Slashdot Mirror
Devs Flay Microsoft For Withholding Windows 8.1 RTM
CWmike writes "Windows app developers are taking Microsoft to task for the company's decision to withhold Windows 8.1 until mid-October. Traditionally, Microsoft offers an RTM to developers several weeks before the code reaches the general public. On Tuesday, however, Microsoft confirmed that although Windows 8.1 has reached RTM, subscribers to MSDN will not get the final code until the public does on Oct. 17, saying it was not finished. Antoine Leblond, a Microsoft spokesman, said in a blog post, 'In the past, the release to manufacturing milestone traditionally meant that the software was ready for broader customer use. However, it's clear that times have changed.' Developers raged against the decision in comments on another Microsoft blog post, one that told programmers to write and test their apps against Windows 8.1 Preview, the public sneak peak that debuted two months ago. One commenter, 'brianjsw,' said, 'In the real world, developers must have access to the RTM bits before [general availability]. The fact that Microsoft no longer seems to understand this truly frightens me.'"
so Microsoft wants only the agile and extreme to survive, while the slackers get left behind. makes sense to me.
Now we don't even test anymore - the customers can test.
Go team retard!
No more Ballmer, no more Developers, Developers, Developers?
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
Withold access to the new APIs until their own stuff is out-the-door. Then third party developers will have to spend months playing catch-up ...
AccountKiller
So when it gets released and pushed out over Windows Update, the average user's install won't break because some little driver has an issue with how Windows 8.1 does things. Having the RTM out early also allows OEMs to make sure they are picking hardware that will work best with Windows 8.1 and have 8.1 machines ready for to be sold when 8.1 drops. By not having an RTM, Microsoft is telling everyone to go screw themselves and that they'll have to figure out if stuff works on Release Day.
Can you please explain why developers need the early access? Is Windows 8.1 not backwards compatible? If it's not available to devs prior to GA will the users end up spending several months being able to do nothing but play solitaire? What is the significance of a third-party piece of software being GA on the exact day as the OS it targets?
Backwards compatible is not always backwards compatible, I haven't written MS software in ages but plenty of things behave differently with new releases and SP's - sometimes bugs that your software has been written to work around have been "fixed", which then makes your workaround fail... Maybe your software doesn't use any of those bits, or maybe it makes your software crash upon startup. The only way to know is to run it against the same release that consumers are getting.
On Tuesday, however, Microsoft confirmed that although Windows 8.1 has reached RTM, subscribers to MSDN will not get the final code until the public does on Oct. 17, saying it was not finished.
What the fuck. No. Words mean things, and "release to manufacturing" means that the software is ready for Releasing To Manufacturing. It doesn't mean "beta 15", or "we think this might be ready", or "release candidate". It means that it's ready to ship and that this is what will be going out the door on launch day.
Google's infinite betas are a bit of mild industry humor, but "beta" doesn't have an inherent definition. You can stretch it to justify almost anything. But "RTM", "release candidate", and others have very specific, unambiguous meanings. If it's not finished, it's not RTM no matter who the hell says it is.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
If I'm a Dev, I would be trying to use the FIXED features as much as possible, especially for desktops. So if I was working on a win 8.1 app, I just got nicked at the last minute. So when my customer upgrades at 12:01am I got no chance to get a patch in place. Behavior like that is Microsoft throwing their devs under the bus (of pissed off customers) for no good reason at all.
I think Apple still gives Devs a few days between releasing "Gold" to them and the package for general release. That way they have lead time to load up the App Store for release day.
The APIs were in the CTP. If nothing changed it shouldn't be as scary as the story indicates. Though it does make for good MS bashing, which is why it's here.
The devs can use Windows 8.1 preview
I think the point of the article is that developers feel likely to end up burned by any substantial differences between Windows 8.1 preview and Windows 8.1 RTM. When a difference between preview and RTM causes an application not to work, it may end up with unjustified 1-star ratings (or whatever the equivalent on Windows Store is).
If a behavior difference between preview and release causes an application that worked under preview to fail under release, the owners have to deal with increased support issues resulting from this failure. Support costs money.
Keep in mind that Windows "8.1" is really just a service pack for Windows 8. Only the marketing department ran amok and decided to bump the version number to make it look like this "rapid release" shit.
It is hilarious watching all the betaz folks getting all crazy excited over a damn service pack.
And exactly how is this shafting you?
"I got to feeling like a machine, and that's no way to feel." - Shaft
Simply put, you, the developer, are out of picture. MS, simply, don't, care, about, you, anymore. Period.
Remember Ballmer and MS only "in trouble" because their ever growing profits and income are growing quite as fast as they'd like. they aren't hurting at all
Nobody is suggesting that M$ is in any financial Difficulty. The "in trouble" is 5 quarters of PC sales down. The "in trouble" is missing the boat on massive computing shifts like mobile and cloud. The "in trouble" is its partners are walking away form Windows and announcing greater Android and Chrome products. The "in trouble" is its trying to be a services and devices company...and failing at both. The "in trouble" is those competitors it could crush with spare change or be having or being a monopoly, now have Billions of their own they are struggling to spend. The "in trouble" is suddenly both its cash cows of Windows and OS have competitive replacements at little or no cost.. The "in trouble" is its brand smells of failure. The "in trouble" is everything it had depends on its "windows" monopoly, and suddenly that is looking to be a legacy windows monopoly/Microsoft Office Insurance monopoly, and suddenly those are not not as relevant, and becoming less relevant.
Ballmer is not "in trouble" he is out the door, stabbed in the front by Bill no less, and its not because Microsoft is "in trouble" financially its just all that future computing cash looks to be flowing to other companies who aren't "in trouble"
8.1 will bring back the look and feel older people where missing
How so? I've read that 8.1 just brings back a visible button in the lower left to open the Start screen. It still has the same problem that the Start screen entirely covers up the applications you were using on the desktop, breaking subconscious continuity, unlike the Windows 7 Start menu or the Classic Shell Start menu that sits in the lower-left corner and leaves what you were working on visible.
There are some exceptions: We poor IT people who see Windows Server 2012 R2 and its bump of Hyper-V heading right for our data centers, and want to be able to start testing on it as soon as possible.
A preview release won't do, as there almost definitely will be changes between it and RTM versions.
Yes, on Windows 8, it is a lot of cosmetic changes, but Windows Server 2012 R2 has a number of new features that need to be evaluated and scoped out, testbeds created, tickets to vendors made (so they can fix incompatibilities), build documents updated, AD policies checked, tests to see if the OS will work on existing hardware, and so on.
All this OS testing has to be done and well documented before anything hits the production floor. Yes, one can sit on Windows Server 2003 and not bother trying to throw anything newer, but things change, and even though ESXi might be the mainstay of virtualization now, the deduplication and VM handoff (similar to vMotion) capabilities of the 2012 R2 Hyper-V will make it extremely attractive as a competitor. This all has to be well tested and documented.
Not doing so will eventually result in a day when the auditors come by, find obsolete versions on products, demand they be upgraded... which forces the business to go head-long to the latest OS or else. Might as well ease the pain and take time to get things tested, bugs found, and workarounds documented as early as possible.
Of course, this varies from business to business. Some companies can remain on NT 4.0 and be well off. Others have lots of software and regulatory issues, which means that not keeping updated means failing security audits.
If you hadn't noticed, MSFT requires you to create an XBOX account to play certain games and music in 8.1.
Trusting MSFT that they didn't break anything between the developer preview and RTM is like trusting that man who just walked into the Baghdad cafe with the overstuffed jacket is here for lunch even though he is shouting 'Allu akbar' right now.
This post is a public plea for someone within Microsoft to come forward with documentation on the rationale behind the recent apparent loss of all reason and common sense by the company.
Please, please come forward now!
The actions of this company make no sense to us. We are bewildered by the illogically behavior of Microsoft's direction.
Everyone knows that to ruin the useability of Windows by the utter donkey skit that is the Metro Interface makes no sense. There must be some greater reason behind these mysterious decisions that Microsoft has recently under taken.
So give us an internal memo or two! There must have been voices of intelligence within Microsoft who argued against the self-destructive path that it has recently undertaken.
Let us know why Microsoft is committing public suicide.
Metro apps written for 8.0 won't be "glitchy".
That you know of. No-one can tell since no-one can test.
Once 8.1 is released, developers can test and release their new version of apps using the new APIs.
First of all, that means mostly no apps that make use of 8.1 specific features on launch.
Secondly, it's not about the new API's, it's about ensuring that older stuff is bug free. I've never met an OS patch yet that didn't impact some subset of applications.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
As someone who has written and maintained complex commercial Windows software recently I can say that since Windows Vista the backwards compatibility story with Windows is not nearly as good as it used to be. Pretty much every new version of Windows since then has brought some serious changes in behavior.
With Vista the big breaking change was of course UAC which I'm sure everyone here knows about.
Windows 7 on the surface did not introduce a large amount of breaking changes when compared to Windows Vista. Probably the biggest breaking change was the need to use a new GUID in your application manifest if you didn't want your customers to be annoyed by the "Program Compatibility Assistant."
However, Win7 was the first version where 64 bit OS installations really took off. Depending on the application, making an existing 32 bit Windows application work on a 64 bit OS can be a lot of work. I'm not talking about recompiling to 64 bit here either. There are a fair number of breaking changes with regard to COM objects, esp. if you are mixing .NET and native code anywhere.
Win8 brings us Metro/Modern apps which most Windows developers have been ignoring because of lack of backwards compatibility with Win7 and a strict sandbox that makes it almost impossible to write anything other than silly casual games (Cut the Rope/Angry Birds) or an "app" that does nothing more than access a website which you could access with your web browser anyway ("Facebook app"/"Netflix app".)
For the people who write applications (not "apps") Windows 8 has a couple things that make life difficult as well. One of the big ones is how difficult it is to perform an automated installation of .NET 3.5. For those doing driver development, the addition of connected standby to Win8 has really complicated life as well.
All this adds up ever since Vista we have always had to make changes to our software to support a new OS release, wierdly enough binary compatibility between OS releases on Windows is actually becoming comparable to a typical Linux distribution. With the release cadence of Windows becoming quicker ongoing support and maintenance for commercial Windows software is quickly becoming as expensive as commercial Linux software support.
It's also when we found out how much legacy 16 bit shit was a point of failure in expensive applications and wouldn't run on 64 bit Win7 - I'm looking at you AutoDesk, Halliburton, and just about every "security" copy protection dongle supplier on the planet. It's no use if your expensive per seat application won't run because some IDIOT has coded something as recent as a usb driver for a evil dongle thing in 16 bit.
Those features I mentioned will affect existing apps, not just apps to be newly released. Developers would like to test to make sure the new features don't interact poorly with existing apps.
It doesn't really matter how it's done in the Android world, the point is that developers currently pay for MSDN subscriptions precisely to get access to Microsoft software for development purposes and now those perks are largely useless. It's a regression on a paid subscription, we have every right to be unhappy about it.
Windows Dev: Gives us the RTM MS or else!
MS: Or else?
Windows Dev: Or.... or... I will continue to buy into your mono-culture by not learning any portable languages or tool chains and only develop for your product to the greater glory of your holiness.
MS: I might have stepped in something, lick clean my shoe and try to hide your excitement.
Windows Dev: Yes glorious master.
MS knows EXACTLY how to treat its 3rd party developers. Like shit and the 3rd party developers will lap it up hoping that one day they will be bought out. Or *shiver* partnered. Which is code for getting it so hard up the ass your tonsils hurt.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Those features I mentioned will affect existing apps, not just apps to be newly released. Developers would like to test to make sure the new features don't interact poorly with existing apps.
Are the existing apps using the new APIs? Do they operate poorly in the Preview?
I don't think the apps call any APIs to trigger the new functionality, I believe the OS just does its thing assuming the apps will behave correctly. Considering part of the reason the original Metro split screen stuff was so limited was because Microsoft "guaranteed" that apps will only run 1/3, 2/3 or 3/3 of the screen, it's quite likely some apps won't behave correctly when resized to an arbitrary size. Running in the preview *should* be sufficient to test for this, but there's no guarantee the preview behaves exactly like RTM.
It doesn't really matter how it's done in the Android world, the point is that developers currently pay for MSDN subscriptions precisely to get access to Microsoft software for development purposes and now those perks are largely useless. It's a regression on a paid subscription, we have every right to be unhappy about it.
So it's less a matter of process - since in the Android world we do this all the time - and more a matter of regression of value in the paid subscription...well maybe it's time to cancel that subscription then.
With Microsoft cancelling TechNet and devaluing MSDN, I wouldn't be surprised if that starts happening soon.
Well that's the problem!
In the past, a PC gamer would replace their main rig every year to 18 months, and this would drive quite a bit of sales. In fact, ordinary PC users would change their computer every 2 to 3 years because the new ones were much better, and new software was more capable (and a lot more bloated) and wouldn't run well on a 2 year old machine. This started changing in the early 2000s for non-gaming PCs (my non-gaming development box I built in 2002 lasted 7 years - basically until components started to fail). For gamers this started changing towards 2010 - now there's little advantage in changing your gaming rig more than once every 3 or 4 years.
The result - while PC usage is probably still growing a little, PC *buying* is declining rapidly because a machine from 2010 is still good enough even for gamers, and a machine from 2005 is good enough for typical email/browse the web stuff. My main gaming rig now is a decent spec *laptop* with nvidia graphics and an i7, and not a hideously overweight one either like gaming laptops of 5 or 6 years ago. Since hardly anyone buys Windows retail, falling PC sales means falling Windows sales. A Windows license for a normal PC is lasting 6 years or more now as people only replace when components actually fail beyond economic repair, and most every day users are no more likely to buy a Windows upgrade any more than they will switch to Linux. A Windows license on a gaming PC is lasting at least 3 years now, possibly more - when in the past, Microsoft could rely on gamers buying a new Windows license every year to 18 months and non-gamers every 2 to 3 years.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
and 1 core per virus scanner
and 1 core per IE tab
and 1 core per zynga game
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.