Two links to Marco Arment within a few days? Well, if you make good points: “Many Windows developers were upset that iOS development had to be done on a Mac, but it didn’t hurt Apple: the most important developers for iOS apps were already using Macs. But the success of Windows 8 and Windows Phone in the consumer space requires many of those consumer-product developers, now entrenched in the Apple ecosystem, to care so much about Windows development that they want to use Windows to develop for it. How likely is that?” As usual a bit too Apple-centric (he implies – as explicit as possible while still being implicit – that only iOS developers can create great applications), but his point still stands. Judging by the abysmal quality of Microsoft’s own Metro applications (Mail, Video, Music, People, IE10, etc.), even Microsoft doesn’t know how to create great Metro applications.
“Judging by the abysmal quality of Microsoft’s own Metro applications (Mail, Video, Music, People, IE10, etc.), even Microsoft doesn’t know how to create great Metro applications”
I get slammed every time I say that, but its really one of the biggest things that irks me the most. Microsoft prancing around trying to tell us how great Metro is, yet their own apps that they ship with preview builds such as Consumer Preview, aren’t anything special that would warrent people to get remotely excited.
In fact, they are terrible. They’d be a key reason NOT to want to use Windows 8, buy a Windows Phone, or even develop for their ecosystem. Their own core apps far worse then their ‘classic’ Windows counter parts. Upgrade to Windows 8 with metro? nah its more like a downgrade if thats the best they can come up with.
Sure Microsoft can upgrade their mail, pictures etc Metor apps for release, or even afterwards, but they’ve got to create apps that are better then existing programs (or even webpages!) that people are currently using. If they can’t do that, its not an upgrade for users or developers.
First of all, why are everyone making judgement on unfinished and early preview apps?
Secondly, these apps are SIMPLIFIED. They are meant to be easy to use even for people with no computer experience. This is new direction for Microsoft that we should applaud not ridicule.
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/03/windows-8-mai…
I’m sorry but the “more accessible because it’s simpler” argument doesn’t work. People mainly learns when there is a need for it, and accessibility comes second as a plus.
Facebook is a prime example of of accessibility vs need and Apple does a great job in promoting their products as needed to belong to a social status.
But for Microsoft and Windows 8, the argument is pretty much.. what is the need for it? what does it change? why should people care?
I’m sorry, but the reality is that consumers hardly get to make the choice. If technology truly sold on satisfaction alone then there’s no way in hell that Android would dominate.
The pitch has always been to OEMs. DESPITE Microsoft launching their own Surface tablet, Windows 8 still represents an OEMs best bet to take on the iPad.
Android has failed OEMs spectacularly. Performance isn’t there, patents are a legal minefield, app quality isn’t there, the platform is wholly unsuited for tablets. Even on ICS many objective people can still concede it is largely unready.
In contrast, Windows 8 offers stability. It is THE only OS seen as a viable competitor to iOS in the tablet space.
Android won the battle of entrenchment in the Mobile Phone space, but in Tablets it hasn’t happened yet. This is where Microsoft will capitalize. Windows 8 will see a spectacular success.
Why will Windows 8 be such a success? It breaks the chicken and egg scenario, and its quite genius.
Developers wont develop for a platform without users, users wont flock to a platform without developers.
Microsoft will put Windows 8 on PCs too, giving them an immense install base (Hundreds of millions), which will entice ANY SANE DEVELOPER.
This is why Windows 8 can, and largely will work for Microsoft. OEMs are enthusiastic about it, just look at Computex. Dozens of devices announced.
I’m sorry, but you are wrong about everything.
There is no alternative to Windows for OEMs looking for the “anti-apple”.
Windows 8 absolutely dominated Computex. When the hell did they mention Android? I seriously heard of like two devices announced. It is beyond clear the OEMs are looking to get the fuck off of Android as soon as they can. Some PC OEMs have completely abandoned it, others can’t wait to do so.
It by and large is not a question of “What does Windows 8 bring to the table?” (The answer being a no compromise solution across the PC, Tablet, and Phone), since strong OEM support is a certainty.
If I’m wrong on anything I’ve said I certainly would love to hear why.
FYI: This year’s Android tablets have been already announced at CES and MWC.
You are getting this from Computex?
You obviously mean Dell, that abandoned WP7 as well. They did abandon the phone and tablet market altogether.
Which number in the single digits, after you factor out the references, concepts, and obvious vaporware.
Besides ASUS, Samsung, and maybe Toshiba no one is really having any luck or even showing enthusiasm.
Yes, CES and Computex together showed a vast array of Windows 8 devices.
Yes, the same Dell which is incredibly bullish on Windows 8 and sees it as their come back kid.
If you disregard the platform demos(from TI, Qualcomm and similar), the difference in product announcements is not big.
First you are biased towards Microsoft. Second you are biased against Android.
Android is so popular because it is a good and free mobile OS. The patent problems are a temporary problem from competitors that can’t compete. This popularity brings apps to phones and tablets.
Microsoft used to have all the apps with win32 on x86. Now they start on the same playing field as Apple and Android. WP7.5 has not taken off like they wanted. Why would you choose W8 over iPad and Android?
I could say the exact opposite about you, or anyone else I’d argue against. Doesn’t make it true. People can have preference without letting it cloud judgement.
I have no problem criticizing Microsoft when they do indefensibly stupid things, but this entire article is a concern troll.
That’s quite the fairy tale. Android is popular because Verizon and the rest of the world needed an anti-iPhone. Windows Mobile was floundering, there was nothing to step up to the plate.
Google’s Android represented the perfect storm. Complete and utter carrier and OEM capitulation. They had free reign to do anything they wanted. They could modify it until it slowed even the most expensive quad core monsters, or they could shove it on 500MHz crap devices with 2 inch screens.
The patent problem is a big problem, one that threatens the existence of Android. Microsoft is set to make a BILLION (with a b) dollars off of Android this year alone. You think OEMs like paying royalties? Fuck, for that they’d just license Windows since the advantage of “free” Android is negated by licensing costs.
There’s one too many players here. The new question is Windows 8 vs iPad. Android completely failed on Tablets. Its no longer in the picture. OEMs are moving on.
Yes, this must be why Windows phones give you so much better hardware at the same price point, right? Android patent licensing costs bringing the price up beyond a WP7 license.
Fact of the matter, if you care, is that unsubsidised Android phones tend to have far better hardware to offer for the money, and the manufacturers seem to profit a lot more.
OEMs like profits. They have to pay licenses for all sorts of things no matter what.
Its funny you say this, read below:
Profit more? No. OEMs make higher margins off of Windows Phones than Android Phones. Windows Phones retail for the same asking price as a typical Android phone, but since the OS is optimized for resource usage, they can use lower end parts.
It costs them less to build a Windows Phone than it does to build an Android Phone. All that without even factoring in legal costs and licensing fees.
Your comment made zero sense.
And then, after factoring in legal cost and licensing fees, the Windows phone becomes much more expensive. It’s less profitable as it doesn’t sell.
You’re restating my point as if it were your own, ignoring its implications, then telling me I don’t make sense. You’re an idiot.
There are no licensing and legal costs as there are in Android. This is where you fail to realize the distinction.
Microsoft indemnifies OEMs.
Basically:
Cost of Windows Phone 7 license is less than getting Android for free and having to pay licenses and patent royalties plus inevitable legal bills.
Incorrect. WP7 licenses cost money. From http://www.gottabemobile.com/2012/01/20/zte-reveals-windows-phone-l…
Oh, and those $30 are more than anyone pays Microsoft in extortion money and patent fees. At least twice as much as the speculated fee Samsung pays Microsoft.
Samsung makes money making Android phones. No one makes money making Windows phones.
That is just feeds paid to Microsoft (one patent holder). There can be many more. Plus the legal costs (while not an upfront cost) are surely biting HTC, Samsung, etc. in the ass. That drives down profit per handset.
Android is a legal minefield, and everyone is looking to get a piece of the pie. Google does nothing,ziltch, nada to defend OEMs. Microsoft does, and its a cost built into the license.
So given all of that, it is significantly cheaper to license a Windows Phone than Android. That’s before even taking into account that you can sell a high end Windows Phone using less expensive parts. On Android you need to throw 40 cores at the phone so people care.
Blah blah blah. You’re making this up. Give me some data, not just your nauseating fanboi fantasies. There’s nothing whatsoever to suggest legal costs for using Android are approaching the cost of a WP7 license, and nothing to suggest WP7 is more profitable for anyone.
That’s the fact of the situation. Now go away.
You keep mentioning that but a lot of people choose Android over iPhone or Winphone. I wanted something like iPhone but I don’t like how it works. So I waited 3 years before I could buy a good Android phone.
I think oems want control and would like to own the platform. That way they can stand out from the crowd and even make money with their platform. This is why I am baffled by Nokia’s choices.
There are too many ecosystems yes. But I believe webapps are the future. That way there can’t be too many players. Let there be hundreds.
I really, really doubt a majority of Android owners have any kind of brand loyalty. Only because Android as a brand isnt’ really strong enough. There’s Galaxy S, there’s HTC Sense/One, there’s Droid, and then there’s pretty much everything else.
So I think its great you truly love Android, I just think you’re in the minority.
Note that the same thing can be said about Windows on the desktop. How many people do you know (besides me :-)) who actively give a damn about Windows? It is installed by default, it is pushed the hardest at the point of sale. That’s why it dominates. Android is in a very comparable situation to Windows.
Nokia is actually probably making decent money off of Lumia and Windows Phone when viewed in isolation. They have a majority of share among Windows Phone OEMs.
Thanks to WP7 allowing for lower specs than Android does to work well, Lumias can also be made cheaper so their profit margins are actually pretty good.
Android OEMs are working with razor thin margins, and Android litigation costs (plus engineering costs of making up for Android’s many shortfalls) dont help.
Nokia innovates on hardware. Carl Zeiss optics, Polycarbonate unibody design, ClearBlack display.
Plus they have a number of WP7 exclusive titles. Beyond their own impressive suite of apps.
Samsung, HTC, et all could do the same. They chose not to because it would take more than marginal effort.
The next HTML spec is slated for like 2022. People are NOT going to fucking wait that long.
The standards process is this slow, tedious thing. Talk about red tape.
No sane developer (and I don’t give a damn about the already clinically insane web devs) is going to jump ship to HTML just by virtue of reach.
HTML5 is write once, test everywhere. Its the biggest myth in modern computing.
Nevermind, judging by your comments in another thread you’re just an irrational fanatic. Makes sense now.
It puzzles me in this day and age that Microsoft fanboys still exist..
The last time i saw someone being a fan of Microsoft was like.. 1996?
It would be mean to suggest that the fanboy is — by definition — eternally adolescent.
That he refuses to see what he does not want to see: in this case, that Windows remains the OS of choice for a breathtaking number of users:
From Statcounter:
Mobile v Desktop Global:
http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_vs_desktop-ww-monthly-201105-2012…
Even in gadget-obsessed Japan the desktop still dominates:
http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_vs_desktop-JP-monthly-201105-2012…
Operating System Global:
http://gs.statcounter.com/#os-ww-monthly-201105-201205-bar
Choice?
> Mobile v Desktop Global:
>
> http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_vs_desktop-ww-monthly-201105-2012…..
That is according to webbrowsers what means people are using webbrowsers more/longer on desktop then on mobile. I would wonder if otherwise cause most people still prefer a large screen over a small screen while browsing for porn in the internet.
> Even in gadget-obsessed Japan the desktop still dominates:
Dominates for web browsing. Search at google to figure yourself out that mobile is used way more often for phoning then desktop. I dont think that tells us anything about the dominance of either of them. Do you?
> Operating System Global:
Still for browsing. You may like to have a look at other sources to get a picture of desktop vs mobile dominance not only related to browsing for porn or phoning s*x hotlines.
So was Honeycomb when it was demoed. So far it’s another competitor, with a newer interpretation of UX/UI. No single tablet has succeeded when taking on iPad head to head, same goes for iPhone.
Can capitalize on the failures of iPad competition and can see success on tablets. Execution, execution, execution.
It forces a new UX on existing developers on PC and offers no audience for the tablet.(2 indisputable facts) Millions in install base is an enticing proposition, but question will be one of UX quality. On the number of apps part Windows8 will be covered quite well and you probably know that it’s not only the number of apps.
On tablet front: that was prior to Surface. On PC OS front: There is no other option for PC manufacturers.
The second part will help Windows8 in regards to the quantity of apps, but we have evidence that success in one market does not necessarily translate to success in another.
There is only 1 problem – Windows 8 is going against iPad. It has to bring viable disruption to the market. As good as Surface looks, it’s not really that obviously great. The new iPad, however, is.
Honeycomb was really an embarrassment of a release. I think even reviews at the time acknowledged it didn’t have what it took.
And guess what, not much has changed with ICS.
Microsoft wins by default, pretty soon like I said only a few OEMs will be even playing ball with Android tabs.
Especially more PC oriented OEMs who already have their bread and butter with Windows.
I honestly am of the opinion that a lot of the complaints are strict power user complaints which have no bearing with consumers.
Microsoft has gone into incredible detail in their blogs about the interaction studies they did while designing Windows 8. Funny how no one takes on those issues head on, but sticks to the same, tired “Its a bad UX” meme.
Metro makes it really easy to make high quality looking application. Its probably easier than on any other platform. Including iOS, including Android, including Windows Phone.
The story is a lot more complete. Its easier to use pre-canned animations, the performance of apps is dramatically better, Live tiles are precanned templates, etc.
A lot of the pain points WP7 dev had has been addressed marvelously.
Plus, and I think this is overlooked, this will be the FIRST Tablet since the iPad to have the Gaming chops to take on the iPad.
Android gaming is really a joke, but with Windows 8 the Game studios use the _very_ familiar DirectX APIs and can reuse existing tooling for Metro Style gaming.
I expect gaming on Windows 8 to be huge. Especially once devs get to play with the Xbox 360 Smart Glass APIs.
Surface changes nothing. OEMs are not going to drop Windows 8 because of it. They have no where else to go. Go back to Android? Yeah, like that’s been working so well for them (rolls eyes).
A lot of the PC OS manufacturers are also going to be making tablets. Acer, HP, Dell, Asus, hell, even Samsung.
I think it will carry over well, because apps written for WinRT run across both the PC and the tablet. So the ecosystem is bootstrapped. That’s often a very significant inhibitor of progress.
Sure, part of it will be marketing and working the sales channel (Which PC OEMs are masterful at, mind you), but a large part of it is a healthy and growing ecosystem.
Windows 8 has the potential to have an addressable market in the hundreds of millions in just a year. Any developer who doesn’t immediately hop on that train is wasting money.
This dwarfs Androids, dwards iOS. Microsoft sold 180 million copies of Windows Vista, and people hated that shit.
By virtue of being Windows, the ecosystem is almost guaranteed.
I’m on the fence about Surface, that will take real execution. I think Windows 8 as a whole. Surface, and all OEMs included can take a healthy chunk of the market.
The #1 reason for Direct X support on WP8: Microsoft’s huge library of old XBox games, that would make a great addition to their game collection. In fact, their only killer feature. They’d be fools if they didn’t port at least their most popular titles.
AFAIK Xbox doesn’t use either windows or directx.
Wrong. On both counts.
DirectX, sure. Where’s the evidence that Xbox runs Windows?
Even if the games use some kind of xbox specific api’s, I’d bet it’s a lot easier to either port that, or create a translation layer that deals with those xbox specific calls, than it would be to port all the graphics code over to another api.
Xbox runs DirectX, which in turn runs on a variant of Windows. What the hell else is it going to run?
According to wikipedia, it runs a custom OS with a subset of the Win32 APIs.
XNA games are sure DX but big titles are programming close to bare metal afaif, otherwise they wouln’t be competitive to PS3 stuff.
You have a point there. They could port the simple titles to W8. Could be cool.
I’ve confirmed with a friend with access to the dev kit that it is indeed a variant of DirectX (somewhere between 9 and 10).
The “programming closer to the metal” thing is a myth. No one wants to do that.
Well… Acer has broke the silence of the OEMs and it’s not good for Microsoft. http://venturebeat.com/2012/06/23/acer-microsoft-criticism/
I’m not saying that the first party UX is bad, I’m saying that that UX is still alien to most developers.
My buddies at Unity Technologies say different. Direct3D is no critical feature.
For tablets, they might just drop it. Surface is no less sour than Google’s Motorola acquisition.
As I mentioned, there has to be the “in your face” disruptive feature. I yet to see it in Windows8, or in Surface.
From the article :”Instead, Ahrens would like to see Microsoft focus on the Windows 8 user experience and leave the hardware creation to its hardware partners.”
The Windows OEMs create crappy hardware experiences, including Acer. Ahrens is just mad that MS is now producing a reference model that people will judge their hardware against. Their cheap, cut all corners hardware and stuffed to the gills with crapware software load is going to look pretty bad against the cherry picked stuff from MS.
You’re thinking consumer, and that’s not who is going to buy this initially.
The disruptive feature is a full fledged Windows OS with printing, Active Directory integration, and Windows apps. This is answering the need of businesses that need a tablet that is more PC then phone.
They also mention they intend to STAY with Windows 8. Logically, they have no choice.
I actually agree here, but Microsoft has the muscle to do intense training. They have developer code camps all over the country, and offer more dev support than any other company I can think of.
Also, it is especially hard to deviate from the standard UX of Windows 8 when writing an app. You have to actively go out of your way to violate principals on WinRT.
It was tons easier to make something look bad on Silverlight for Windows Phone.
Unity is peanuts in the gaming world. Sure, it’s big on mobile because iOS doesn’t have DirectX and they _need_ something there.
On Windows, there is Unreal, Havok, Source, CryEngine, etc. All of those toolchains use DirectX.
There is tons of developer knowledge on DirectX. It heavily outweighs OpenGL.
OpenGL lost this war about half of a decade ago. It recently found success on mobile because Microsoft floundered.
What are they going to do? Go to Android who hasn’t performed well and is made by Google? (Who also has Motorola) Roll their own? No, and no.
Tablet OEMs are going to stay the course on Windows 8.
The killer feature is the keyboard, the ability to run Windows apps, the enterprise support (This is highly instrumental, this with Windows Phone 8 is going to eat Blackberry’s Lunch), the familiar UI across 360, Phone, Tablet, PC . Etc.)
Apple’s approach to unifying their platforms I think is much more pigheaded.
> What are they going to do?
Dont think that absolute there. They just need to offer alternates to Windows (like Android) and Microsoft loses like they lost never before. Remember that Microsoft is, err WAS, the only preinstalled OS without any serious alternate for a decade. That is going to end. Good for customers cause they got a choice. Good for partners cause they have alternates and are not any longer bound to Microsoft only but very bad for Microsoft which is losing its monopoly.
Are you saying that nothing comes close to an iPhone?
In it’s category? Nothing.
All those people that chose anything else but Iphone are dumb? I don’t care that you call me dumb for paying 600 euro for an Android phone but I am interested how far you are willing to go with your opinion.
I would be calling myself dumb as well, since I have had every single Nexus device within 2 weeks of it going on sale.(Nexus One, Nexus S and Galaxy Nexus)
But as far as small smartphones go(<4″), iPhone has no competition.
Can you spell “Shill”? Come on, we all know better and the numbers just simply don’t agree with you. Android, is by far the #1 selling platform with IOS behind. Samsung and HTC numbers 1 and 2 in the market.
I work in China which is a good indicator of what is happening in the market, I now see more Samsung devices in public than I do Apple, and have yet to see a single Microsoft powered device.
Did you read anything that I said, at all? If you did, read it again. Pay attention this time.
Please read yourself about last quarter numbers. In Q1 2012 Android became market-leader.
http://articles.businessinsider.com/2012-04-27/tech/31419233_1_mark…
Sounds just like when you told us Silverlight was the future!
You make Florian Muller come across as objective…
XAML and C#, it still is pretty much silverlight.
In your words – Oh, whatever!
Pretty much the same technology, therefore the same techniques … but whatever.
I used Silverlight for lack of a better word at the time. But XAML is the future.
XAML is on the Xbox 360, the PC, the tablet, and the Phone space.
How exactly was I wrong again?
First off, stop moving the goalpost, Silverlight is dead, now you try to paint it as ‘oh, but in reality I meant the technology on which Silverlight was built upon’
It’s like saying ‘yeah, this new code/framework we said was going to rule the world failed, but you know, it was written in c/posix, and c/posix is still readily available so it’s not as we failed!
And XAML being the future? I doubt it’s even the future for Windows as with Metro we have HTML5/JS as the first class citizen for Metro apps.
And as for C#, not even Microsoft tries to pretend it’s the software panacea anymore as proven by their ‘going native’ push for Visual Studio 2012. Just like WinRT is native, you know that runtime which HTML5 and NET wraps around to provide performant functionality.
Of the three options available for Metro developers I think HTML5 for simple stuff and native C++ for where they need to push the hardware (as in higher end games) is going to dominate, not XAML/NET. But this is all just speculation at this point, time will tell.
All the technologies and techniques are pretty much the same between Metro and Silverlight. Windows Phone 7 even uses Silverlight.
It isn’t nearly as generic as the example you gave.
Silverlight = XAML + VB/C# .NET
Metro = XAML + VB/C# .NET || HTML + JS.
That is debatable. I rather take a strongly typed language over HTML 5 and JS anyday.
Unfortunately we are coming up against Atwoods law.
C++ in Metro is still going to be managed C++, which is very .NET-ish and it uses XAML. There really isn’t that much difference.
Edited 2012-06-25 15:13 UTC
Really? WinRT is native, C++ is native and afaik the interface between C++ and WinRT (C++/CX) is fully native.
Granted I’m pretty much reiterating a discussion I had with a fellow programmer at work, however he is generally very up-to-date on Microsoft tech so I’m inclined to believe him.
Do you have any official information indicating that it is not so? http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/br211386.aspx lists C++ and DirectX as a way to develop native Metro apps.
Yes, your fellow programmer at work is correct. Lucas Maximus seems to get the details wrong like he got with his Silverlight statement.
I wasn’t wrong about Silverlight.
http://www.silverlight.net/archives/tutorials/building-a-windows-ph…
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc189036(v=vs.95).aspx
It is still XAML + .NET.
So how exactly am I wrong?
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/262151/Visual-Cplusplus-and-Win…
It seems to be native, but I am sure from that article it is managed C++, not un-managed.
WinRT might be native, but it is still C++\CLI code.
Edited 2012-06-25 17:11 UTC
WinRT is native, that much I can tell you. The article you point to actually confirms what I’ve been told, it says the C++/CX interface is native. It (the article) explicitly states that both WinRT and the C++ interface (C++/CX) are native, so if this article you linked to is anything to go by then you are obviously wrong as these quoted passages from the article clearly demonstrates:
-WinRT is native. I’ll repeat that once more, this time with an exclamation. WinRT is native!
-They call it the C++ Component Extensions or C++/CX for short. Syntactically, it’s nearly identical (not 100% though) to the C++/CLI syntax that is used to target the CLR.
-Well the similarity is purely syntactical though, the semantic meanings and implications are entirely different. C++/CX is native code, C++/CLI is managed code.
How can you, having read and linked to this very article be of doubt as to whether WinRT and the C++/CX interface is native?
I was wrong then, I misread it.
It still doesn’t change the fact that the UI is defined in XAML.
Oh come on, you’re playing semantics. The XAML vocabulary shared between WPF, Silverlight, and WinRT is the same.
The databinding mechanisms are the same (Dependency Properties, INPC interface, Value Converters etc.)
Attached properties, Behaviors, hell, even the API namespaces are largely the same.
The standard controls are the same. There’s StackPanels and Grids and WrapPanels. There’s still UI virtualization.
There are differences along the margins, but its expected in the evolution of a technology. Does Microsoft have an extreme naming and messaging problem? Yes.
Does that make these technologies fundamentally different? No.
HTML5/JS is really relegated to second class citizen status, if you actually know what you’re talking about (read: actually develop for Windows 8, like I do).
In HTML5/JS you can’t author WinRT components, only consume. You can’t interop with DirectX natively without expensive GPU readback. You get a subset of WinRT and its type model.
That, and there’s still no comparison between .NET BCL and what JS offers (next to nothing).
There’s no one king of the hill in Windows 8. C++ and C# are slightly on elevated footing because of what I mention above, but HTML5/JS is still compelling for people who like that.
You might’ve been able to get away with this with lucas_maximus because he got a little confused, but you won’t get away with it with me.
First off, various WinRT components (even public API endpoints in Windows 8) are a mixture of C++ and C#. Some are C++ and some are C#.
The WinRT underpinnings learned a lot from .NET, and borrows a lot from it. The type system is modeled after .NET, the metadata _IS_ .NET metadata. You can view it in ildasm.
The entire design of the WinRT API is .NET, the enabling of generic types is .NET, basically WinRT could not have happened without the innovations in the BCL and C#.
Where WinRT was needed was to provide a better interop story. That’s something COM (which WinRT is a modified incarnation of) is excellent at. The difference is that its coupled with language projections.
Javascript doesn’t talk to WinRT directly, its wrapped by the WebHost engine. C# doesn’t talk to it directly, its wrapped using a RCW. C++/CX doesn’t talk to it directly, it’s a language extension and compile time wrappers using the WRL (a WinRTified ATL).
So unless you’re doing raw C++ with WRL (read: nofuckingbody), you’re using some form of an abstraction.
Hell, if you even bothered to do some profiling (You haven’t), you’d know that the C# projection and C++/CX projections provide pretty comparable performance.
From an abstraction performance there’s no difference, essentially. C++ just still wins on raw performance, but that’s always been true, but it comes with its own can of worms to deal with.
HTML5 even for “simple apps” is tedious. There’s a reason why all HTML5/JS apps in the Windows Store are boring walls of tiles. Because besides the pre-canned templates, no one wants to fucking deal with that mess of a combo.
Any language of medium to high complexity is C++/XAML or C#/XAML.
Plus, you can look at it by forum popularity. The C# forum on dev.windows.com is the most popular by leaps and bounds. It’s obvious the .NET collective is pumping out Windows 8 apps.
Actually, time has already told. If you do some inspection of Windows Store apps, you can see that its not so cut and dry.
A lot of DirectX apps use C++ DirectX for the rendering and scene graph with C#/XAML for the logic/interface.
C# is just easier to manage, and with WinRT the interop between native and managed is much faster. It becomes feasible.
I wish you’d do a lot less talking out of your ass and more actual research.
I actually think you have made a very valid point, and one that I and I’m sure a lot of others have missed.
Apps will appear for the Phone because apps will be written for Metro on W8/9/10/n, it’s just going to happen.
Whether or not W8 is a huge success (see Vista) is not the point, W9 or W10 will do well (see W7). MS for all their faults do understand that you just need to stay the course, even if your product is not so good right now.
MS need to stay in this market, so even if Surface fails, there will be a Surface 2 or 3.
Eh I guess you are talking about tablets, so are you including Kindle and Nook?
Windows 8 will be a subset of the Windows install base and ANY SANE DEVELOPER will take that into account.
Nothing says thrilled like “We’re making our own tablet”.
No, I’m not. They’re ecosystems in their own right (The Kindle Fire at least, don’t know enough about the Nook to comment.)
The install base will still be over 100 million. In one year. Hell, Windows Vista in one week sold more copies than there were OSX users on the planet. And people hated Vista.
Again, I think its a lot of concern trolling. OEMs logically have no other choice but Windows 8. Unless you’d like to point some out?
They can…keep doing Android (Let me know how that works for them) or … ? Nothing. Windows 8 is the only choice.
Seriously. Take it as an opportunity. The Apple iOS platform has good applications such as Sparrow because the native e-mail client sucks very hard.
If MS stock offerings don’t satisfy, built a better one. You will have customers.
Who do you think developed most of the example apps on Win8? the core dev team? Hell no…they are far to busy doing their regular job. Interns write those apps and interns are…..LEARNING.
I don’t really see the “Problem”… Some devs with huge egos want to everyone to believe that they are cr~A¨me de la cr~A¨me and the centre of the new computing. That without them a platform will fail no matter how good or bad it is.
I believe that Windows 8 will be very successful with lots of great ideas and apps. Microsoft alone has enough creative great programmers and creative people to keep the platform alive if it has to.
I’m sure they do, but it seems that often Microsoft’s programmers aren’t really able to exercise their creativity. Management says “make it look like this and do that” and they have to design it accordingly or lose their job. Microsoft has plenty of creative programmers, but perhaps they need more creative managers and marketers since it’s not the programmers that have the final say on a product.
Are you kidding me? You can’t categorise companies of this size as “creative” and “not creative”. All companies have some great folks and some complete idiots.
With things like Metro, Kinect, Surface, Wordament, Kinectimals & on{x} Microsoft has shown that the idiots are at least not in the majority
At what point did I say otherwise?
I wouldn’t be so sure about that where Metro is concerned. They are, after all, trying to force a touch screen paradigm on to a medium that isn’t suited to it (keyboard and mouse). Which Surface are you referring to, the tablet (wow, another tablet), or the project that came before it with that name? The latter was, at least, an interesting idea. Microsoft seems, at least where their Metro division is concerned, to be in a “me too” mode lately. They’ve essentially copied everything about iOS except the user interface and programming APIs. Locked down, check. Optimized only for touch, check. Make it extremely simple, check. Make developers pay to develop for it, check. I think they really have room to do a lot more than this if only they were permitted to do so. In fact, it would be a really good marketing move for them if they did deviate from this formula.
I agree with you on the stupidity of making devs paying.
I don’t agree about your other points you made but at this early stage we are all speculating. Let’s let it rest and see what happens during the coming months…
Kinect was developed outside of Microsoft.
So was Siri, so was Android, so was iTunes, etc. Acquisitions happen.
Pre Android 1.0 was not. Everything afterwards WAS developed inside google and yet even 1.6 did not succeed but it took some more iterations.
iPhone was a success long before Siri amd iPhone was developed inside of Apple when it became a success.
Any better, more matching examples?
Edited 2012-06-25 16:26 UTC
But that’s all they will be doing – keeping the platform alive.
On the desktop they might succeed in persuading a handful of people to use Metro applications, but in the face of Android and especially iOS on mobile devices it is dead on arrival. There is too much inertia now and they are too late.
iOS is pretty much the number one mobile platform developers develop for and has been for many years. It’s really only now that Android is catching up on the applications front and it is a platform developers feel they have to support. Windows ‘Whatever’ and Metro are absolutely nowhere near that point and there is a compelling argument that developers just won’t tolerate a third platform, especially one that locks them into the Windows/Visual Studio treadmill for no good reason.
There is another option which is to lower porting costs by layering Android on top of .NET.
The current plan of trying to leverage their desktop market and forcing the start screen to encourage ‘app’ development will fail.
Windows 8 will be hated by both developers and casual users. People will keep buying iPads and shareholders will want Ballmer’s head.
But what do I know, I merely work on enterprise .NET applications and haven’t heard a single positive thing about Windows 8 from everyone I work with. Word on the street is that Microsoft sales reps are taking a lot of heat over the release preview.
Oh and yes I did change my name from nt_jerkface.
Nothing. Developers I’ve talked with are bullish on Windows 8, and have nothing but love for WinRT and .NET 4.5 .
At the very least it seems to suggest that there are mixed opinions, and its not as black and white as you make it seem.
Yet another, “Microsoft should give up and close up shop” articles. The article is the very definition of FUD.
I find myself wondering, “What is the point of these articles?” Meaning, what is the purpose of writing them? Is anyone going to make any significant changes in their lives after reading it? No. I guess it’s just for entertainment at the end of the day.
Pageviews.
Yup, sad isn’t it.
Come on, do you really think Windows developers can create as many awesome fart apps as the IOS developers have?
*That’s* how you measure the success of your platform….
And those are metro apps. OK, a significant percentage are glorified RSS readers, but same goes for iOS. These Apple fanboys really need to get over themselves and their belief that “Everything is about Apple, nobody else need apply.”
Edited 2012-06-23 18:36 UTC
You know, every time someone brings up app numbers, I want to smack them. App numbers mean nothing. It doesn’t matter how many apps a platform has, but whether they have the apps people want or need to get things done. This goes for any platform. Enough of this “platform x has y number of apps” crap. It tells us nothing about the quality of the apps or the platform, and is only a stupid marketing tactic that demeans the intelligence of both the person saying it and those who read it.
Also, “good apps” are only and advantage to the platform owner if they are not available on competing platforms, and can’t be ported (or cloned by someone else) with minor efforts.
Even if Instapaper was _the killer app_ for iOS, would it be impossible for Microsoft to create something similar? Sure it would take some time and money, but not nearly as much as Macro and his huge ago wants you to believe!
PS. there are already some Instapaper clients for WP7.
I disagree. If there aren’t enough good apps for the platform you wouldn’t want to buy a phone with it. So it doesn’t matter if everybody has the good apps. It starts to matter when your platform doesn’t have a good app.
While it doesn’t speak for quality, it DOES speak for momentum. It’s undeniable that the Windows Phone marketplace has incredible momentum behind it.
Microsoft is pulling ALL the stops with regards to driving hard and fast adoption of the platform. Given that we’ve moved much closer to a unified platform in recent releases, this will have a catalyst effect over to Windows 8.
A *lot* of people I talk to within the developer community is doing porting work to Windows 8. I’m sure its the same story on a larger scale.
Windows Phone has over 20,000 developers. That’s 20,000 able bodied souls who already know the key technologies needed to write Windows 8 apps.
If you take .NET and XAML as a whole, you get an even larger number of developers.
People continue to completely underestimate Microsoft’s vast .NET army.
They kept off WP7 drive for 6 months of this year already, because of Window8. That is not good for anyone.
Both Apple(lack of Objective-C devs) and Android(massive Java dev army) have proven that having a large army does not mean it will translate onto a new medium.
Not exactly sure what you mean. Nokia+MS combined developer outreach efforts are unmatched in the industry.
Apples to Oranges comparison.
iOS had true, organic growth because it was the only thing available for a long time. It was relatively uncontested before Android gained traction. So the ecosystem sprung up out of need.
The problem with Android is the developer experience is piss poor. The IDE is fucking shitty ass eclipse. The emulator until literally the other day was dog slow. The UI markup language is primitive, and then of course there’s the fragmentation elephant in the room.
Those are real issues which hinder adoption. Developers have been doing WPF/Silverlight development on Windows for years before Windows Phone. It naturally translated. A lot of big names in Silverlight and WPF instantly pumped out supporting toolkits and articles and code.
WP7 was really seen as a “.NET nirvana” and a lot of .NET fanboys who I knew flocked to write apps for it.
Now, imagine the gold rush when Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 share the same underlying technology, but on a greater scope.
Windows 8 lets you use C# and XAML. C++ and XAML or Javascript and HTML5. That’s a pretty broad market of devs who are hungry to write apps for the worlds most popular OS.
Consumer and operator adoption, not developer adoption. Nokia was trying to do most of it, but is failing due to the drop in relationships with operators.
No comment on the second part, mostly because it will become an unproductive inter-fanboy sputum.
I’ve developed on Android, I’ve very little in the way of complaints.
Eclipse is an IDE that can be used with Android development but it isn’t the only choice, it was simply the first to support Android development. Google do provide ADT tools and vaguely suggest Eclipse.
As to “shitty ass” Eclipse, this is purely all your personal preference. I personally like Eclipse and dislike IntelliJ. (in other words, if you don’t like Eclipse then use IntelliJ)
In what way is the UI markup primitive? I’ve developed UI’s without problem.
There is lots of bluster in your posts but little in the way of actual statements of fact.
The simple fact is Windows Phone has been an abject failure and it will continue to be a failure. Just because MS are trying to crowbar their mobile stuff in with Windows 8 will not suddenly make Windows Phone popular with people.
In my personal opinion and from the opinion every person I know who I’ve asked who has used it, windows 8 is from a user perspective an absolute dud. It has a UX that is a convoluted mess for the desktop. As nice as C# is, that doesn’t detract from the horrendous.. absolutely horrendous desktop user experience.
I suspect W8 is going to get the user reputation as the next Vista. It’ll do well on sales as it’ll be bundled with OEMs on desktops as usual with MS. But from a bought off the shelf perspective it’ll probably end up being skipped until MS fix the UX issues in W9.
As to windows 8 on tablets.. we’ll see, but honestly. All the developer momentum is on IOS and Androids side right now. Just because something has a similar development environment doesn’t mean they’ll all magically become windows mobile developers overnight or even show any interest.
Honestly, look at the market. When it comes to it, the market sustains a couple of major platforms but that’s it. As lovely as WP7 is there is next to no user interest in buying into a new platform and losing all their apps. Android and IOS are at the “good enough” stage for users never mind the fact that MS lacks the critical Google services or good equivalents.
Oh, just something else I saw you post about Direct3D on Windows Phone; Do you honestly think that only having Direct3D instead of OpenGL is a plus?
You do realise that pretty much all games on Android and IOS use OpenGL or alternatively something which abstracts (like unity) right? MS are massively hobbling the platform.
Look at it from this perspective of a game dev: “Well, I can write my game using OpenGL which covers Android and IOS making me lots of money with about 90%+ of the market, should I completely rewrite all the 3d handling code for WP which has a couple of percent and isn’t likely to break even in dev costs. No.”
As nice as developing for WP7/8 is in general, it’s a failed platform. MS missed the bus, they were too late to the game. It’s interesting to see them spending so much money on it but it’s going the way of webos. A lovely platform that had no real user interest.
As to my Android complaints, yep the emulator is slow but it’s usable and honestly.. you do realise you can plug a phone into the pc and use that for development right?
My only other complaint is I wish it wasn’t limited to Java 1.6 rather than 1.7. (hey, I like being able to switch case on a string)
You really need to take a step back and stop being so obsessed with being so blindly pro-MS. Most platforms are great to develop for, don’t be so single minded.
Java IDEs go from bad to worse. Worst being Eclipse and mildly better is IntelliJ. Netbeans, I won’t even go there.
At work we ended up going with MonoDevelop and MonoDroid after finding it dramatically more usable than ANY Java IDE. Holy. Fuck.
It is not a 1:1 mapping to UI elements like XAML is. There’s a lot more plumbing work using Android Layout XML compared to XAML.
The Android code is a mess of findViewbyId(..) everywhere. Who the fuck wants to maintain that?
Every XAML element is a .NET object. Its really quite powerful when you come to think of it. The marriage of the two concepts is seamless.
You can with XAML: Do animation, styling, and layout. With Android you can just do layout.
Plus I’d rather kill myself before I have to use the Android visual designer again.
With XAML I have a world class tool in Expression Blend.
The original XBox was also a “failure”. Microsoft has the resources to stay in the game until they eventually dominate the field.
Windows Phone emerging as additional viable ecosystem is an inevitability.
Denying that is just shortsighted foolishness.
There is no developer momentum on Android tablets. None. Zero. You’d be hard pressed to find even a FEW good Android tablet apps. Trust me, I’ve tried.
Also, a good chunk of Silverlight and .NET devs DID become Windows Phone developers. That’s part of the reason they had 20,000 developers OVER NIGHT. That’s why app momentum is HIGHER than Android. We’re adding apps at a faster rate despite having an install base astronomically smaller. Why is that?
Because there is genuine revenue coming out of the Windows Phone marketplace. The Android market is a complete and utter failure. No one really gets money off of it. Its just a means to an end, growing the user base.
Palm was once good enough. Windows Mobile was once good enough. Times change.
Yes, honestly.
You realize almost all games on Windows use DirectX, right? You realize a great majority of middleware on Windows uses DirectX, right?
Like I said in another comment, the DirectX and OpenGL war was decided a half a decade ago. Around the time Vista launched. OpenGL lost that war.
You realize the DOMINANT GRAPHICS PLATFORM is DirectX? Right? I mean, you _ARE_ aware of that? Correct?
Alternatively, here’s how it’ll play out:
“Hey, the Unreal Engine works on Windows 8.”
“Hey it also works on Windows Phone 8 now too”
“Hey it also works on the Xbox 360”
Plus “Hey all of our fucking devs know DirectX, because its all anyone bothers to learn”
Seriously.
Microsoft is no Palm. Windows Phone is too crucial for them to give up. Like I said, the Xbox was a loss leader for a LONG time before it became the success it is today. Don’t be so naive as to write off Windows Phone.
Yes I do, but your costs rise right with that need. Now every developer needs to have a phone on hand in order to even do some development.
You realize on Windows Phone you can make money without even owning a phone, right? I know plenty of devs who just do emulator development and it works great for them.
The Windows Phone emulator really has no equal. With Windows Phone 8 it will run on Hyper-V. Yeah, good luck matching that.
It is exactly the fact that I spent a few months working with Android that I can be so vehemently opposed to everything it stands for. As a developer it is borderline insulting they expect us to use this stuff.
You ignore the fact that there is (and will allays be) a significant performance/feature gap between powered and mobile devices.
The gap is expressed in disparity between DX 10 and before and that makes porting game engines from PC and consoles to phones more involving than just rewriting UI code between IOS and Android.
Urgh, I hate silly long quotathons.
Java IDE’s: That’s personal preference. The IDE has now reached a point where it’s mostly just peoples personal preferences to which they prefer using. I’d compare it to MS Office, like ms office 2000 reached a good enough point of features people actually use most IDE’s have now reached a point of good enough for features devs actually use.
I agree, MS tools are very cool. But Android dev is not hard nor is it some kind of sumerian ziggurat of findviewbyid’s.
Erm, yes.. you can do animation in XML on android.
Who uses any visual designer? Everyone uses it to quickly see how it looks then goes back to the XML or the Java.
MS managed to get success with the Xbox 360 because Sony royally messed up with the PS3. And i’d remind you that Nintendo were the victor of this generation of consoles, not MS. Ultimately in terms of sales the 360 and PS3 are now worldwide about equal in parity. So i’d hardly describe that as “dominating the field”.
You can call it what you like, the simple reality is that MS have lost the phone market. They might be able to buy themselves some market share but it’s simply unsustainable, they can only spend so many billions before the shareholders begin questioning the reasoning. MS’ primary phone provider is a dying company which just shed 10,000 jobs. (pretty sad, as Nokia were once real innovators)
As to the tablet market, right now the only successful tablet is made by Apple. From every single news source that has been mentioned the pricing of Windows tablets will be above the iPad, that’s commercial suicide. I’m personally holding a wait and see approach about the next Android and Windows 8 tablets. I wouldn’t be so closed minded as to outright dismiss something without trying it. (Android 4 on tablets is okay at the moment)
Really? A complete and utter failure? Do you really want to say that? That is just silly.
I don’t doubt that there are a few small developers making money on WP7, but I seriously doubt there is anything on the same level as the money that’s being made on IOS and Android. The numbers of users simply prevents that.
Yep, Android and IOS are good enough. And windows phone isn’t good enough nor a game changer like the iPhone was. Times change every so often and Windows Phone isn’t it.
Look at the type of games on games consoles and on the pc.
Now look at games on mobile phones and tablets, you can’t simply go from console dev to mobile dev and expect the same sales or results with the same kind of games. You have to create games for the platform. Now again, if you’re a dev creating games you will look at what mobile platforms have the biggest share and focus on them first. The dominant mobile platforms use OpenGL, that’s the reality. The devs will go where the money is, which is OpenGL.
People simply aren’t buying Windows Phone, therefore the devs won’t write games for it because the initial investment is high with low probability of a return on your investment. Some games companies may be sources of evil, but they’re run by businesses who will look at the numbers.
You can hark on all you like about DirectX, but the mobile devs are writing for OpenGL and it’s not going to change anytime soon. It’s the Angry Birds syndrome, the market isn’t there therefore the devs won’t write or port the games because the cost of porting is too great with little return. MS would be very smart to have an implementation of OpenGL in WP8 that way they’d get more cross platform games on it.
By the way, DirectX is the dominant platform on windows, the xbox 360 and windows mobile.
Everything else, whether it be the Wii (the dominant games console) or Android (the dominant mobile platform) it’s OpenGL.
No serious devs are going to invest serious money into writing games for a single mobile platform that has a couple of percent of the market. Nobody.
And thank you for reiterating my point about middleware, Unreal like Unity will be one of the ways to get games cross platform on mobile. Side stepping the whole OpenGL/Direct3D malarky.
I’m not writing off Windows Phone, I’m saying it’s lost unless MS do something truly radical like Apple did with the iPhone. Which right now i’m not seeing anything.
Good on the windows phone emulator! Good show!
Again, stop being so blindly pro-MS. It’s really clouding your vision to the current realities. I’d quite like to see a three horse mobile race, but right now it’s Android and IOS that are dominating. MS is going up against Google and Apple which haven’t really slipped up much. MS are going against them with a platform that’s okay at best and so-so at worst.
> Nokia+MS combined developer outreach efforts are unmatched in the industry.
As we see on there unmatched “success” in the industry…
Yeah but, I don’t want or need 99975K calculators, rss readers and weather apps thank you very much!
Alas, no one cares about WP7 regardless of how many apps it has.
As a side note, you gotta love the terminology in the article. Apparently there are no users anymore, just “consumers”. Which always brings to mind a certain quote…
[A consumer is] something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It’s covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth… no genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote.
~William Gibson – “Idoru”
MS development drive was since I remember pinned on:
– lock-in on OS pc shipments;
– Commercial ties with hardware companies – still strong;
– business applications that leverage the value of MS as a business platform, which is still great. Apple is far away on this;
– games – still unsurpassed. Consoles did shift a little the market but it is still basically a MS camp. Most games are still developed on MS platform;
– market opportunity for new professionals – undermined by surge on opportunities of the move to the web. It is actually almost platform agnostic now;
– regular software – also undermined by the surge of users not needing special applications other than what is web or multimedia related. i.e., they need basically browsers as a platform for their needs plus something to take care of photos, music and movies. This is the weakest point of MS as they dont have a good enough solution to counter iTunes (by the way, which a consider a monstrosity, but I am not the typical user anyway).
The shift to the web is the critical part for MS, as it devalued its before untouchable position as well as the huge number of people that just care about using computers/tablets/phones for communication and shopping purposes.
So, what MS can do? Use what they have strong to break in and improve their solution to take care of photos, music and videos. Make no mistakes, even thought Ballmer was/is not the right guy to lead MS, they will probably succeed. My guess is that BlackBerry is in a bad position right now.
Even if slowly in the beginning and, of course, not with the same drive that they had before, they will start to capture back market share. Sad, but true.
Edited 2012-06-23 19:37 UTC
A developer goes where the money is, but a very smart one goes where the money will be.
I mean, given the choice would you rather develop for an overcrowded App Store where your product will be just one of the hundred of thousands available, or try to be one of the first that made it to the New Frontier?
Yes, we all read stories about someone who made loads of money on the App Store, but let’s keep in mind that these are the exception to the rule and most developers can’t even recover the development costs (one of many examples: http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2010/06/full-analysis-…).
As for needing Windows versus needing OS X to write software, every Mac developer’s machine is perfectly capable of running Windows, therefore the point is moot and more along the lines of “damn, I can’t think of anything else to close this article.”
RT.
MS now has 100k apps for ~10M installed base.
Android has 300k apps for ~330M installed base.
Do the math.
Edited 2012-06-24 15:55 UTC
That would be:
100k – ~20m(I really hope they achieved that at least)
470k – ~380m(300m + 119days*700k)
550k – ~420m(365m end of calendar Q1 + 55mil)
Customers on Android are less likely to purchase apps, and piracy is RAMPANT on the Android platform. Development costs are also higher.
How are development costs higher on Android? All the dev tools are free, the primary language is Java so you’ve got a large pool of existing libraries and developers to call upon.
That statement doesn’t make sense.
All platforms have a problem with piracy, it’s an age old problem that isn’t going away any time soon.
Because:
A) The tooling is subpar leading to more developer frustration and lost productivity
B) The emulator (up until recently) was dog slow, again, leading to developer frustration and productivity.
C) Fragmentation. Needing to deal with compat toolkits and managing backporting of features. Dealing with an array of resolutions. All that leads to time spent dealing with bullshit that developers should not have to worry about.
It gets worse if you’re a game developer. Deal with ARM SoCs which have GPUs which implement only _some_ vendor extensions, or implement them in bugged out ways (Tegra I’m looking at you. Fuck.)
All this leads to lower productivity and higher costs. Then factor in the fact that app piracy is RAMPANT, not just existent, but utterly rampant on Android..and it starts to not make sense.
The final nail in the coffin is the propensity of users to actually even fucking buy an app once you spend money creating it. The Android market is a race to the bottom, wild west, shit hole of a marketplace. No real developer makes money there.
The real cash is over at iOS, everyone knows that.
Huh? Eclipse and IntelliJ are both fine IDE’s. There is shed loads of documentation. How is it subpar?
Are you honestly saying a developer writing an Android app does not have access to an Android device on which to write?
I’ve been mildly annoyed when using the emulator, but honestly.. who uses that when you’ve got an actual device?
Um, it’s pretty trivial to add compat toolkits if you want newer features in older android versions. (stuff like Action Bar Sherlock is trivially easy to add and manage)
Handling multiple resolutions is not hard in the least unless you’re hard coding to pixel rather than density. Which is a really stupid thing to do, people like different screen sizes and resolutions.
Then you code to the lowest common denominator and deal with it or you code your way around it, any large platform that has multiple vendors has this problem. Android has it, Windows has it. I’m not really seeing your point here.
Again, all platforms have piracy. Looking on a certain bay of pirates both IOS and Android apps have the same levels of downloads. So I’m unsure where you’re getting your “OMFG RAMPANT” from. Unless you’re saying the two most popular mobile platforms have piracy, just like all popular platforms have a problem with piracy?
Honestly dude, citation needed. IOS does make more money on a per user basis, Apple have been very smart in monetising. But looking on Google Play simply proves you wrong, the sheer quality and quantity of apps on there proves you wrong about nobody making money. You need only look at the numbers. Both Android and IOS make app developers money, the sheer size of the user base makes your point invalid. The idea that out of hundreds of millions of users nobody is buying apps or downloading apps with ads in them is just silly.
I take a plain text editor over Eclipse anyday, Eclipse is barely any better than VS 2003. There is simply no equal to Visual Studio 2010.
Whatever you take. There are far more Java-developers out there then C# developers and they are producing far more software spanning all kind of fields AND platforms. Visual Studio is no competition there.
But as emacs user I can understand that Eclipse is supoptimal to my favorite, my known army knife emacs like it is to your Visual Studio too. Its just that we are not the majority.
I am not talking about the number of developers, I am talking about the quality of the tools.
Eclipse is miles behind in features. The odd time I have to fire it up to fix Java code, it feels like going back to the past even though I have 3.4 installed.
Starting a flamewar? Seriously, you have an issue with Android.
And by some comments, it seems you don’t even develop professionally for it. My “distaste” for most stuff Microsoft has at least some history behind it.
PS: Piracy is one of the major reasons why Microsoft is dominating the desktop PC market.
Metro so K-Rad.
Make your platform libre.
Look at GNU:
* Zero market share.
* Zero profitability.
* Millions of developers.
Now if you have a platform like Windows 8 with 90% market share and high profitability and you make it libre, developers will come in such an unprecedented huge number that we will hardly notice other platforms even exist.
I’d say the problem tackled in the original post is a real one for app devs who make their living from mobile apps. Fortunately, I’m not one of them
I mostly create mobile apps for research purposes (to see how certian algorithms perform on mobile devices) and for that I really like to use a platform for which I can create apps in omni-available IDEs and the native algorithms even from a console with ssh – yeah, it’s no secret I prefer Android. For the MS problem above, yes, it could be a problem to attract good devs to the Metro environment and the WP8 platform, a problem which will solve itself if and only when windows phones and tablets manage to gather a serious market share, since if that occurs, no app dev will be able to ignore tha platform. Otherwise it will be good bye and thanks for all the fish.
Edited 2012-06-24 16:54 UTC
It’s true that the apps bundled with Windows 8 suck. In fact, ever since Windows 7’s optional “install Windows Live Essentials instead” decision was I unhappy with the first-party apps on Microsoft Windows.
Outlook Express has long been horrible, but I had a ton of clients that used it, and even used it myself back when I had a POP e-mail account from my ISP. Then, when I first upgraded to Mac OS X back in 2004, I saw Apple’s Mail.app and loved it and wondered why Microsoft couldn’t create something similar^aEUR| something that wasn’t as overkill as Outlook, but not as limited and shitty as Outlook Express (seriously.. the inability to import/export your mailboxes after how many versions was just ridiculous).
Ironically, for all of Windows Vista’s flaws, the built-in Windows Mail application was beautiful. The interface was lean, it properly handled IMAP folders, and you could import/export. In fact, I set up an IMAP e-mail account on my web server just so I could use it. I loved it. Then, with Windows 7, they took it away and forced users to use that god awful Windows Live Mail mess (which was confusing to a lot of my clients because they also renamed “Hotmail” to “Windows Live Hotmail” so many clients didn’t understand what they were using).
I think the Windows Live Essentials apps, with their horribly bloated and excessive “chrome” or window borders or whatever you call it, was the pre-cursor to Metro. A ton of wasted space that made the app look like their horribly designed web apps. Metro is the next logical step.
Microsoft has hidden behind the excuse “we’re not showing all of the UI changes in Windows 8 yet” and “we’re going to add more functionality^aEUR| we promise” but the fact that after 3 public preview releases you can’t add POP and IMAP accounts to the Metro Mail application is inexcusable. And the functionality of the app is pathetic. My old BlackBerry running OS 5 has more capability than that Metro-based Mail client (the BlackBerry not using an e-mail account that is connected to Exchange or BIS/BES^aEUR| so, just plain old e-mail, which BlackBerry doesn’t handle well at all).
Microsoft’s first-party apps have been poor for quite some time. Windows Media Player has gotten more bloated. I know a lot of people claim otherwise, but the Zune software is absolutely horrible, bloated, and awkward to use in my opinion. Windows Movie Maker was a nice answer to iMovie back in Windows Me/XP but has gotten worse. Outlook Express finally shaped up into a decent client with Windows Mail in Vista only to be replaced by the most awful Windows Live Mail, and they have yet to offer a decent built-in solution for standards-based e-mail (POP/IMAP), calendars (CalDAV), and contacts (CardDAV).
Metro isn’t going to be any better. Instead, we’re going to see a bunch of “apps” for individual services and a bunch of free or cheap e-mail/calendar/contacts clients that differ very little and will work with standards and clog up the “Windows Marketplace.” And to get the most out of Metro, each individual app/client will get its own “SUPER AWESOME LIVE TILES FTW!!!!!!” clogging up the already stupid and wasteful Start screen.
When Internet Explorer is the best first-party built-in app on Windows, things are pretty bad.