victims of a small typo. The real name of the program all the time was "Pays For Sure."

Re:Well, Yeah

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Now, how would Microsoft feel about doing that . . . is another matter . . . but it would get folks like me to try to develop for it. And, *gasp*, maybe folks might even like it . . . ?

RIM has already done it - it's that easy for BB10. Give it a try ;)

https://developer.blackberry.com/develop/platform_choice/bb10.html

Re:Well, Yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

ActiveX

Re:Well, Yeah

[scamper_22]

It might actually make it less of an issue.

It all depends on the reason Microsoft goes through development fads.

Possible Reason 1:
Microsoft has traditionally gone through development fads to push people to upgrade. Their revenue stream before depended on people upgrading versions of software.

Possible Reason 2:
Microsoft just has a bunch of software designers or managers that like to push out the latest fad and have no internal discipline.

If it is 1, then hopefully the Microsoft business people see the change in both hardware and 'the cloud'. Hopefully they see that the revenue stream has changed to services and device upgrades. They will then stop pushing pointless development fads.

Re:Well, Yeah

[ozmanjusri]

it was a solid piece of gear in its time.

No it wasn't.

I had several WM phones (for development). All of them were crash-prone and unreliable to the extent that you had to have a backup alarm clock if you wanted to be sure of waking up on time.

Re:Well, Yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

They still support WinCE, now called WEC7. There are lots of jobs in CE development and plenty of places where it makes sense. If you're developing embedded devices, it's one of the cheapest real-time Windows-based platforms you're going to find to keep your profit margins high.

Re:Well, Yeah

[marcosdumay]

but, with desktop and server cases, it has usually been possible to keep the offspring of a now-deprecated fad limping along for years after it is officially killed.

Or, in other words, dektops and servers are open, while mobile is DRM protected crap.

That won't last much, not anymore. And MS is creating the hardest protection scheme just at the moment people will be more aware of it.

Re:Well, Yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

Weren't you supposed to be able to run your WP 7.5 applications on Windows Phone 8 practically unchanged?

You can run your Windows Phone 7.5 application on Windows Phone 8 completely unchanged. If you don't need WP8-specific functionality you can target WP7.5 and your app will work on both.

Of course, this limits you from using any of the new stuff like native code and DirectX support. If you want that, you're looking at a rewrite, but that shouldn't be a surprise.

Re:Well, Yeah

[jimmyfrank]

I invested and my app is doing well. I also wasn't dumb and wrote it in a way that made it easy to port. With the latest changes to portable class libs my app is almost ready to do for wp71, wp8, and win8.

Re:Well, Yeah

[21mhz]

If you don't need WP8-specific functionality you can target WP7.5 and your app will work on both.

Yeah, that's what I understood. I don't know why would people feel blocked if they already have things working for WP7.5.

Of course, this limits you from using any of the new stuff like native code and DirectX support. If you want that, you're looking at a rewrite, but that shouldn't be a surprise.

Even then you get to keep the UI written in C# and XAML, and bridge with the native stuff should you need any.

Re:Well, Yeah

[jimmyfrank]

I'm not at build and not using VS2010 to work on WP71 projects anymore. They work fine in VS2012 and run on the emulator just fine. Of course you need to install Win8, which is pretty quick and easy.

Re:Well, Yeah

[jimmyfrank]

It does but of course you can create a WP8 project, point to what you need in the WP71 project and add everything else to the WP8 project.

Re:Well, Yeah

[jimmyfrank]

I'm getting paid to do it right now, not by MS though. The company I'm working for are porting their app to WP and Win8.

Re:Well, Yeah

[MrEdofCourse]

Hey this is fun. I'm going to go with 'Kin.

Re:Well, Yeah

[erik umenhofer]

windows 8 has been available to devs for almost a year. It's only untested to the lazy devs that didn't download it.

Re:Well, Yeah

[dudpixel]

What? you want to develop for windows phone 8 but you don't want to shell out $39 for windows 8? not even on 1 machine?

I see the problem, and it isn't just microsoft at fault.

And you say that "obviously none of us have windows 8" except that the date is oct 31 and windows 8 was released on oct 26. There is nothing obvious about it at all except that you want to be successful on windows 8 without paying $39 to get started.

Re:Well, Yeah

[dudpixel]

That's from a user's perspective.

If the developers of those apps are making money then I'm pretty sure other developers will follow. All you need to do is make something of better quality and you too can earn some dough and solve the user's problem at the same time.

I'm pretty sure that if novice developers start earning serious money on windows 8 it will solve the apps problem pretty soon, and all those people who whinged about developing on windows 8 being a pain, will suddenly join in.

Of course, that's a big IF, but it will be interesting to watch what happens anyway.

Re:Well, Yeah

[GigaplexNZ]

Windows 8 has only been available to devs for a little over 2 months in a capacity that is fit for production use.

Re:Well, Yeah

[ColdWetDog]

Bob

Re:Well, Yeah

[EvilIdler]

They just required newer than Snow Leopard. I'm still on Lion. Apple support the two most recent OS versions.

Re:Well, Yeah

[EvilIdler]

It's not the money for most. The OS is still rather new, and companies don't jump at new systems right at launch. It can take years - they're still migrating from XP to 7!

Re:Well, Yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

More like, "Plays for Shit."

Re:Well, Yeah

[secondhand_Buddah]

Well, I have been burnt by Microsoft phones twice already. Almost 3 times.
I most certainly will never buy another one until the phones can be upgraded to the latest OS version over time.

Re:Well, Yeah

[Luckyo]

Well, the alarm clock issue hasn't really been fixed today. Both iphones and windows phones are known to have problems waking people up on time, though rarely because of phone software crashing, and more because of designers not really understanding how time saving and such works.

Re:Well, Yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not $39 if you want a non-upgrade license.

Re:Well, Yeah

[bad-badtz-maru]

I have a Windows Mobile 6 phone right now and what he says is exactly true.

Re:Well, Yeah

[jimmyfrank]

My company jumped to win8 but that's because I'm in charge.

Re:Well, Yeah

[sensationull]

Totally agree, it did depend on the ROM and apps but there were problems. I loved the expandability and flexibility of the platform, had a WM2003, WM5, WM6.1-5 device. They had a use by date where you'd get 'issues', not ringing, refusing to answer a call, hanging up before making a connection, not ringing, not giving low power warnings etc. Didn't have many big crashes per say but problems. Feature wise they all eclipsed anything my friends had at the time and three years or so after. They needed tlc but were like having a Swiss army knife.

Have gone to a WP7 phone after holding out for quite a while and for usability it is great, quicker and more stable than their predecessors but disappointing feature wise. They keep making it better but now have abandoned it and everyone on it, again. Time will tell if they make 7.8 a really decent peace offering or not, if not their potential seed of users will turn into a poisonous blight that will make sure 8 has an even harder time. Who is to say that MS will stick with this platform any longer, if they just stuck with one long enough to do it well they could kill at it.

Re:Well, Yeah

[TemporalBeing]

Windows 8 has only been available to devs for a little over 2 months in a capacity that is fit for production use.

Still can't download it - any version, even RTM - from my MSDN account.

Re:Well, Yeah

[517714]

No, same or equivalent app, from same vendor in many cases. Pocket CAS, Emu48, and Math Studio, were all free on WM none (full featured to meet my needs) are free on Android, and the first two were far better implemented under WM. A couple of bucks over and over again adds up. The bottom line is that I spent equal amount on offline GPS Navigation and decent Office Suite in WM and Android and then had to replace dozens of free and very cheap WM apps with their equivalents and the total cost for Android apps was over twice that of the WM apps.

Re:Well, Yeah

[dudpixel]

I'm not talking about companies in general.

The post I replied to specifically mentioned developing an app for windows 8. If you're developing apps for windows 8, you should buy it. That's all there is to it.

Even if you didn't use it for development, you'd still need it for testing. So the complaint that microsoft forces you to buy windows 8 in order to develop apps for it is just stupid IMO.

Re:Well, Yeah

[Meski]

DCOM

Re:Well, Yeah

[Meski]

Yeah? How many iOS apps can I develop on my Windows 7 box?

If your Windows7 box is a VM running on a Mac, then as many as you like....

Re:Well, Yeah

[Meski]

3 - because their market position means they can get away with it. They do not have a market position for this market that lets them get away with it. They do it because they are not-so thinly veiled competitors with those they sell development systems to, and making them re-learn skills every 2 years wastes their competitors resources.

Re:Well, Yeah

[Meski]

But what they do is charge you up front. So do the other guys, but they have a mature market.

Re:Well, Yeah

[lanswitch]

It looks like you are trying to make a joke. Do you want help with that?

Not enough fart apps

[Anonymous Coward]

There can never be too many fart apps. Fart!

Gone Are The Days...

[Jane Q. Public]

Gone are the days when your company supported Microsoft's latest or else .

Today, there is no or else. Microsoft is just another player in a large market.

Re:Gone Are The Days...

[roc97007]

Well, especially in the phone and tablet markets. I think they could still say "or else" pertaining to the desktop, although it would be feebler than in the past.

Re:Gone Are The Days...

[Penguinisto]

I'm afraid that it still depends on what market we're talking about.

In mobile and tablets, you're absolutely correct. MSFT is a bit player at best here, and you'd get more marketshare by supporting RIM.

In server-side software, maybe, depending on what your product does.

On workstations, you're still stuck with supporting them if you want more than 10-15% of the total market. I don't think that's going to change much for awhile still, at least not unless/until Windows 8 completely pisses off enough people to knock Microsoft's marketshare on desk/laptops down enough (and even then most will just go back to Windows 7, just like Vista users knocking back to XP).

Re:Gone Are The Days...

[girlintraining]

Gone are the days when your company supported Microsoft's latest or else .

Corporate IT just called. They want to have a word with you about that comment in one of the meeting rooms on that empty and unused floor with no security cameras. Microsoft may not have that kind of pull for smart phones, but when it comes to Windows and Office, you bet your sweet ass it's supported "or else".

Re:Gone Are The Days...

[jedidiah]

Even with the monopoly, supporting the "latest" is not really a requirement. If anything, it's corporate IT that's pulling Microsoft back and forcing it to support older "legacy" software.

In companies, change is managed and occasionally resisted. The resistance aspect is especially true if there's extra money involved.

Re:Gone Are The Days...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really they do not even have a lock there either -- screw it we will build it as a web app.

Re:Gone Are The Days...

[Anonymous Coward]

>and even then most will just go back to Windows 7

Don't they have to upgrade from XP first?

Re:Gone Are The Days...

[Yaur]

Except it isn't support "the latest" or else... its support XP or else and 10 years from now its likely to be the same deal with windows 7, not widows 8.

Re:Gone Are The Days...

[Anonymous Coward]

Except web applications are taking over on workstations! Cloud stuff like salesforce.com or google apps are OS-agnostic, maybe some IE testing is still required but it is getting better with each IE release (and general loss of marketshare.)

The only thing really keeping Windows around anymore is Office.

Herp?

[kelemvor4]

It's no surprise. Generally, companies sell "apps" to make money. As of August, Microsoft and other small fry mobile OS's combined represented a whopping 0.6% of mobile device OS's. What's more, that number has declined by almost 50% from a year ago. Why spend time and money developing for a platform that appears to be dying. Developers will probably wait to see if the current rev MS os can turn that trend around before spending more time and money on the platform.

Source: Gartner

Re:Herp?

[roc97007]

It's no surprise. Generally, companies sell "apps" to make money. As of August, Microsoft and other small fry mobile OS's combined represented a whopping 0.6% of mobile device OS's. What's more, that number has declined by almost 50% from a year ago. Why spend time and money developing for a platform that appears to be dying. Developers will probably wait to see if the current rev MS os can turn that trend around before spending more time and money on the platform.

Source: Gartner

Well, they're all looking at it wrong. When Windows 8 phones are released they're going to dominate the market. Developers would be wise to get on board early.

....nah, I don't believe it either.

Re:Herp?

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Companies practically give away apps so that they can steal/exploit users' personal information and use that to make money. This is the 21st century business model.

Re:Herp?

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows Mobile is not Windows Phone.

Re:Herp?

[rtfa-troll]

Now I was going to ask "what use would that be" but then I thought. If you want to know differences between Microsoft associates and normal people then put your app on Win phone as well. There will be pretty limited market for the data but I guess antitrust lawyers, Google and IBM will pay well for that data.

Re:Herp?

[DigiShaman]

If ZTE cranks out W8 phones in China, they could dominate that market in which the momentum could spill over to the North and South American market too.

Never underestimate the power of *cheap*!

Re:Herp?

[roc97007]

If ZTE cranks out W8 phones in China, they could dominate that market in which the momentum could spill over to the North and South American market too.

Never underestimate the power of *cheap*!

Lessee.... Windows.... Cheap.... Windows... Cheap... I don't see those two words going together.

Re:Herp?

[tftp]

Never underestimate the power of *cheap*!

Android is as cheap as it ever going to be ($zero.) Is MS going to pay OEMs for using their Win8?

Windows RT is going to cost an estimated $85 per copy to your average OEM. A Windows 8 Professional license on x86 will be considerably more. [link]

I can buy a whole tablet now for $99 or even less, and - imagine that - the hardware is included in the price!

Google can release Android for free because it is not the product, it's the grease in the data mining machine that Google runs. The daily bread does not come from Android OEMs, it comes from billions of ad clicks and other services. But MS cannot do that, they are a software house and they can't give their software away. As result they will not be able to compete. I cannot imagine why they even entered this market - this is a race to the bottom, and the software is already comfortably sitting at that bottom.

If I were MS I would be porting MS own products to Android and iOS. That's where MS's wares are viable. MS Office for Android - the true office - would be a killer application. Days of Windows are numbered, and while Windows will bring many more millions of dollars in revenue, its end is visible. Tablets are running on free software already. What's the point of even going there?

Re:Herp?

[DigiShaman]

I'm just saying that there are billions of people who don't -yet- own a smartphone. Most of these people are living in emerging markets. Specifically the BRIC nations. You and I don't belong in that group. Yet, it's a vast untapped market that could soon explode in numbers to the smart phone market.

Microsoft lost many mobile phone battles, but they could still win the war however little that chance may seem from our (Slashdot's) vantage point.

Re:Herp?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just sayin', but Android and iPhone have been there for long already. Android's got a nice advantage for OEMs over there because it allows installation of third party appstores (coughwithpiratedappsandprofitsgoingtooemscough). iOS jailbreaking is rather popular there as well

Re:Herp?

[ozmanjusri]

it's a vast untapped market that could soon explode in numbers to the smart phone market.

You and Microsoft are about a year too late.

The latest research on global smartphone shipments shows that 42 million smartphones were shipped in China in the second quarter, versus 25 million in the United States. Chinese smartphone sales tripled last year, according to Canalys.

  Chinese vendors ZTE, Lenovo and Huawei all saw their smartphone sales increase by more than 100% in China last year. (Lenovo’s smartphone sales in China were up 2,665%.)

With Apple in fifth place in the Chinese smartphone market, Android is the country’s dominant operating system. Canalys says 81% of the smartphones shipped in China last quarter were Android phones.

http://www.rcrwireless.com/article/20120803/devices/smartphone-sales-surge-china/

Re:Herp?

[roc97007]

Yeah, that's the problem. Microsoft's business plan requires the software be a premium product that everyone has to adopt, which is how the OS marketplace had always worked for them. In this case, however, three things are working against them: One, they're last to market in this marketplace. Two, the perception that the competing products are more mature and useful. Three, the competition, having a different business plan, offers for free the component for which Microsoft's business plan requires that the user pay a premium.

I just don't see it happening.

And in fact, I suspect that Google and Apple intended this scenario from the very beginning. Instead of meeting Microsoft head-to-head selling operating systems, they adopted a different business plan and gave away the parts that Microsoft's business plan requires they sell.

Now, Microsoft could certainly change their business plan, at least for gadgets, but wouldn't they have had to start, oh, a decade ago?

Re:Herp?

[R3d M3rcury]

There are other ways you can look at it, too, depending on your app.

One disadvantage to iOS and Android, for a small developer, is that it can be very difficult to rise above the noise. In a smaller environment, it's easier to get noticed, get product reviews, etc. It's probably also easier to get the Microsoft Mothership to notice you and help you out with marketing, etc.

Once you've got your product ironed out, then you can take that Windows buzz, such as it is, and move on to greener pastures complete with reviews about how wonderful your product is.

Re:Herp?

[tftp]

Now, Microsoft could certainly change their business plan, at least for gadgets, but wouldn't they have had to start, oh, a decade ago?

Lost time is just one aspect of the problem. They have worse demons than that. For example:

Windows was always Microsoft's cash cow. Generations of employees came and went working on that cow. It is engrained into MS's thinking that Windows == MS and MS == Windows. But these days MS has to accept that they are quickly losing dominance. You know what my desktop will be in 10 years? It will be probably Android-based, with or without overlapping windows (as needed, depending on the size of the monitor.) What is there in Windows that Android does not deliver? But think now, can MS give up on the future of its primary product? What will shareholders say to that? This is exactly why Ballmer is locked into the old vicious cycle of crossing desktops and tablets and then wondering why nothing works. MS as a company cannot think outside of their Windows box. Apple could - and it won the world.

Microsoft is not staffed with geniuses. MS people are, by and large, regular coders. They just know *everything* about the environment they operate in. But geniuses they are not. Take their advantages away and they are just as helpless as a startup who hired 10,000 random coders off the street.

And once you get to that point, MS will not be any better than anyone else. Except that they are ten years behind and they have no clue. MS is a large, old company. It is not like Google where inventive behavior was (or is) promoted. MS earned its money not by being creative but by being prolific. Mountains of code were written to do mundane tasks (MS Exchange, AD, and every other aspect of the server.) It is not fun, and it is not interesting. But it was profitable because enterprise paid them for developing all these functions over the years. MS is like a tank. But it's heavy and needs a lot of fuel. The world is not experiencing its best days; sales of existing MS software are not expected to skyrocket. 3rd world would gladly pirate all that they can - because they can't afford to buy anyway. MS would have to be very inventive to find something new to sell; but MS does not invent - not now, not ever. They are just plain slow.

This cathedral of MS still stands. But we already can see that when MS is forced to invent they invent poorly. Nobody in his right mind would make Metro a mandatory function. I bet it wouldn't be too hard to launch Metro environment whenever it is needed, and one could be minimized, and one could have more than one Metro environment if only anyone wanted that. But no, they decided that their only way is the true way, and everything else is heresy that ought to be eradicated. They even removed the "Start" button. You know what? I had the Media Center icon there in my test setup of Win8, and I can't even count how many times I clicked on it wanting to bring up the Start menu. How hard would it be to keep a component that you already have and that works just fine? I'm not always an idiot; I simply don't even think when I want to access the power menu or the control panel or my pinned applications. Years of the "Start something!" training bore fruit.

When you combine all these factors you will see that MS's future lies in maintenance of legacy software, of which they churned up a lot. If a small office now needs a mail+groupware server, that'd be MS Exchange. MS will sell that. But many clients of that server will be iPhones, iPads, Androids, and everything in between. Desktops with Windows will remain in production because too much essential software is locked into Windows and cannot be moved anywhere. But in an average company you will have one such engineering desktop for three or five mobile terminals. A company that sells clothes wouldn't need even one Windows machine. If they need a database, they can rent one for cheap, and if they need a custom client, that is just as easy to develop for a tablet as it is for Windows. (WPF with dat

Re:Herp?

[Anonymous Coward]

I read the headline as "Windows Phone 8 Having Trouble Attacking Developers" and thought MS is loosing talent. because MS never had trouble attacking developers.

Re:Herp?

[Luckyo]

Insert "apple" into the other side of that equation and you will get "cheap" on the windows side.

Re:Herp?

[hairyfish]

You and Microsoft are about a year too late.

A year too late for what? Will there be no more mobile phone sales ever again? By all reports the smartphone market is still growing, and even if it wasn't people generally buy new devices every few years. This means there is space for a good product to take some market share. Whether Win8 is that product is another matter, but you'd be a fool to say write of the likes of MS (or Apple, Google or anyone else who has experience in this game).

Re:Herp?

[Luckyo]

While true, you would likely earn more as "noise" in android/ios market then as a noticed one in wp7/8 store.

It's just that the WP market share is just that tiny.

Re:Herp?

[randyleepublic]

Windows never even got started. I have at least ten ideas for killer Windows OS features. I've had some of these ideas for decades, and I am not that smart. MS is a black hole where good ideas go to die. No wonder the desktop is "dying". It was never truly alive.

Developers

[girlintraining]

The correct response to this kind of press is to say "We have developers! Tons of developers! They're falling out of the sky, honest!" The smart phone market long ago stopped being about features and now turns on the number of apps. All the phones have GPS, megapixel cameras, touch screen interface, etc. In terms of hardware features, they're largely the same. So they have to differentiate themselves on the basis of apps. And what kinds of apps are popular? Games.

People loooove screwing off at work with Angry Birds and Farmville. So the smart phone market is not that much different from the game console market in that regard: Sales of hardware are based on how many new and exciting games are available for that platform. Now yes, it is in reality not that simple -- the app market isn't just games, but the idea is the same: The number of popular apps is strongly correlated to the number of units shipping. So regardless of how many developers the platform has, Microsoft needs to be out there screaming "Developers! We have them! Oh yes, developers, developers, developers!" Preferrably without monkey man on stage saying it, but even a dancing fat guy is better than nothing.

That's the only strategy that will work if Microsoft doesn't want another dead on arrival platform launch. Sorta like, say, the Dreamcast.

Re:Developers

[roc97007]

> The smart phone market long ago stopped being about features and now turns on the number of apps.

And this is as it should be. It's the inevitable transition from "what it is" to "what can I do with it".

Re:Developers

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, Microsoft should do what they did for X-Box and just buy developers. You do realize that Halo was intended to be a Mac OS only title at release with an eventual release on Windows. This was back in the hay day of Windows as the gaming platform for multiplayer online FPS and Apple was doing better but not great. Microsoft understood that they needed killer Apps or games in this case. They saw what Bungie was making and decide to snap them up. I think it really is what made the X-Box a success. It really did break my heart as a Mac OS fool back in the day.... Hell, I haven't bought an apple product since or an X-Box or even played any HALO games. But this is what MS must do find the next big mobile GAME buy the company and tell people you want gamy you buy this first.

Re:Developers

[Shoten]

The smart phone market long ago stopped being about features and now turns on the number of apps.

Smartphones have stopped being basic embedded devices and are full-fledged platforms. The apps *are* the features, and thus the number of apps directly affects the features. Nobody who is even the least bit savvy runs just the applications built into a phone, or even just apps that replace existing features that are built in. The most popular apps are usually either games, or things that provide some unique and clever functionality that nobody else had thought of yet, like Shazam.

Re:Developers

[gman003]

You know, when you phrase it like that, you make it sound like Nintendo could release a best-selling smartphone...

Re:Developers

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what's strange. With the Xbox brand fully behind Windows Phone you'd figure that people would be buying the devices for the games.

Re:Developers

[Anonymous Coward]

Nintindo should have released a phone 10 years ago when 2G cell phones started shipping with color screens. Its not like the 8 bit games take much CPU power or even bandwidth.

Hell, they could have even done it with the game boy games on black and white screens.

Re:Developers

[Anonymous Coward]

Put a cellular radio and a functional web browser on a DS and see how many million sell in a week!

Re:Developers

[93 Escort Wagon]

The correct response to this kind of press is to say "We have developers! Tons of developers! They're falling out of the sky, honest!"

Wait a minute - Microsoft is throwing developers out of planes now? No wonder they're having trouble attracting them!

Who came up with THAT hare-brained idea??

Made $4 with WP7

[Anonymous Coward]

After three months of effort writing a free app for Windows Phone 7, so far I have made a total of $4 from Microsoft's advertising system. This is from the top-rated app in its category. Needless to say, I won't be writing any apps for Windows Phone 8 unless I'm being paid to do so.

Re:Made $4 with WP7

[roc97007]

$$Profit!!$$

Re:Made $4 with WP7

[Anonymous Coward]

Ads suck. You are telling me that Microsoft's platform actually has few of them? I like!

Re:Made $4 with WP7

[narcc]

Maybe going the ad-supported route was the wrong way to monetize.

But go ahead and blame Microsoft for your mistakes.

Re:Made $4 with WP7

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Well, that's kind of useless without a comparision to the amount a top rated app in apple's app store or google play makes. I'm guessing more than $4, but I don't know I've never clicked a mobile add before. I never understood why anyone would click an add. None of them are relivant to me.

Re:Made $4 with WP7

[sideslash]

That was really vulgar, but it may have been an accurate judgment of the OP's complaint. I have two WP7 apps that have had payoffs of $690.13 thus far. That's nothing to brag about, but I probably made a better effort at making something that users wanted. And "the top rated app in its category" doesn't mean much. You can define such a category very narrowly.

I do take issue with the monetization comparison with the iPhone. The opportunity is not that much worse such that it explains making only $4. Or to put it another way, it is almost as hard to make serious money on the iPhone as on WP7. App development is just an unforgiving environment in general, littered with the carcasses of hopeful developers with their skeletal fingers still tightly grasping the "top rated app in their category".

Re:Made $4 with WP7

[Anonymous Coward]

Try releasing a non-add supported version for $.99 and see if how well it does.

Re:Made $4 with WP7

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe going the Microsoft route was the wrong way to monetize. Maybe GP will go a different way. In fact, that's what GP said. Didn't mention blame at all.

Re:Made $4 with WP7

[jimmyfrank]

My app passed certification Feb of this year. It's about to reach 20k downloads, some are ad driven and some are purchases for .99. So far, I can't complain. I've made a few house payments.

Re:Made $4 with WP7

[Raenex]

I have two WP7 apps that have had payoffs of $690.13 thus far.

Is that via advertising or are they apps that cost money? Also, I assume that's $690 combined, or restated: $345 average per app.

Re:Made $4 with WP7

[hairyfish]

That's ok, someone else will. Apple never had a success story before Angry Birds. Someone will be the Angry Birds of W8, clearly it won't be you, but that's the great thing about capitalism, someone out there will find a way to succeed where others have failed.

Re:Made $4 with WP7

[sideslash]

Correct, that's two paid apps. However, most of my app income has come on iOS via "freemium" apps, and if and when I revisit Windows Phone, that's the route I plan to go, now that Microsoft is adding support for in app purchase with WP8.

Personally, I hate ads, so it's no huge grief to me that the returns have dropped off so precipitously in mobile advertising. I feel sorry for the OP, though.

Excuse me? Windows 8 is trash.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry but Windows 8 is trash for users. I've yet to meet a single person I know who has used Windows 8 and liked it. This ranges from server admins down to grandma with her choice of tablet. Windows keeps forgetting it's audience. They did an amazing job with Windows 7 but now it's like uncle fester without his meds they are trying to take on Apple with an inferior product.

What windows truly needs is to get rid of a certain Executive (*cough*SteveBallmer*cough*) and get one with his head on straight. Focus on your core business. Focus on your strengths. Apple will beat you like a red headed step child if you take them head on. Focus on corporate/enterprise level support. Meet those needs because apple sure as hell isn't trying to.

Re:Excuse me? Windows 8 is trash.

[m1ndcrash]

Windows 8 will succeed on tablet devices or those double sided laptops they advertise. It's faster than 7. No doubt 7 is a great product, 8 is looking forward to occupy touch screen interface niche where MS is lacking in presence.

Re:Excuse me? Windows 8 is trash.

[Penguinisto]

I've seen exactly two in-the-wild. One was carried by a Microsoft sales rep last year when the EA was renewed, and the other by a Microsoft consultant who stopped by to perform the free SQL Server performance assessment that we got for renewing that EA.

Re:Excuse me? Windows 8 is trash.

[Anonymous Coward]

I love my Windows 8 machine, I put Start8 on my desktop and left the touch interface in tact on my Surface...it works quite well. Windows 8 is significantly faster than 7 in various areas.

Re:Excuse me? Windows 8 is trash.

[Dutch Gun]

Windows 8 will succeed on tablet devices or those double sided laptops they advertise. It's faster than 7. No doubt 7 is a great product, 8 is looking forward to occupy touch screen interface niche where MS is lacking in presence.

Perhaps, but at the expense of their desktop OS? I know I'm going to be sticking with 7 until I'm not forced to deal with the Metro interface on my desktop machine. Metro actually seems pretty slick for tablets and phones, but it's absolutely ridiculous on a desktop machine without a touch interface.

Re:Excuse me? Windows 8 is trash.

[Anonymous Coward]

Everybody that I've seen using Win8 seemed to like it. They said it's modern, fresh, different, fun... "not the same thing", etc. Server admins and grandma aren't really their target I guess.

Re:Excuse me? Windows 8 is trash.

[m1ndcrash]

I'm with you there. I've played around with 8 on my "normal" laptop and metro with its sidebars was useless. 7 will stay on desktop for a long time. I think they are looking at their XP experience and trying to expand to a different market that's all.

Re:Excuse me? Windows 8 is trash.

[shutdown -p now]

What does this have to do with Windows Phone 8?

Windows Phone 8 hasn't been out for a whole DAY

[Anonymous Coward]

And already Apple fanboys are submitting shit like this here

Re:Windows Phone 8 hasn't been out for a whole DAY

[m1ndcrash]

They are scared. Better things are coming out then their precious iPhones.

Re:Windows Phone 8 hasn't been out for a whole DAY

[CanHasDIY]

And already Apple fanboys are submitting shit like this here

That's silly - One must not be a manure farmer to know a turd when they see it, polished though it may be.

Titanic fails to attract Passengers

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows 8 has been a PR disaster for a while now and it has the reek of failure all over it. Microsoft is really good at a lot of things but selling their damn products to the average consumer isn't one of them.

Now that I've had a bit of experience with 8 I like some things but the point is I shouldn't be discovering stuff like this at arms reach, they have to start making things sexy if they want to attract users, which in turn attracts developers.

Re:Titanic fails to attract Passengers

[lightknight]

Meh. MS has the odd ability to accidentally make a success, typically without even them thinking it would become a success.

Consider Windows 2000 vs. Windows Millennium. I'm sure all the market studies done before the product launch said that businesses would love 2000, and consumers would love Millennium. Except after launch, consumers had a chance to test drive both, and decided that despite the fact that it wasn't targeted at them, they much preferred Windows 2000 to Windows Millennium. Consumers wanted an OS that didn't need to reboot when a program crashed more than the jazzed up game / home Windows 9x+ OS that everyone thought would be a sure winner. If I had been in charge of a MS division at that point, I would have taken note that our market analytics were pure trash.

And that's how MS tends to operate. The 'sure-winners' that get all the nice literature and pamphlets are, by launch time, seen as over-hyped or totally miss out on what their potential customers wanted. Instead, it's a lot of the 'what the hell, Bob was bored and made an add-on for Office while waiting for his monthly check to clear' that seems to endow MS with those surprise features that people find, and decide they can't do without.

Consider Office for a moment. We'll say Office 2010. Now, the common belief is that people 'just need Word and Powerpoint' with possibly a few people needing 'Excel' and others 'Access' or 'Outlook.' Now me being something of a prima donna (and not trusting any company to not sell me a crippled edition of their software), I tend to send in orders for the Ultimate / Enterprise / all the bling editions of software. Why? Because personal experience has shown me that software developers, paid ones, don't really give a damn about the feature-less standard editions, and put all the magic in the Unobtanium versions. So, I ended up with a copy of MS Office 2010 Business Plus, or whatever it is that has all the fruit. Now, admittedly, I had not been paying attention to some of the previous versions of Office, and so came to a rather pleasant discovery of a program, only bundled of course with the Uber version of Office, that should really have received top billing on the Office brochure. Like, even before mentioning the oldie but goodies, they really needed to mention Sharepoint Workspaces. The ability to synchronize, without needing to handhold or verify, the various folders / files between your laptop and your desktop, the ability to say "Just shutup and automatically synchronize everything between my VS and NetBeans folders whenever you detect changes / the other computer is awake" is really, really something that needs to be mentioned somewhere. In prominent letters.

Yes, yes, we've heard about the cloud bullsh*t, but it is pure bull. Plus, for companies that need to keep an eye on things, that cannot use clouds because that data cannot be let out of their sight (just tons of corporations in there), this is really, really what they need to keep work between the encrypted laptop and their workplace under safe keeps.

They really, really missed the window here. I'd have made that program a standard feature, then abused everyone else for failing to have something comparable. Even the people in the linux realm don't have an equivalent, with a few of them desperate to try and get the thing running on Wine.

No surprise here

[JDG1980]

""Microsoft has promised that cross-platform development across the 8s â" from Windows 8 on a desktop to Windows Phone 8 â" will be a simple matter, but that's still not enough to get some developers moving on Windows Phone 8 support."

Bah. Microsoft can't just declare Year Zero and expect everyone to drop everything and follow them. If you are targeting desktop/laptop users, you'd have to be crazy to write for Metro at this point, when the overwhelming majority of your users are still on Windows 7 or even Windows XP. If you want to pitch your software to mobile users, then you can get a much larger audience by targeting iOS and/or Android.

In other words, writing for Metro will give you access to three platforms... all of which have virtually nonexistent market share at this point. And Microsoft has shown on several occasions in the past that they're willing to pull the plug on various developer technologies if they're falling behind, or just if the business strategy has changed. Ballmer and company can't see this because they are in love with their products, themselves, and the sounds of their own voices. But from the point of view of an independent developer, jumping into the Windows 8 pool now doesn't pay off – the most rational move is simply to wait and see what happens.

I suspect that Microsoft's actual response to this will be to bribe certain developers to port particular desirable applications to Metro. To an extent this may have already happened.

Re:No surprise here

[Animats]

And Microsoft has shown on several occasions in the past that they're willing to pull the plug on various developer technologies if they're falling behind, or just if the business strategy has changed.

Ah, yes. Softimage, PlaysForSure, Silverlight, Zune... On each, the plug was pulled suddenly; they weren't slowly phased out.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if Microsoft backs off from desktop Metro. Enterprise customers hate it and want it to just go away.

Re:No surprise here

[Billly Gates]

I disagree. Many developers who snubbed Vista and then Windows 7 and only supported XP are having their customers switch to competitors!

Windows 8 sucking or not is too large of a marketshare to ignore. The customer determines what you support. Not yourself. Windows 8 mobile maybe crappy in terms of marketshare but every new pc that most people and businesses buy will come with it. Most employers are small believe it or not and do not have a dedicated IT departmetn with images of ancient platforms like yours does. They buy a pc at Staples and install the software themselves and get to work. If your corporate app wont support them they will simply buy from someone else who will.

What MS fucked up on is not making metro binary and source compatible between Windows 8/RT and Windows 8 mobile. The kernels between all 3 plataforms are identical. No difference whatsoever. Windows 9 may fix this if it not too late.

Re:No surprise here

[Anonymous Coward]

It has already happened, Nokia paid for Rovio to port one of angry bird's versions to Lumia after they said that they don't see it economically viable.

Re:No surprise here

[Anonymous Coward]

Lack of interest isn't the consequence of the plug suddenly being pulled. Rather, suddenly pulling the plug is the consequence of lack of interest.

Re:No surprise here

[PlusFiveTroll]

A lot of small employers actually have tech services that come out on call and make recommendations. At one time my recommendation was stick with XP and keep away from Vista. Later when Win7 was in a decent condition and the software they used was supported, they migrated. Maybe at one time small businesses ran out and grabbed whatever computer, but after the costs of getting new software, retraining staff, and paying support bit them in the ask, most will ask someone with knowledge first. In the reality I live in, corporate apps are not fungible, and migration costs are huge.

Re:No surprise here

[JDG1980]

I disagree. Many developers who snubbed Vista and then Windows 7 and only supported XP are having their customers switch to competitors!

First of all, Windows 7 was (and is) actually popular. Secondly, making an application support Vista/7 is not that difficult; in many cases, no changes at all are needed from XP, even at the binary level. The only major issue was UAC prompts, and those would only be triggered if your application was already doing stuff that it shouldn't have been doing from a security standpoint (e.g. saving settings to Program Files instead of the local user profile).

Windows 8 sucking or not is too large of a marketshare to ignore. The customer determines what you support. Not yourself. Windows 8 mobile maybe crappy in terms of marketshare but every new pc that most people and businesses buy will come with it. Most employers are small believe it or not and do not have a dedicated IT departmetn with images of ancient platforms like yours does. They buy a pc at Staples and install the software themselves and get to work. If your corporate app wont support them they will simply buy from someone else who will.

All this is irrelevant, as Windows 8 for desktops/laptops will continue to support the same software as before. There is no reason to think that businesses will demand specifically "Metro" apps. If your app was well-designed and ran on Windows 7, it should run on Windows 8.

That leaves Windows RT (Surface) and WinPhone8. These systems do lack backward compatibility. But they also have essentially zero market share at this point, and there's no reason to think they will make a big impact, either among consumers or among businesses. That's why I said the wise move for developers was to sit and wait. If and when they start to pick up (and I doubt that is going to happen) then, and only then, would it make sense for developers to spend the time/effort/money to port their application to Metro.

Re:No surprise here

[jimmyfrank]

It's really not that difficult unless you're writing winForms. Otherwise, if you're working with WPF or SL it's very easy to do it in a way that allows a lot of re use between WP and Win8/RT if that's desired. Further, if you work with something like mvvmCross, you can target iPhone and Android as well, using the Xamarin products. I suppose bad programmers will make it difficult though.

Re:No surprise here

[Anonymous Coward]

"Ah, yes. Softimage, PlaysForSure, Silverlight, Zune... On each, the plug was pulled suddenly; they weren't slowly phased out. "

The real problem was that apart from Softimage, Microsoft is such a lumbering dinosaur that each of these products was at least two years late to market. Silverlight was a Flash clone, and now Flash is waning. Zune was an ipod ripoff released in...2006. WP7 was released in 2010, iphone, 2007. Ipad, 2010, Surface, late 2012. The pattern is easy enough to recognize: too little, too late.

Was $99 now only $8 for a short time.

[Anonymous Coward]

They just announced access to the developer platform will be $8 for the next month or so, down from $99:
http://blogs.windows.com/windows_phone/b/wpdev/archive/2012/10/30/announcing-the-new-windows-phone-8-developer-platform.aspx

Re:Was $99 now only $8 for a short time.

[Swistak]

Yeah, and promotion is as shity as their whole dev center. I thought $8 I'll register just in case I'l EVER have to release anything for W8. But it's not $8 it's $99 and after a MONTH (30-45 days!) the'll refund you 91$, how fucking hard is to set up a discount in shop made by microsoft? apparently it's impossible, you have to charge client then refund him. So no thanks

Re:Was $99 now only $8 for a short time.

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

    I went to register - can't go wrong for $8 -- in spite of Android and BlackBerry, BlackBerry 10 being free -- then I saw this:

Windows Phone 8 is out, the tools are available, and devices are about to be released—it’s time to get coding. As an added incentive, for the next 8 days individual developers can register for a Dev Center account for just $8 (a 92 percent savings). Please note because this is a very limited time offer. You’ll be charged $99 USD or equivalent in your local currency, and we’ll refund the difference in the next 30 to 45 days. Watch for more details on Dev Center soon.

WTF? This is $8 in the same way that 'property tax rebates' are a discount on property tax: in the most inconvenient, inefficient way possible. I think I'll pass.

i dont see the problem

[pointyhat]

Apart from about 100 apps per platform, the rest are crap universally between android, IOS and winphone. Why is "only" 100,000 apps a problem? the stats are absolutely meaningless.

Re:i dont see the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. Quantify != Quality.

But now that Apple has competition, it's driving the conversation by poining to number of apps.

On Android, when I search for anything there is only 1-2 apps worth it and the other 50 are crap.

Re:i dont see the problem

[tuppe666]

Apart from about 100 apps per platform, the rest are crap universally between android, IOS and winphone. Why is "only" 100,000 apps a problem? the stats are absolutely meaningless.

Windows simply doesn't have top tier Applications either. If you were comparing top 100 applications I would care more...but I don't. I personally believe choice matters. I have even changed my main Apps browser; music player; Video player several times. I own 80+ applications, and belong to 4 Application Stores, and I'm not a heavy user. The bottom line is though your like ly to get a higher number of top tier applications on a platform with the greatest number of Applications...the reality is very few top tire apps find themselves on Microsoft platform at all.

Re:i dont see the problem

[gstoddart]

The flippant answer is that I absolutely need 7 different fart pianos. Some have different pitches, and some make squishier sounds. I'm composing my masterpiece of farts. ;-)

The more serious answer is that if people perceive there's not as much software available for Win 8 phones, they're not going to buy one. If nobody is going to buy one, WTF would a developer invest his time into writing apps for it? I'd be surprised if anything more than tiny fraction of all mobiles in win 8 yet.

The reality is, Microsoft is coming to the game two years after everybody, proclaiming they have the best game in town, and the wondering why they only hear crickets in return.

Re:i dont see the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Granted, there's a ton of redundancy – how many weather or newsfeed apps does one person need? – but it points to availability and developer support

It's the simplest metric, but it's still a decent indication of the overall developer interest...perhaps there's also 6x less "good" apps on winphone.

Re:i dont see the problem

[narcc]

I don't get it either. 100k Apps seems adequate to me -- especially for a new platform.

I don't know where the 100k figure comes from though. According to Business Insider they had close to 10k apps at launch, though the store was growing by about 500 apps per day. (They've got about 180 days to go at that rate to make the 100k mark)

Of course, most of the apps are still garbage -- on every platform. It would be nice to see multiple, competing, app stores on various platforms to help weed out the crap.

Re:i dont see the problem

[mspohr]

Right!
"64 apps should be enough for anyone!"

Re:i dont see the problem

[bloodhawk]

If you take a look they actually have the vast majority of top tier apps as well. last look it was something like 90% of the top tier apps.

Re:i dont see the problem

[pointyhat]

Op here. I'm typing this on a Lumia 710. My app needs are covered fine with good quality apps.

Re:i dont see the problem

[windwalkr]

I don't get it either. 100k Apps seems adequate to me -- especially for a new platform.

A small number of quality apps is enough to suit most users, most of the time. The difference is the lack of all those niche apps which are only needed by a few people, only some of the time. Need a security-camera app to check on your business when the alarm goes off at 3am, for whatever el-cheapo camera brand you thought was a good idea at the time? This is where a more mature app library can be noticeable.

It's the whole 1990s Windows vs Mac thing over again, but this time in reverse. If you're in love with the minority platform, the lack of apps probably won't make you change. But for someone who cares less about the platform, it's hard to give up access to those niche apps for questionable benefit.

Wow, all that one day later

[Anonymous Coward]

It's amazing that this is somehow relevant just a single day after the official WP8 announcement.

It's too early to already be a slow news day...

I am writing a Slashdot app

[Spy Handler]

for Windows 8, I am beta testing it now.

Oh and Frist Post

Best Tools, lack of "Hip" factor

[erik umenhofer]

I know this is an on-going flame war, but with Expression Software and Visual Studio 2010/2012, Microsoft has some of the best tools out there for building mobile applications. Throw in testing tools, and you are at the top of the class. After using the tools and marketplace for 2 years now, I can say a couple things.

*The marketplace has come a long way. It is getting better every day. It used to be a real chore to use year or so ago. It is a lot more streamlined and clean.

*The bad press recently around marketplace submissions is a crap shoot. I've experienced similar things, but also I've experienced quick easy submissions. It honestly depends on the tester. If things seem to be going bad, there is always a manager you can contact to get things going.

*Lets be honest too. The iOS and Android marketplaces are FILLED with pure crap applications. I'm not saying that the Windows store is any better, but comparing numbers isn't fair because, most of those apps are useless and are never downloaded.

*If you know Java or Obj-C, not many people are willing or paid to jump into C#. I'm definitely not interested in learning a new language at this point in my career.

* Lastly, I think the main problem is traditional Microsoft fear/hatred. I have talked to more "hip" iOS teams that make cooler apps for android and iOS. They showed zero desire to even make an effort to make any apps for Windows Phone. The attitude I saw a lot was just pure bandwagon hatred. "Meh"

Re:Best Tools, lack of "Hip" factor

[Shoten]

I don't think the problem is the lack of hip factor.

Question:
What's the motto of a developer who focuses on "hip factor" above market size?

Answer:
"Would you like fries with that?"

There are many problems facing a developer writing for Windows Phone 8. Windows CE/Phone 6/Phone 6.5/Phone 7 have always had poor uptake and very upset users. I used to work for HP, and before they bought Palm, every HP smartphone ran Windows Phone, and that's all that was issued to people. To a man, everyone *hated* them with a vengeance. Eventually, we all broke the rules and BYOB'ed iPhones...nobody got in trouble because EVERYONE did it. And I mean, freaking everyone. And this is not news. So Microsoft is at a natural disadvantage, out of the gate, since there's this relatively large base of users who either had a Windows Phone and hated it or know someone who did. Add the talk/rumors about marketplace issues, the fact that it's one more platform to support, on top of iOS and Android, and I don't see why having good dev tools for the platform would be all that great a balancing factor. The tools are great, sure...but so what? The tools have absolutely nothing to do with the demand for the platform the apps would run on.

Re:Best Tools, lack of "Hip" factor

[Anonymous Coward]

The attitude I saw a lot was just pure bandwagon hatred.

I have a hard time feeling any sympathy for Microsoft on this point. More than anyone else, they've made the bed that they're now being forced to sleep in. Solely based on their sleezy business tactics in the past, everyone is well justified in hating Microsoft and longing for a world where that company is on its knees begging.

Re:Best Tools, lack of "Hip" factor

[erik umenhofer]

Dear lord, please don't lump 6/6.5 in with 7, 7.5 and 8.

Re:Best Tools, lack of "Hip" factor

[JDG1980]

I know this is an on-going flame war, but with Expression Software and Visual Studio 2010/2012, Microsoft has some of the best tools out there for building mobile applications. Throw in testing tools, and you are at the top of the class.

I can't speak to mobile applications, but from what I've seen of Microsoft developer tools on the desktop, I'm not impressed. I got a chance to try Expression Web (for ASP.NET web page development) at work, but quickly found I could operate quicker and easier by just editing the pages in Notepad2. Elsewhere, I've tried Visual Studio 2010 Express – only to find that the vast majority of open-source projects I tried to build were made on Visual Studio 2008, and unbelievably, the project files are not forward compatible. When you open the project, it insists on "converting" it, and then the conversion always fails. I don't plan to use a development tool that will break all of my projects when I upgrade the IDE.

Lastly, I think the main problem is traditional Microsoft fear/hatred. I have talked to more "hip" iOS teams that make cooler apps for android and iOS. They showed zero desire to even make an effort to make any apps for Windows Phone. The attitude I saw a lot was just pure bandwagon hatred. "Meh"

Did you consider that they aren't making apps for Windows Phone because it simply isn't worth the trouble? Android and iOS, combined, make up the vast majority of the smartphone market. Windows Phone is a tiny niche player. It has nothing to do with "bandwagon hatred" or "fear" – they just don't think it is a cost-effective use of their resources. Why should they change their mind now? Developers don't have an obligation to play along with what is best for Microsoft; rather, Microsoft needs to show developers what's in it for them.

Re:Best Tools, lack of "Hip" factor

[david_thornley]

Doesn't matter whether GP does, because people will. Many will think "Microsoft phone - they've always been crap". Many more will think "Windows phone..." instead, and those who pay attention to numbers may think "6 was crap, 6.5 was crap; having been burned twice I don't think I need to try WP8". It won't kill the platform, but it will be a serious hindrance, and a company trying to make headway in a crowded market needs as few hindrances in reaching customers as possible.

The difference between bad and good, here, is apparently 6.5 to 7. If you know that, then you figure a WP7 phone is something new, and not necessarily bad. (It looks ugly to me. Apparently, many people don't agree.) If you don't, then you don't know when to buy another one, particularly since there's lots of hype for both good and bad phones.

What Microsoft should have done is come up with a new name, preferably not anything like "Kin" or "Zune", to try to escape all the bad memories. I think a "Microsoft Starweb 7" phone would do better than "Windows Phone 7" did.

Compatibility with METRO

[Billly Gates]

It would be really nice if it were binary, or perhaps source compatible with Windows 8/RT.

I can't see why not? There is not enough marketshare for people to care right now but Windows on the desktop you simply can't ignore. Fat binaries is how Apple accomplished and a fat Metro applet with x86/arm that can run on a phone should have been thought of in 2010 since that is where MS wanted to go.

I mean the kernel is freaking identical between win 8/RT and Windows mobile!

Re:Compatibility with METRO

[lister king of smeg]

fat binaries arn't needed unless you are selling via physical media, if you are distributing via download you can use a simply architecture or version check and download the proper binary. if you have fat binaries you will quickly hit data caps on current mobile data plans.

Re:Compatibility with METRO

[Anonymous Coward]

If they provided a good way for 3rd party apps to work with Windows 8 desktop apps then they would also be providing a good way for android and apple apps to work with Windows 8 desktop apps.

Re:Compatibility with METRO

[darkgrayknight]

Not sure where you get that the kernel is identical. It is not like they compiled exactly the same source for each, there are differences. For one the Windows Phone 8 has to run Windows Phone 7 apps, so there are some differences there. Windows RT has some differences from Windows 8, they are built for different processors. There are enough core components that and app built for any one of them can be compiled to work with the others, but it doesn't just happen if the application is more complicated and uses components outside the core set.

Re:Compatibility with METRO

[shutdown -p now]

It doesn't seem to be fully source compatible on XAML (and, more generally, UI) level, but for the model, looks like it could be ported directly.

Re:Compatibility with METRO

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a high level of source compatibility. Binary compatibility would be difficult, because Win8 apps need to support mouse and different aspect ratio screens, plus some of the high level UI paradigms are different (Phone's "panorama" view vs. Win8's tile view).

If your lower level code is sufficiently general, there should just be a couple of surface level UI bits that differ.

Re:Compatibility with METRO

[Anonymous Coward]

The kernel is identical. They have different shells and libraries on top of the kernel, but the Win8 kernel is the WinPhone8 kernel.

Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

Developers? Developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers...

I make no apologies

Two is company....

[Anonymous Coward]

Three is a crowd. Shame really.

78% of slashdot summary contain glaring errors

[zill]

A survey by IDC and Appcelerator found 78% of Android developers were 'very interested' in programming for Android smartphones

Wait, what?

Re:78% of slashdot summary contain glaring errors

[AmazingRuss]

The other 22% have actually made android apps, and don't want to any more because of device fragmentation and poor sales.

Mostly on MS

[Anonymous Coward]

They just released the tools yesterday. Developers have known for months that win phone 7 apps would not carry over, so why would you build one? This is mostly MS fault for being late, and switching strategies mid stream. Not to mention the poor market share. The market is still open, we just passed 50% penetration, now that they have shipped we will see.

Microsoft is where programming languages go to die

[gestalt_n_pepper]

VB6, Winforms, dying Silverlight, J# ... Nothing quite says, "I don't give a shit about my developer base or their customers" like dropping a platform and not even making a token attempt to provide an upgrade path that doesn't include the word, "rewrite" even when doing so would be technically trivial.

Any wonder that nobody is much interested in committing to a platform that will change the next time some genius at Microsoft decides to change the world again? Used to be that you'd at least get a decade out of a platform. Those were the days.

Hey Microsoft, ARE YOU LISTENING? Oh, wait. The start button that thousands of developers on the forums wanted to retain is gone too. I guess that means, "No."

Hi Mr. Linux!

I can tell you why.

[Anonymous Coward]

Desktops/laptops = Windows 7.

Tablets/phones = Android.

Windows 8 is a bloated gas bag attempt at trying to force a market into buying a product that is not only a step backwards, but its also a closed minded pile of shit with that windows marketplace crap, it does nothing to improve gaming experince, its clumsy to use at best and basically just a piece of shit operating system.

They wont get developers for it really because no one wants to wants to waste, time, energy and resources on operating system that sucks and the alternatives are far superior with a larger user base.

Youd be a retard to sink time and money into windows 8.

Developers developers developers...

[whitelabrat]

Developers developers developers...

If it was a flex phone with built in projector

[na1led]

I might consider, but going to a proprietary platform with limited apps is not going to do it for me. Microsoft needs to give us something no one else has.

Haters Gonna Hate

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember when people were bashing XP because windows 2k was so much better, and Vista after XP, which was really not too different from Windows 7. So it's not surprising to see that people cling to the status quo and bash a new system.

I went to a Microsoft store in Orange County and played with a Windows 8 tablet for a while and I'd say calling it Windows 7+ is about accurate enough for most people. It's basically Windows 7 with an added touchscreen interface. Nevermind that many benchmarks show that Windows 8 is about 10% faster across the board than Windows 7.

I know it's hard to change your set ways, but now and then change is actually an improvement, and Windows 8 is one of those times.

Get off your lawns!

Re:Haters Gonna Hate

[PlusFiveTroll]

You might forget that XP had all kinds of issues before SP1, it really came in to form at SP2. SP2 is when I had my customers migrate to XP. My customers didn't migrate to Vista. My customers did migrate to Windows7 SP1. New systems come with new problems that have to be identified and solved. Either you can run out and do all that testing yourself, or you can let the rest of the world be your beta tester. Once the problems and faults of the operating system have been identified and patched, or workarounds are available, then it's smart to migrate. Never, ever take someone selling you somethings word at face value.

Their own fault

[hsmith]

I wanted to port our App a month ago.

Nope, no access to the SDK, besides the lucky few MS chose to grant access to.

If you want developers to build for it, you have to provide them the tools.

Re:Their own fault

[PlusFiveTroll]

Yea, the SDK just came out today, which is insane. I'm D/Ling it now to see what the phone emulator is like.

I wonder if they eat their dog food.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

There was some apocryphal story about Microsoft developers seen with the ubiquitous Apple iPod headphones would be have choice words (and probably no chairs) thrown at them by Steve Ballmar. Not sure if that was true. I wonder if Microsoft has mandated the use of Win 8 phones (or zune) as the corporate standard?

If not, why not?

Re:I wonder if they eat their dog food.

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't MANDATE using Windows Phones, but they will subsidize anyone who uses one. Use an iPhone? Fine, but Microsoft wont pay your bill. Frankly, I think it's shortsighted to have policies like this. Yes, you should have groups using (testing) your own product, but having employees use the competitor's product gives insight into what they are competing with...and gives incentive to making your product work BETTER than the competition! Of course,shortsightedness is nothing new from Microsoft management!

Re:I wonder if they eat their dog food.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not mandated unless the company is paying for it. But Microsoft is buying all of their employees Windows phones and plenty of people have taken them up on that offer.

Really? Don't say.

[Kynde]

Windows Phone 8 Having Trouble Attracting Developers

I didn't rtfa, hell, I even skipped the summary. This is just about the most breaking and surprising news story I've seen all year.

Not exactly Microsoft's fault

[TejWC]

Even if MS made the best phone OS ever created, it would still be hard to get many developers interested. The "mindshare" of developers is all in Android and iOS. Even 2 years ago, if you were at a mobile developer's conference, nobody would care about what you had to say unless it had something to do with Android or iOS. That is one of the reasons why nobody cared about MeeGo or WebOS even though they were both open source.

Re:Not exactly Microsoft's fault

[jimmyfrank]

Yeah, it's super hard. Dear .NET developers your skills transfer right over to WP. You're all mobile devs now, have fun.

Windows phone 8 has my interest but...

[WaffleMonster]

I think it is correct to call out the promise of portability between windows 8ish platforms as irrelevant because currrently there are no apps or user base for any of it.

However the core advantage for WP8 is not compatibility with windows but compatibility with existing C/C++ codebases used across all platforms. WP8 allows native code and offers a much more capable and complete API.

WP8 makes it easier to port codebases from other systems as they no longer need to be totally rewritten to some other language that will run atop a .NET CLR.

Android has fragmentation and security issues which makes it a pain to develop for without dealing with platform garbage.

iphone locks you into carriers, no choice of hardware vendors, form factors or ability to install apps without authorization from a central authority.

If MS gets the development environment and security picture right out of the box which at the 30k ft level it seems they have with jails and choosers as trusted go-betweens to protected or shared resources I could see it being a useful platform.

Some of the things they have like deep integration with voice recognition into applications to ask applications questions from a voice interface and deep VoIP integration seem very cool to me.

What I fear will happen is that MS will not open up their platform and allow third party apps to be installed external to the appstore or they will in some other way thru privacy violations and "to the cloud" make the platform sufficiently unappealing to me that I will not bother writing anything for it.

For exmple WP7 has no way for me to locally sync contacts without uploading them to some microsoft server.

There is no way to connect to the appstore and forbid Microsoft from wiping my phone or finding my location because these levers are controlled by a web site hosted by Microsoft not by levers in the device itself.

I can't even use the GPS without it leaking data over my data plan that I pay for to croudsource their a tower/wifi skyhook type system.

I can't use wifi without it sending NLA type crap to MS servers I have no way of turning off.

I hate this kind of bullshit shit.. it is a large part of the reason I am not using windows phone. I just want a device that will do what I want it to do and not the endless streams of vendor bullshit that seems to be baked into all modern mobile platforms.

At the very least I demand a permissionless environment so I can distribute apps myself if I choose to.

Finally I demand a SDK that does not require me to have windows 8 to develop wp8 apps. In my opinion Windows 8 sucks ass and I refuse to waste my time with it.

Re:Windows phone 8 has my interest but...

[geekoid]

"Android has fragmentation and security issues which makes it a pain to develop for without dealing with platform garbage."
diversity, not fragmentation, they are different things.
And the Android isn't that much of an issue. No more then windows; which as many version running at any one time

Re:Windows phone 8 has my interest but...

[21mhz]

There is no way to connect to the appstore and forbid Microsoft from wiping my phone or finding my location because these levers are controlled by a web site hosted by Microsoft not by levers in the device itself.

You mean, if somebody steals my phone and it's not locked, they should be able to prevent me from wiping my data and going after them?

I can't even use the GPS without it leaking data over my data plan that I pay for to croudsource their a tower/wifi skyhook type system.

I suggest you look into Google ToS for their location-enabled applications. They played this game with Google Maps waaay back in Symbian times. But otherwise yeah, it looks like you can't opt out. So enjoy your quick assisted GPS fixes, that's what you get in return for sending data about the tower IDs your device sees.

I can't use wifi without it sending NLA type crap to MS servers I have no way of turning off.

That's news to me, is there anything on the net describing this "feature"?

Re:Windows phone 8 has my interest but...

[WaffleMonster]

You mean, if somebody steals my phone and it's not locked, they should be able to prevent me from wiping my data and going after them?

No, I mean the user should have the choice when setting up the phone or option of protecting settings with a local password. There is no choice of any kind other than *never* associating a live account which means no apps can be purchased.

But otherwise yeah, it looks like you can't opt out. So enjoy your quick assisted GPS fixes, that's what you get in return for sending data about the tower IDs your device sees.

Warm start with modern GPS chipsets is more than quick enough for my needs.

That's news to me, is there anything on the net describing this "feature"?

I have no clue what all is written about it. I do know if you run wireshark and turn on wifi it makes all kinds of http and https requests by itself with no options to control behavior. It even sends device id in the clear.

Re:Windows phone 8 has my interest but...

[WaffleMonster]

You mean, if somebody steals my phone and it's not locked, they should be able to prevent me from wiping my data and going after them?

Thinking about this some more this just does not work anyway.

If the radios are first turned off by someone who wants to rummage thru your stuff you are denied the capability to remotely stop them.

Neither would the location feature work after a stolen device was factory reset.

How many OS'scan a market support

[strangeattraction]

What is the chance I can make an energy efficient application for mobile technology if I had to make it cross platform. I will argue that my cost go up for each OS I support. My guess is 3 is one too many, so M$ is doomed at this point. Supportig iOS and Android is economical since they already have market share. Risking a third will only kill your profitability. It is up to M$ to provide the incentive by either paying for great apps, providing a market were margins are higher or giving away their devices so that developers can have enough customers to make money. As much as I have had a l dislike/hate relationship with M$ in the past I will be sad to see them go. I only hope that Apple will continue on their current path and become the company to replace my dislike/hate relationship with M$. I can only hope.

Re:How many OS'scan a market support

[21mhz]

Supportig iOS and Android is economical since they already have market share. Risking a third will only kill your profitability.

This means it will be taken over by your competitor who now has a chance to claim the Windows Phone users uncontested. Their number is relatively small, but it's growing, and the growth is expected to accelerate now that the fully competitive OS version is finally released.

Re:How many OS'scan a market support

[Anonymous Coward]

Their number is relatively small, but it's growing, and the growth is expected to accelerate now that the fully competitive OS version is finally released.

Expected by whom? Microsoft?

The SDK only came out today

[zanderz]

How many developers could there be in only a few hours? http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-delivers-windows-phone-8-software-development-kit-7000006631/

Re:The SDK only came out today

[faboo]

People were begging to develop for the iPhone well before Apple even thought providing an SDK might be a good idea.

The lack of an SDK is unlikely to be the issue. The possibility that Metro won't last even a couple of years as a supported framework might though.

Wrong goal Microsoft

[gr8_phk]

cross-platform development across the 8s – from Windows 8 on a desktop to Windows Phone 8 – will be a simple matter

People developing mobile apps don't care about ease of going between those platforms. They care about covering all the mobile devices which means you need to help with them to run across: iOS, Android, and Windows Phone. Given the momentum the others have, who is going to make the effort to port apps to WP8? There are still nice apps that haven't crossed the iOS/Android chasm and you want to add another big leap? Dream on.

How much work would it have been to port the dalvik VM to Windows Phone to enable existing android apps? Now THAT would be doing developers a favor.

Re:Wrong goal Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Having worked with the both the Android and WP7 development tools, I'm much more in favor of going the other way. The Android development tools absolutely suck, especially if you're trying to target tablets. The emulator can't even dispatch events properly (this was in April)

Good for them

[Brandano]

"A survey by IDC and Appcelerator found 78% of Android developers were 'very interested' in programming for Android smartphones" I don't know, but I'd expect the near totality of Android developers to be interested in programming for Android, unless I am missing something? Maybe 22% of them are forced to program for it?

Silverlight/WP7 anyone?...

[erp_consultant]

I'm not a Microsoft developer but haven't we been down this path before with the above technologies? I recall a heavy emphasis on silverlight only to mothball it not long after. if I'm going to write Apps for someone I want some stability and recent history shows that Microsoft has not provided that to their developers.

Re:Silverlight/WP7 anyone?...

[PlusFiveTroll]

Long term usefulness is currently in Apple's favor. If you can get your app past the app police, it will likely have a long life of usefulness without the platform breaking underneath it. Android is more in the maybe category, there are a lot of different forks that can cause problems, but you can load your own apps on some devices which many businesses do. Microsoft's history here has not been so good. Starting with a half baked plan leads to long term failure.

Re:Silverlight/WP7 anyone?...

[erp_consultant]

I would add that the advantage Android has is in sheer numbers. It's by far the most used mobile OS so you've got a bigger audience to sell to. iOS is not far behind. Win8 is a distant, distant forth (behind even Blackberry I would guess). If I'm trying to make a living selling mobile apps you can bet I would be hitching a ride on either Android or iOS. Microsoft is going to have to show me that they have the vision to stick with a plan all the way through. Their recent history has not looked encouraging in that respect.

Re:Silverlight/WP7 anyone?...

[cavebison]

I recall a heavy emphasis on silverlight only to mothball it not long after.

Silverlight 5 was released just a few months ago. That's mothballed?

And this should be news?

[aglider]

You really thing that a third and different mobile platform would have attracted any developer?
Ah!

Re:And this should be news?

[jimmyfrank]

For the .NET devs that don't know java or obj-c, yeah.

Sho me da money...

[sitarlo]

Once devs see a way to monetize their efforts they will adopt the platform. Heck, Apple created an army of Objective C developers once the appstore took off.

This article is Retarded

[Anonymous Coward]

I am sorry but the freaking SDK for windows Phone 8 was released today. Today!!! Are you saying they shoudl have been attracting developers when the SDK was released a few hours ago. This has got to be one of the stupidest articles I have ever seen posted on /. and that is saying something.

Re:This article is Retarded

[Anonymous Coward]

I am sorry but the freaking SDK for windows Phone 8 was released today. Today!!! Are you saying they shoudl have been attracting developers when the SDK was released a few hours ago. This has got to be one of the stupidest articles I have ever seen posted on /. and that is saying something.

It sounds like you believe that Windows Phone 8 will be different from all the other satellite stuff that Microsoft has abandoned in the past, burning countless developers. This kind of thing has been going on since before Microsoft burned us with the OS/2 fiasco, pushing developers to commit to it, then dumping it on IBM and not even looking back. Do you remember that or had you even been born yet? It doesn't matter that the SDK was released only yesterday; a great many developers have seen this many times before.

It will similar to Windows 3.1...

[Anonymous Coward]

... Lotus, WordPerfect and others didn't ported well their applications to Windows 3.1 from DOS, so Microsoft won the race on Windows. It will similar for WP8, if nobody starts doing apps for WP8 then MS will start doing applications and will be late for the others.

The Solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe they should put huge advertisements on the /. front page. Oh, wait...

Re:Microsoft is where programming languages go to

[zaxbowow]

VB6 dead? My VB6 apps, with my updates to support registry and file virtualization, run flawlessly under Windows 8. Silverlight dead? Silverlight 5 was only released a few months ago, and supports out-of-browser AND in-browser COM automation. Good luck approaching that functionality with any other technology. Silverlight powers WP7 and some pretty awesome websites. If I wanted to start a new website that was more impressive than anything, was a mature technology with lots of examples and free open source libs available, and ran on PCs and Macs (99% of the market?), I'd use it in a heartbeat. Deserted developers? MY ASS. Microsoft supports developers and legacy code better than any technology company. Period.

If you build it, they will come.

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe Andy Patrizio (article author) is just sore that he didn't get into the Microsoft Build conference because......

All Microsoft Build Attendees Get Free Surface Tablets, Lumia 920 And 100GB Of SkyDrive Storage
http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/30/microsoft-gives-free-surface-tablets-100gb-of-skydrive-storage-to-all-build-attendees/

Developer Registration is now $8

[Anonymous Coward]

Well to entice programmers, Microsoft just dropped the price for Developer Registration to $8 (for the next 8 days). Windows Phone Developer Blog

Fine print: Please note because this is a very limited time offer. You’ll be charged $99 USD or equivalent in your local currency, and we’ll refund the difference in the next 30 to 45 days.

Microsoft Partner rules...

[ocularsinister]

My company is currently renewing it's Microsoft Partner status - it looks like we now have to certify on Windows Phone 8 to keep our status. If this is the case - and I've every reason to believe it is - there *will* be lots of apps out there pretty soon because Microsoft shops are used to getting their development tools 'free' with their partner status and will sooner port their app to WinPho 8 than pay 10+ Visual Studio + MSSQL licenses, especially when they live, breath and die Microsoft.

really?

[Anonymous Coward]

an unreleased platform who's sdk was released today....??

no kidding it doesn't have a lot of developers

I'm getting interested

[Jaxim]

Now that I can code for both Windows8 and WindowPhone, I am more interested in coding for Windows.
However, I am unsure which language is best to use. I've heard from many people that C# is the best language to develop for Windows; however C++ seems to be the "native" language. I've read that if you're planning on creating games, then C++ is the way to go.

Does anyone have advice?

How about the fact that they have outlawed VMs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't this seem strikingly similar to the Adobe Flash and Apple debacle. That killed anything starting with a lowercase 'i' for me.

Article is silly

[jimmyfrank]

The article makes it sound like anything done in WP7 isn't applicable or reusable on WP8. That's total bunk. With the latest updates to Portable Class Libs and the async targeting pack for vs2012 it's super easy to share code between the 8's. WP8 SKD was just released today btw.

Re:Microsoft is where programming languages go to

[jimmyfrank]

VB6 is alive and well, SL is alive and well. Any skills used developing SL won't be wasted, they transfer right over to Win8/RT XAML development.

Re:Microsoft is where programming languages go to

[jimmyfrank]

Way to ruin is FUD parade.

Cannot begin developing for WP8

[GraemeWT]

Microsoft are preventing developers moving to Windows Phone 8 SDK. 1. I appled for the SDK about 2 months ago and have not yet been able to obtain it. 2. It requires Windows 8 as a development platform. 3. I cannot upgrade to Windows 8 yet because: 3.1 I currently use Windows 7 Enterprise and Media Center and Visual Studio 2010 3.2 Windows 8 Enterprise does not support Media Cetner yet See, I want to develop for Windows Phone 8 and I want to upgrade to Windows 8 but Microsoft are preventing from doing so!!!

That'll be $10000 please

[Anonymous Coward]

Hold on sunshine, you need $10000 for certification for apps for Microsoft these days. Hand over the cash! Oh and don't think about patching it, we'll want $10000 for that too:

http://games.slashdot.org/story/12/07/20/1540247/microsoft-taking-heat-for-five-figure-xbox-360-patch-fee

Re:Microsoft is where programming languages go to

[Anonymous Coward]

How many people have silverlight installed? 2%?

Re:Microsoft is where programming languages go to

[JDG1980]

VB6 dead? My VB6 apps, with my updates to support registry and file virtualization, run flawlessly under Windows 8.

Yes, binary backwards compatibility on Windows is very good (and this is one of the reasons why they've managed to stay on top of the desktop market for so long, especially in businesses). But what happens if you need to add developers to that application? Do you have to go trawling eBay for old copies of Visual Studio 6? I mean, if you're a hobbyist you could just download it from "various sources" and not worry about the niggling legal issues, but in a real business that generally won't fly. And I don't even know how well Visual Studio 6 runs on modern versions of Windows. It's probably workable, but the IDE and everything else must look way out of date.

The fact remains that deprecating Visual Basic (and replacing it with another language that was called the same thing but not really compatible) was a boneheaded move on Microsoft's part. Heck, they could have sold VB6 individually as a separate product, and plenty of businesses would have bought it.

Re:Microsoft is where programming languages go to

[Just Some Guy]

Silverlight powers WP7 and some pretty awesome websites.

Please. It powers Netflix, and that's the main reason 99% of its tiny market share ever installed it in the first place.

If I wanted to start a new website that was more impressive than anything, was a mature technology with lots of examples and free open source libs available, and ran on PCs and Macs (99% of the market?), I'd use it in a heartbeat.

LOL. Now you're just toying with us. Anyone rolling out a new website in Silverlight (or even Flash) today is hopelessly out of touch with industry trends. I mean, sure, you might not mind throwing away 100% of the mobile browser market, but most developers aren't quite so cavalier about pissing off their potential clientele.

They will, if Apple continues to be elitist.

[nikonian]

I'm a C#, C++ & Java developer, and have seen both sides of the fence dividing Developerville for over 14 years.

This is why I think MS will get developer support:

1. Tools - they have well integrated tools, which are free to use.

Nothing out there can match the ease of building an app for desktop and mobile with Visual Studio. Google has done an impressive job with the Android development tools & tutorials, but Java based desktop apps are an entirely different story with FOSS alternatives like the do-it-all Eclipse framework which are not easy to get productive with.

Though I am peeved to see Windows Phone 8 development needs Windows 8 and SLAT processor support, which means I would need to replace my "old" laptop which runs Windows 7 & the Windows Phone emulator just fine, to do Windows Phone 8 development.

2. Consistent managed programming languages between desktop & mobile.

I quite like how MS has extended Silverlight's C# / XAML paradigm to both desktop & phone. C# is easy to learn and C++ is a first class language on Windows 8 desktop and phone. While C++ is difficult for novice developers, good C++ devs will continue to be in demand for efficient LOB apps, and I can see them migrating to this paradigm.

3. C# & XAML are easy to learn.

From a business perspective, platform integration implies skill reuse and reduced headcount. From a business perspective, cost is also important, and MS may have shot itself in the foot on the pricing of its Windows 8 tablets.

Will the desktop equation change if the "Mother Of All Walled Gardens", Apple, reduces Mac desktop prices?

Just my 0.02.

Missing the obvious?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe the developers see no point investing in a platform that has a measly global market share?

Yes, Windows Phone 7/8, I'm talking about you. Still single digit % market share after so much hype/money/years.

It's not the size of your app store that matters..

[Anonymous Coward]

So what does it say about the apple and android app offerings that the vast majority of them have never even been downloaded? Seems to me this is a quality vs quanity question.

Re:Microsoft is where programming languages go to

[HerculesMO]

About 70%. Just as many people who have Java installed.

Sorry to ruin the hate parade here.

WP8 SDK Breaks VMWare

[Jamel Toms]

Perhaps developers would try out WP8 development, if installing the SDK didn't break your VMWare installation.

Re:Microsoft is where programming languages go to

[Anonymous Coward]

VB6 never ran flawlessly on any platform.

Rebate:Was $99 now only $8 for a short time.

[girlinatrainingbra]

Yep, just like Fry's or Office Depot or (heaven forbid) Best Buy: if you see a rebate offer attached to something, do not buy it. The odds of the rebate ever getting back to you are infinitesimally small and they want to make it as difficult as possible for you to complain, and they always put up many hoops for you to jump through (in a bizarre non-rational sequence, with flames on some hoops to singe you!) so that they can say you did something wrong and forgot to cut along the dotted line so you no longer qualify for the rebate, too bad. WPh8?? Nothing to see here, nothing to develop here. Let's move along.