Where does this ludicrous claim that Windows RT doesn't support sideloading keep coming from on here? I could vaguely understand it amongst the luddite community, but I expect better of Slashdot.
I've got a Surface RT (through work) and it has three sideloaded apps on it right now: one that I'm developing, one that somebody else developed and offered me for pre-release testing, and one that can be simply downloaded off of XDA-Developers and which completely breaks the restrictions on what you are allowed to do with a "Windows Store" app (it allows executing unsigned command-line apps on the desktop, after recompiling them for ARM).
Instructions for how to sideload using a developer account are published on Microsoft.com, and the account is free.
He specifies a 1-pound device. There are only a few tablets which actually meet that bar + have the requested battery life even in the forecast, and they do it by slimming way down on stuff in the case.
Win8 is pretty good as a tablet OS, certainly far better than any previous Windows version. However, if you don't want Win8, put something else on there. It's an x86 (Intel Atom, specifically) CPU with a couple gigs of RAM and enough storage for a multi-boot setup if you really want to. It may have SecureBoot but, per Microsoft's requirements for implementing SecureBoot for Windows 8 x86/x64, it will be possible to disable the feature and/or add your own signing keys. Lenovo hardware tends to be well supported by Linux...
Self-reply, but I also wanted to mention their joysticks. The Sidewinder joystick family was great, arguably among the best, for years. I still have a gen1 Force Feedback Pro around somewhere... but it requires a gameport connection none of my PCs have had for years.
Ah... odd, my Intellimouse Explorer from 2001 or so is only just now finally beginning to die. It still tracks and all, but the button debouncing is unreliable now which has an annoying tendency to turn every click into a double or triple click. That only started in the last few months though. A few others I've owned developed cord problems (too much stress over the years on the point where the cord enters the mouse, usually, which is mostly user error in how I treated them). Nonetheless, none of them did I not get my money's worth out of.
Have you tried using the Surface keyboards? They aren't actually undersized, at least not in terms of key placement. You can code on them from muscle memory; the meta keys are where they should be and they work fine for touch-typing. It's part of why MS went for the screen size and form-factor that they did; at the widescreen aspect ratio, it's *just* wide enough to squeeze a full keyboard in if you don't need any of the traditional laptop bevel/rim (because the keys are on the cover). Sure, the keys on the edges feel a little cramped (the ` ~ key in particular is very skinny, and on the right side the \ | key is only normal width) but the right Shift doesn't actually need to be 3x the width of a normal key...
With that said, there are limits. The number keys are crammed in a corner, and the Home/End/Ins/Del keys are overlaid on F9-F12 (you have to hold the Fn key to access any of the F1-12 keys, actually), but otherwise it's a very nearly full keyboard that you really can type on. As for the colors, they come in black...
The most expensive Surface RT model is $700 USD. The base model is $500 (both prices rounded up). Unless you're quoting prices in some other currency (in which case, specify it - this is a US-hosted site and most people will assume US dollars if you use the $ symbol) or are talking about the Surface Pro (which has nothing to do with the article, and the comment you responded to explicitly called out ARM processors meaning the RT model), you're talking out your ass.
I can tell you know a *lot* about these things. You were able to get within a factor of 2 of the actual price!
None of the prior-generation x86 Windows tablets ran an OS that was really touch-friendly. The software, even more so than the hardware, crippled them as products. Additionally, the hardware has come a long, long way. Tablet PCs used to come in two form factors:
1. Badly overpriced/underpowered laptops with funky screen hinges, styluses, and mediocre battery life, 2. Very thick and heavy (for a handheld device) "slates" with high prices, poor performance, no easy way to use them like a laptop, probably a stylus, and mediocre battery life.
#1 achieved some popularity in workplaces and university campuses, where the ability to take notes and documents on a reasonably portable device that could also run "real programs" was useful, but they were never a commercial hit and until software like OneNote started appearing, there wasn't a lot that took advantage of their unique functionality. For the same price, you could get a more portable and durable ultra-light laptop, or a more powerful and durable conventional laptop, or a vastly more powerful non-tablet laptop. For a lower price, you could get a more powerful and durable small laptop, or a much more powerful (though less portable) typical laptop. With tablet functionality imposing such a hit on the performance and cost, and the software not there to back it up, of course they weren't popular.
#2 was even worse off. Although slightly more durable (no easy way to cover the screen though, unlike the convertible clamshell designs) and more portable (no keyboard, etc.), they were worse off for software (some programs just can't be used without a keyboard, and the on-screen keyboards take up too many pixels and are a pain to use) and were so niche that they had very little to drive the price down (convertible tablets had a reasonable amount of competition, with most major laptop vendors offering at least one model at a time in the last decade or so). Combined with their crippling inability to be used as a typical laptop (no built-in stand, no convenient way to offer peripherals), of course they sold terribly.
The world is different now. The introduction of cheap and accurate (if not precise) capacitive touchscreens has made multi-touch a far more common tablet interface than stylus digitizers. Low-power CPUs and high-capacity batteries have more than doubled tablet battery life, even as the devices have gotten thinner and lighter yet also more powerful. Relatively cheap and widely available solid-state storage has drastically improved performance, weight, battery life, and durability of modern tablets compared to their predecessors. The earmarks of the old tablet form factors are all but gone, even as the general classes of form factor - convertible and slate - still exist. Those lines are blurring now too, though.
On the software side, multi-touch has made interacting with a tablet much easier and more practical. Largely as a result of the rise in touch-driven phones, users are much more familiar with interacting with a computing device via touch - it is, after all, a natural paradigm, and one which the old tablets typically didn't support well if at all - and developers are much more familiar with writing touch-driven software. The hard-learned lessons of what makes a touch interface usable are finally being embraced by OS and app developers alike. Similarly, the importance of low battery utilization in apps has finally penetrated, and developers are learning to code appropriately. Tablet hardware (at a reasonable price) is finally capable of supporting "real" software - full web browsers and office suites, high-quality games and powerful utility apps, slick media players (and storage for their media) and tools for photographers and artists - in form factors that were before barely usable for handwritten notes and barely capable of running anything else. To find and buy all that lovely new software, built-in app stores are now common. To the user they provide convenience and at least some safety against malware, to the developer they offer di
Um... both the Touch Cover and Type Cover have mouse buttons. On the Touch cover, as you'd expect, they don't actually physically move... but they're there, right below the trackpad, where you'd expect them.
Aside from the "because it's there" factor, there are two other reasons that come to mind.
1) The same reason many people multi-boot Windows and Linux on the PC: they like being able to run Linux, but they need some MS software. From the software side, the best feature of the Surface is probably that it comes with Office. Even among users of Linux at home, that's a tempting advantage for a mobile device that can be used to exchange documents with people at work. Being able to switch back and forth would be great.
2) "Crippled by design" is accurate, but that doesn't automatically make the hardware itself terrible. The iPad is similarly crippled, but its high-resolution display is nonetheless a tempting feature. The Surface is one of the most rugged mainstream tablets (look up "Surface run over by car" if you're curious), probably the best hardware/price for a 10" widescreen tablet, and the keyboard+trackpad covers are greatly appealing to some people. For people who want the hardware features of the Surface, but want to run some other OS on it, the issue is very relevant.
This isn't actually *entirely* true. Although when somebody says "Microsoft OSes" or even "Microsoft Windows", the usual thoughts are DOS (and 16-bit Windows), Win9x, and Windows NT (talking families of OS here, of course). However, not all of those have been commodity hardware. For example, there are number of devices with an NT family OS, such as "Embedded XP", which are not meant to be general-purpose computers. Additionally, there are other MS OSes, most notably the CE family, which were never really intended for commodity hardware in the sense you're implying. True, the early CE devices were marketed as "Pocket PC" and a few of the later-generation Windows Mobile devices have had Linux (typically Android) hacked onto them, but it always required considerable hacking to run a third-party OS. The devices weren't intended for it.
Commodity PCs came the other direction. They were designed from the beginning (Apple aside) to run a variety of operating systems. While they are slowly moving away from that, it is not a valid comparison to look at the Surface RT (which, despite resembling a commodity computing device in several ways and running an NT-family OS, has no lineage of being commodity hardware) and complain that you should be able to put Linux on "just like you always have" on actual commodity PC hardware.
Agreed, the DMCA thing is a complete red herring. Nobody is talking about legal difficulties with unlocking the Surface bootloader, they're talking about technical difficulties. These difficulties may not be insurmountable - after all, the PS3 used something that is, in many ways, comparable in terms of lockdown to UEFI Secure Boot - but as with the PS3, it'll be hard and will rely on finding some implementation bugs. Well, that or some serious revelations in applied cryptography...
MS made (and still makes) some of the first and best mass-market ergonomic keyboards. It was apparently actually a response to an internal problem; too many of their employees were getting RSIs and the best solution was to manufacture their own improved keyboard design. MS also makes some of the best general-purpose mice (1000 DPI, 5 buttons, excellent optical sensor, cheap) and laptop mice. They have competition in all those areas, and some of their more exotic designs haven't fared too well, but the mainstream Intellimouse designs have gone through something like eight generations of steady sales. I don't know how well they've done on the webcam market, though.
Also, since we're talking hardware, the Xbox and Xbox 360, while very expensive to make and taking a long time to recoup that investment, are certainly products which "did not tank". The Kinect has sold fantastically, although the gen1 model is feeling a little gen1 these days.
As for Surface... that remains to be seen. The lockdown on the UEFI and bootloader is a pain (personally) and will cost them a few sales (some portion of Slashdotters who would otherwise buy a widescreen tablet with a really nice cover/keyboard/trackpad accessory). Beyond that... it remains to be seen. The Surface Pro is even more a mystery in terms of market response.
It actually is possible, though it's rather complex to do manually. It's used automatically in some places, for example Win7's Virtual XP Mode will appear to run XP programs on the Win7 desktop by remoting them from the VM. It can also be manually configured (at least on Server, and possibly on Client): http://www.techotopia.com/index.php/Configuring_RemoteApps_on_Windows_Server_2008
Vim and gvim are available for Win32 (native port, I believe using MinGW), Win32-via-Cygwin, and POSIX on NT (SUA via Interix; the [g]vim package is available from http://suacommunity.com/ or any other Interix package repo). Kwrite and KATE (KDE's text/code editor programs, with KATE being mostly a multi-doc capable Kwrite) are available for Windows (along with the rest of KDE4) from http://windows.kde.org./ I'm sure there are many others.
For the record, this is possible with menus too. [Alt] always opens the menu bar (it's the best way to do so on apps which now hide the menu bar by default, in fact), after which you can hit the letter corresponding to the menu that you want, followed by the letter for the option, etc. It's basically exactly the same thing as you're doing right now, in fact, and some of those key sequences may even not have changed (may Ribbon tabs using the same shortcut keys as the menus they replaced).
You mean the self-signed certificate that most apps will come with? That's auto-generated by Visual Studio. There's no way to revoke it (as I said, self-signed) and you don't have to use the automatic cert anyhow. Most Windows developers can figure out how to generate their own signing certs and use them, and the tools (makecert and signtool) come with VS.
How is it a "big deal"? Yeah, it's (intentionally) not something people are going to stumble over by accident, but it takes about as much time as getting to the relevant setting in Android, assuming you aren't a ridiculously slow typist. The steps aren't hard to follow.
It's a single command, which pops up a dialog box asking for your Microsoft Account (f.k.a. Windows Live ID) username and password. You don't have to do any kind of "online registration" except then you created the account, and most people will already have one (Hotmail account, Outlook.com account, Xbox Live account, etc. - all the same thing). Renewing is just typing the command again and providing the same password...
I agree in general. However, there's something I feel should be pointed out:
You refer to Search as though it's an option of last resort. That's backwards. Ever since Vista came out (6 years ago), the Start search has been *the* method you should use to launch programs or access settings. It's faster by far than navigating the Start menu or navigating the Control Panel, it can be done entirely with the keyboard ([Windows] + a few letters of the program name you want + [Enter]), it's practically instant on the search, it can find things even if you're not sure exactly what they're called (typing "dpi" will get you the relevant control panel view, even though the control panel in question is called "Display"), it filters as you type, and it will show both "The Interface Formerly Known As Metro" and Desktop apps/settings.
My biggest UI gripe with Win8, by far, is the way they divided the Start search results. It now takes a few more keystrokes to launch something from Settings, which is (IMO) a rather large regression. I don't mind the split UI, I actually rather like the Charms bar, and making Start be full screen doesn't bug me at all. Making me use a bunch of extra clicks to launch stuff from the keyboard is just a pain in the ass, though. You can still launch things by typing their binary name (for example, "secpol.msc" and "mmc.exe" and "appwiz.cpl") but that removes a number of the advantages listed above...
... why would you need Start8? The Start screen is perfectly capable of launching desktop apps such as VLC. The goal of this Kickstarter is to break a Windows Store (using The Interface Formerly Known As Metro) version, including porting to Windows RT.
You still could; the Kickstarter is still running. You can probably find a donation link on the VLC site in general too, although that wouldn't necessarily go towards the specific goal of a Windows Store version.
1. Admin Powershell prompt (easily available even on Windows RT). 2. Show-WindowsDeveloperLicenceRegistration (yes, this is a PS command. Try "show-wi" + [TAB]) 3. Enter Windows Live credentials. They don't have to be the ones you sign in with (in fact, you don't have to be using Windows Live signin at all), and the don't have to be associated with a developer account in any way. In fact, they can be for a throw-away account. 4. Download an APPX package and run its install script. Congrats, sideloading achieved.
The status of the "developer registration" will need to be periodically refreshed, as by default it expires after a month. However, it costs nothing except a trivial amount of time, and you can refresh it repeatedly.
Both Amazon and Google led me around by the nose for a month or two (Amazon was the worse) during the interview process, constantly coming up with new people I had to interview with, most of whom were completely unrelated to the job I was trying to get. Facebook, incidentally, was much more straightforward. I ended up not going to any of the big companies, though.
And all cellphones (literally every one I've ever owned or examined) have speakerphone. They stopped listing it as a feature even for most "feature phones" a few years ago, because it's like advertising a car as possessing adjustable seats or automatic dome lights or some such. Not actually required, but you won't see anything that doesn't have it.
Slashdot Mirror
Where does this ludicrous claim that Windows RT doesn't support sideloading keep coming from on here? I could vaguely understand it amongst the luddite community, but I expect better of Slashdot.
I've got a Surface RT (through work) and it has three sideloaded apps on it right now: one that I'm developing, one that somebody else developed and offered me for pre-release testing, and one that can be simply downloaded off of XDA-Developers and which completely breaks the restrictions on what you are allowed to do with a "Windows Store" app (it allows executing unsigned command-line apps on the desktop, after recompiling them for ARM).
Instructions for how to sideload using a developer account are published on Microsoft.com, and the account is free.
He specifies a 1-pound device. There are only a few tablets which actually meet that bar + have the requested battery life even in the forecast, and they do it by slimming way down on stuff in the case.
Win8 is pretty good as a tablet OS, certainly far better than any previous Windows version. However, if you don't want Win8, put something else on there. It's an x86 (Intel Atom, specifically) CPU with a couple gigs of RAM and enough storage for a multi-boot setup if you really want to. It may have SecureBoot but, per Microsoft's requirements for implementing SecureBoot for Windows 8 x86/x64, it will be possible to disable the feature and/or add your own signing keys. Lenovo hardware tends to be well supported by Linux...
Self-reply, but I also wanted to mention their joysticks. The Sidewinder joystick family was great, arguably among the best, for years. I still have a gen1 Force Feedback Pro around somewhere... but it requires a gameport connection none of my PCs have had for years.
Ah... odd, my Intellimouse Explorer from 2001 or so is only just now finally beginning to die. It still tracks and all, but the button debouncing is unreliable now which has an annoying tendency to turn every click into a double or triple click. That only started in the last few months though. A few others I've owned developed cord problems (too much stress over the years on the point where the cord enters the mouse, usually, which is mostly user error in how I treated them). Nonetheless, none of them did I not get my money's worth out of.
Have you tried using the Surface keyboards? They aren't actually undersized, at least not in terms of key placement. You can code on them from muscle memory; the meta keys are where they should be and they work fine for touch-typing. It's part of why MS went for the screen size and form-factor that they did; at the widescreen aspect ratio, it's *just* wide enough to squeeze a full keyboard in if you don't need any of the traditional laptop bevel/rim (because the keys are on the cover). Sure, the keys on the edges feel a little cramped (the ` ~ key in particular is very skinny, and on the right side the \ | key is only normal width) but the right Shift doesn't actually need to be 3x the width of a normal key...
With that said, there are limits. The number keys are crammed in a corner, and the Home/End/Ins/Del keys are overlaid on F9-F12 (you have to hold the Fn key to access any of the F1-12 keys, actually), but otherwise it's a very nearly full keyboard that you really can type on. As for the colors, they come in black...
The most expensive Surface RT model is $700 USD. The base model is $500 (both prices rounded up). Unless you're quoting prices in some other currency (in which case, specify it - this is a US-hosted site and most people will assume US dollars if you use the $ symbol) or are talking about the Surface Pro (which has nothing to do with the article, and the comment you responded to explicitly called out ARM processors meaning the RT model), you're talking out your ass.
I can tell you know a *lot* about these things. You were able to get within a factor of 2 of the actual price!
None of the prior-generation x86 Windows tablets ran an OS that was really touch-friendly. The software, even more so than the hardware, crippled them as products. Additionally, the hardware has come a long, long way. Tablet PCs used to come in two form factors:
1. Badly overpriced/underpowered laptops with funky screen hinges, styluses, and mediocre battery life,
2. Very thick and heavy (for a handheld device) "slates" with high prices, poor performance, no easy way to use them like a laptop, probably a stylus, and mediocre battery life.
#1 achieved some popularity in workplaces and university campuses, where the ability to take notes and documents on a reasonably portable device that could also run "real programs" was useful, but they were never a commercial hit and until software like OneNote started appearing, there wasn't a lot that took advantage of their unique functionality. For the same price, you could get a more portable and durable ultra-light laptop, or a more powerful and durable conventional laptop, or a vastly more powerful non-tablet laptop. For a lower price, you could get a more powerful and durable small laptop, or a much more powerful (though less portable) typical laptop. With tablet functionality imposing such a hit on the performance and cost, and the software not there to back it up, of course they weren't popular.
#2 was even worse off. Although slightly more durable (no easy way to cover the screen though, unlike the convertible clamshell designs) and more portable (no keyboard, etc.), they were worse off for software (some programs just can't be used without a keyboard, and the on-screen keyboards take up too many pixels and are a pain to use) and were so niche that they had very little to drive the price down (convertible tablets had a reasonable amount of competition, with most major laptop vendors offering at least one model at a time in the last decade or so). Combined with their crippling inability to be used as a typical laptop (no built-in stand, no convenient way to offer peripherals), of course they sold terribly.
The world is different now. The introduction of cheap and accurate (if not precise) capacitive touchscreens has made multi-touch a far more common tablet interface than stylus digitizers. Low-power CPUs and high-capacity batteries have more than doubled tablet battery life, even as the devices have gotten thinner and lighter yet also more powerful. Relatively cheap and widely available solid-state storage has drastically improved performance, weight, battery life, and durability of modern tablets compared to their predecessors. The earmarks of the old tablet form factors are all but gone, even as the general classes of form factor - convertible and slate - still exist. Those lines are blurring now too, though.
On the software side, multi-touch has made interacting with a tablet much easier and more practical. Largely as a result of the rise in touch-driven phones, users are much more familiar with interacting with a computing device via touch - it is, after all, a natural paradigm, and one which the old tablets typically didn't support well if at all - and developers are much more familiar with writing touch-driven software. The hard-learned lessons of what makes a touch interface usable are finally being embraced by OS and app developers alike. Similarly, the importance of low battery utilization in apps has finally penetrated, and developers are learning to code appropriately. Tablet hardware (at a reasonable price) is finally capable of supporting "real" software - full web browsers and office suites, high-quality games and powerful utility apps, slick media players (and storage for their media) and tools for photographers and artists - in form factors that were before barely usable for handwritten notes and barely capable of running anything else. To find and buy all that lovely new software, built-in app stores are now common. To the user they provide convenience and at least some safety against malware, to the developer they offer di
Um... both the Touch Cover and Type Cover have mouse buttons. On the Touch cover, as you'd expect, they don't actually physically move... but they're there, right below the trackpad, where you'd expect them.
Aside from the "because it's there" factor, there are two other reasons that come to mind.
1) The same reason many people multi-boot Windows and Linux on the PC: they like being able to run Linux, but they need some MS software. From the software side, the best feature of the Surface is probably that it comes with Office. Even among users of Linux at home, that's a tempting advantage for a mobile device that can be used to exchange documents with people at work. Being able to switch back and forth would be great.
2) "Crippled by design" is accurate, but that doesn't automatically make the hardware itself terrible. The iPad is similarly crippled, but its high-resolution display is nonetheless a tempting feature. The Surface is one of the most rugged mainstream tablets (look up "Surface run over by car" if you're curious), probably the best hardware/price for a 10" widescreen tablet, and the keyboard+trackpad covers are greatly appealing to some people. For people who want the hardware features of the Surface, but want to run some other OS on it, the issue is very relevant.
This isn't actually *entirely* true. Although when somebody says "Microsoft OSes" or even "Microsoft Windows", the usual thoughts are DOS (and 16-bit Windows), Win9x, and Windows NT (talking families of OS here, of course). However, not all of those have been commodity hardware. For example, there are number of devices with an NT family OS, such as "Embedded XP", which are not meant to be general-purpose computers. Additionally, there are other MS OSes, most notably the CE family, which were never really intended for commodity hardware in the sense you're implying. True, the early CE devices were marketed as "Pocket PC" and a few of the later-generation Windows Mobile devices have had Linux (typically Android) hacked onto them, but it always required considerable hacking to run a third-party OS. The devices weren't intended for it.
Commodity PCs came the other direction. They were designed from the beginning (Apple aside) to run a variety of operating systems. While they are slowly moving away from that, it is not a valid comparison to look at the Surface RT (which, despite resembling a commodity computing device in several ways and running an NT-family OS, has no lineage of being commodity hardware) and complain that you should be able to put Linux on "just like you always have" on actual commodity PC hardware.
Agreed, the DMCA thing is a complete red herring. Nobody is talking about legal difficulties with unlocking the Surface bootloader, they're talking about technical difficulties. These difficulties may not be insurmountable - after all, the PS3 used something that is, in many ways, comparable in terms of lockdown to UEFI Secure Boot - but as with the PS3, it'll be hard and will rely on finding some implementation bugs. Well, that or some serious revelations in applied cryptography...
MS made (and still makes) some of the first and best mass-market ergonomic keyboards. It was apparently actually a response to an internal problem; too many of their employees were getting RSIs and the best solution was to manufacture their own improved keyboard design. MS also makes some of the best general-purpose mice (1000 DPI, 5 buttons, excellent optical sensor, cheap) and laptop mice. They have competition in all those areas, and some of their more exotic designs haven't fared too well, but the mainstream Intellimouse designs have gone through something like eight generations of steady sales. I don't know how well they've done on the webcam market, though.
Also, since we're talking hardware, the Xbox and Xbox 360, while very expensive to make and taking a long time to recoup that investment, are certainly products which "did not tank". The Kinect has sold fantastically, although the gen1 model is feeling a little gen1 these days.
As for Surface... that remains to be seen. The lockdown on the UEFI and bootloader is a pain (personally) and will cost them a few sales (some portion of Slashdotters who would otherwise buy a widescreen tablet with a really nice cover/keyboard/trackpad accessory). Beyond that... it remains to be seen. The Surface Pro is even more a mystery in terms of market response.
It actually is possible, though it's rather complex to do manually. It's used automatically in some places, for example Win7's Virtual XP Mode will appear to run XP programs on the Win7 desktop by remoting them from the VM. It can also be manually configured (at least on Server, and possibly on Client): http://www.techotopia.com/index.php/Configuring_RemoteApps_on_Windows_Server_2008
Vim and gvim are available for Win32 (native port, I believe using MinGW), Win32-via-Cygwin, and POSIX on NT (SUA via Interix; the [g]vim package is available from http://suacommunity.com/ or any other Interix package repo). Kwrite and KATE (KDE's text/code editor programs, with KATE being mostly a multi-doc capable Kwrite) are available for Windows (along with the rest of KDE4) from http://windows.kde.org./ I'm sure there are many others.
For the record, this is possible with menus too. [Alt] always opens the menu bar (it's the best way to do so on apps which now hide the menu bar by default, in fact), after which you can hit the letter corresponding to the menu that you want, followed by the letter for the option, etc. It's basically exactly the same thing as you're doing right now, in fact, and some of those key sequences may even not have changed (may Ribbon tabs using the same shortcut keys as the menus they replaced).
You mean the self-signed certificate that most apps will come with? That's auto-generated by Visual Studio. There's no way to revoke it (as I said, self-signed) and you don't have to use the automatic cert anyhow. Most Windows developers can figure out how to generate their own signing certs and use them, and the tools (makecert and signtool) come with VS.
How is it a "big deal"? Yeah, it's (intentionally) not something people are going to stumble over by accident, but it takes about as much time as getting to the relevant setting in Android, assuming you aren't a ridiculously slow typist. The steps aren't hard to follow.
It's a single command, which pops up a dialog box asking for your Microsoft Account (f.k.a. Windows Live ID) username and password. You don't have to do any kind of "online registration" except then you created the account, and most people will already have one (Hotmail account, Outlook.com account, Xbox Live account, etc. - all the same thing). Renewing is just typing the command again and providing the same password...
I agree in general. However, there's something I feel should be pointed out:
You refer to Search as though it's an option of last resort. That's backwards. Ever since Vista came out (6 years ago), the Start search has been *the* method you should use to launch programs or access settings. It's faster by far than navigating the Start menu or navigating the Control Panel, it can be done entirely with the keyboard ([Windows] + a few letters of the program name you want + [Enter]), it's practically instant on the search, it can find things even if you're not sure exactly what they're called (typing "dpi" will get you the relevant control panel view, even though the control panel in question is called "Display"), it filters as you type, and it will show both "The Interface Formerly Known As Metro" and Desktop apps/settings.
My biggest UI gripe with Win8, by far, is the way they divided the Start search results. It now takes a few more keystrokes to launch something from Settings, which is (IMO) a rather large regression. I don't mind the split UI, I actually rather like the Charms bar, and making Start be full screen doesn't bug me at all. Making me use a bunch of extra clicks to launch stuff from the keyboard is just a pain in the ass, though. You can still launch things by typing their binary name (for example, "secpol.msc" and "mmc.exe" and "appwiz.cpl") but that removes a number of the advantages listed above...
... why would you need Start8? The Start screen is perfectly capable of launching desktop apps such as VLC. The goal of this Kickstarter is to break a Windows Store (using The Interface Formerly Known As Metro) version, including porting to Windows RT.
You still could; the Kickstarter is still running. You can probably find a donation link on the VLC site in general too, although that wouldn't necessarily go towards the specific goal of a Windows Store version.
That is incorrect. Nice FUD, though.
1. Admin Powershell prompt (easily available even on Windows RT).
2. Show-WindowsDeveloperLicenceRegistration (yes, this is a PS command. Try "show-wi" + [TAB])
3. Enter Windows Live credentials. They don't have to be the ones you sign in with (in fact, you don't have to be using Windows Live signin at all), and the don't have to be associated with a developer account in any way. In fact, they can be for a throw-away account.
4. Download an APPX package and run its install script. Congrats, sideloading achieved.
The status of the "developer registration" will need to be periodically refreshed, as by default it expires after a month. However, it costs nothing except a trivial amount of time, and you can refresh it repeatedly.
Both Amazon and Google led me around by the nose for a month or two (Amazon was the worse) during the interview process, constantly coming up with new people I had to interview with, most of whom were completely unrelated to the job I was trying to get. Facebook, incidentally, was much more straightforward. I ended up not going to any of the big companies, though.
And all cellphones (literally every one I've ever owned or examined) have speakerphone. They stopped listing it as a feature even for most "feature phones" a few years ago, because it's like advertising a car as possessing adjustable seats or automatic dome lights or some such. Not actually required, but you won't see anything that doesn't have it.