I would take whatever Brandon or other WP7 dev team managers say or promise with a heavy grain of salt.
Recently, I was in discussions with a couple people at Microsoft to swing one of the free developer phones they were offering on Twitter.
They speak of giving one away like it's no big deal. So I had some back and forth with them on an app, and they said something like "Ok, get a MVP and we'll see about getting you some goodies". I got the MVP done and sent off emails and haven't heard back from them in weeks. Not even a "no".
So yeah, I feel a little bitter about it all. It's not like they owe me anything, but just take whatever Brandon, Ben, and gang say with a great big grain of salt.
I see a lot of talk about supporting developers from Microsoft, but not a lot of action.
Tell me exactly to whom you have been speaking. I want to make sure we make good on our commitment to you. My email is ThePhone [at] Microsoft...please reference this HN post.
I am responsible for dev experience on Windows Phone. We have phones available for developers. All developers. We optimize for devs building apps. If you are building apps for Windows Phone, shoot me an email and we'll get you connected to one of our awesome mobile champs. I can be reached at ThePhone [at] Microsoft
Your stance is a kind of funny. When people complain about certain web dev tasks being difficult on Windows we say, "Yeesh, just run Linux already! You can even use a VM."
And if you ask me that's precisely the response MS should give to requests such as yours. I mean, would you really expect them to port their SDK over so that a handful of Linux devs will consider trying it out? Doesn't seem like there would be a big payoff. I bet a majority of devs who use Linux wouldn't even consider it. After making a WP7 app at my day job I sure wouldn't.
If it's fun to develop for, I go for it. I have given up Java before writing things for Android and I can tell you it's a nice environment to play. Palm was a joy to write for. Why did you think I was a Palm developer? Because it's fun, not because I dreamed of retiring after selling a million copies of something. If I wanted a huge market, I'd cover Android an Apple.
There are developers who'll follow the money, wherever it is. Some very good ones won't.
Or, like I said elsewhere, Microsoft has the best developers money can buy. Platforms like WebOS have the best ones money can't buy.
Oh... And I'd be perfectly fine with a VM image with Windows and the WP7 dev tools. I just don't want to boot into Windows or buy a license so that I can make their product more attractive.
Would you pay the $100/year AppHub fee to publish apps for WP7 if you ended up liking it?
This sort of argument just reminds of all those who whine about having to buy a Mac to do iOS development but in reality they wouldn't be doing iOS dev anyways, they just like to loudly cite all the reasons that they're not doing it for some reason.
Why is this guy being downvoted? Mobile development tools don't need to be tied to a desktop OS. Microsoft tauts Mono as a portable alternative. Let them release a WP7 SDK that works on Mono. The Java SDK is much richer & much more sophisticated, yet it has the same experience everywhere. Really, only differences between writing Android apps with Eclipse on Win32 vs Linux vs Mac are the window decorations.
Heck, even Postgres has portable tools. The GUI installer & PgAdminIII look exact everywhere.
Agree dev tools don't have to be tied to any OS and come to think about it, the fledgling Windows Phone OS will benefit if there are more people adopting the dev platform if it runs on Linux BUT you have to draw a line somewhere. realize that this is a new platform and they are trying to prioritize resources. What do you think will give Microsoft more bang for the buck? Supporting a platform that is will likely land them a dev or two or making their core platform kick-ass? I think we all know what the answer is.
But guess what, they are trying to convert non-Windows developers. Palm allowed me to develop on whatever I wanted. And they sent me a phone upon request (they were never sold in Brazil). So does Google. And every dumbphone out there that supports J2ME. The only company that also wants to restrict what I use is Apple. And Apple throws the equivalent of Visual Studio in with every Mac (all you have to do is download it). I don't think it's out of malice they don't support other platforms. I have a couple friends who work at Microsoft and they seem to really believe that everyone who develops software has a Windows machine and Visual Studio. And, if you are serious about developing software, an MSDN subscription.
And this just shows how amazing Microsoft's developer support and outreach really is. As long as you give them money, they support you. If you don't run Windows, they don't really care about you.
No, thanks. My software, my rules.
And, besides that, it's not like WP7 is gaining much support from manufacturers, or market share.
But guess what, they are trying to convert non-Windows developers.
Fortunately, the mass majority of programmers in the world program in and/or on Windows. When MS is inviting programmers on their WP7 platform, you can safely assume they don't mean you.
The Apple/Microsoft development scenario is equal. XCode is free, Visual Studio Express is free. You don't really need an MSDN subscription at all.
And this just shows how amazing Microsoft's developer support and outreach really is. As long as you give them money, they support you.
And this is why MS releases great dev tools, resources, documents, blogs, etc for free? They're offering a 2 day intensive WP7 programming e-course next week. Cost? Free.
If you don't run Windows, they don't really care about you.
Of course not. Does Apple care about you if you aren't using a Mac or an iPad? No. Does the Ubuntu team care about you if you're not using Ubuntu? Of course not.
it's not like WP7 is gaining much support from manufacturers, or market share.
Aside from Acer, Dell, Nokia, HTC, Samsung, Huwei, etc?
You're right about market share, but they've been at it less than a year with an OS with a rather mediocre feature set. Let's see how things are another year from now with Mango and beyond. Android took a while to kick in, too.
I have to ask again. You go off and troll every. single. Microsoft thread, but you claim to shun and abhor them.
If you have a computer that is good enough to develop software on, you can figure out a way. Windows will run on almost any box that a Linux or Mac box runs on. Microsoft rightly believes that everyone who has a machine to develop software can figure out how to get a machine that runs Windows and Visual studio. If your too poor to buy the software you'll pirate it, and they can't squeeze blood from a stone anyway.
What for? So these guys can get burned twice instead of once?
Sorry for the snark - I like WP7, I think it's a refreshing take on smartphone UI, but adoption is really at a standstill. It's been how long since it launched and I've only ever seen one in the wild that didn't belong to someone affiliated with MSFT.
God knows I'd love to have a viable third player in the mobile platform wars, but as it is it just isn't happening.
Maybe I'm wrong, but the circumstances are different for WP7 than it was for the iPhone and Android. I don't think that there was going to be any question that the iPhone was going to be a success with the long lines at launch and devs breaking into the OS to get apps to run. With Android, they were the first true competitor to iOS when it came to touch-based phones.
With WP7 there doesn't seem to be the enthusiasm for the product. It's a terrific OS but I get the feeling that they're really late to the game. This could all change but I don't think anyone is willing to bet their money or time on it, especially after the swift demise of WebOS.
I think the problem for WP7 is that there are now two "good enough" options out there now so all new contenders are going to have to take things a big step forward to attract any interest. From what I've seen of it WP7 isn't enough of an improvement to be genuinely disruptive.
And Microsoft's indecisive churn on its development stack lately has got to make developers a little wary.
They key to WP7 is that it's a competitor to Android. Apple iOS is not available to OEMs, but Android and WP7 is. If handset OEMs do not have a second choice, they'll have a single external dependency on Google and Google will use it to push them around or Google might screw it up really bad. It's in the OEMs best interest for WP7 to at least become somewhat successful so they themselves have a second option.
There is no such dependency on Google with Android because it's open source. You don't have to ask them permission or pay them money to build a phone with it. I agree life may be hard if your competitors get the code before you do and that you may want to have a cozy relationship with Google (and cooperate with your competitors on some level) but it's nowhere close to the dependency you get being a WP7 OEM.
If I ran a phone maker, I'd keep a WP7 handset or two in the lineup (because there will be people who'll want it) and because I don't like to be cornered. But I'd also keep a team ready to run with Android without Google support, knowing exactly what I'd have to change if I couldn't use Google brands or software.
But, again, you don't have to depend on Google like you do with Microsoft. And true great devices come from the careful matching of hardware and software and that's hard to do if you don't get the source code.
You need to work together with Google to gain access to the whole ecosystem, but nothing prevents you from having your own market and it may make sense in some verticals (like B&N does)
I don't see why you think WP7 is a competitor to Google but not Apple. Philosophy-wise, it is somewhere between the iOS and Android platforms. More locked down than Android, less locked down than iOS. Like Android, WP7 is currently distributed by OEMs, independently from Microsoft. But the licensing agreement for those OEMs is much tighter than it is for Android. Like iOS, Microsoft has an established entertainment distribution channel centered around XBox Live and the Zune technology. Even if they think Android is an easier target, I guarantee you they consider Apple a competitor.
In any case, I don't see why you think OEMs are particularly dependent on Google. Google has no direct control over Android -- it's just that Google's fork of the Android source code is the most popular with OEMs for the time being. There is nothing stopping OEMs from building their own CyanogenMod-type customizations (after all, Samsung just hired the creator of this ROM) or even forking Android entirely as apparently some Chinese OEMs are doing: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2010/07/androids-ascent-.... Hell, there's nothing stopping Microsoft OEMs from releasing their own customization of Android with deep integration with XBox Live, Bing search, and Microsoft's other cloud services.
I think we'll see some interesting things play out with the proposed Google purchase of Motorola and Nokia becoming a premier(favored?) WP7/7.5+ partner. In the case of Google, they might be able to set the standard for Android implementations since they'll have vertical integration from hardware to software. We don't know how much Nokia will benefit from their new relationship compared to the other partners. In either case, Google and Microsoft seem to want to follow Apple's complete stack(and don't forget RIM is still in this too who also have a complete stack and a new QNX rtos. Outside of the US, RIM is doing very well) or at least offer the complete stack as an option to customers.
I wanted to edit because of this but you've described it perfectly. The problem is the MMI purchase. If MS is unable to make Android prohibitively more expensive than WP7 then there is no way they can defeat Google as than alternative.
There are some cold realities that Microsoft is up against here. A half decent "me too" effort that's 4 years late is not going to win a lot of marketshare.
The first Samsung Bada phone was launched in June 2010, a few months before WP7. Bada has been increasing in marketshare since its launch, unlike WP7, and surpasses WP7 (note that Microsoft's marketshare includes the older Windows Mobile as well, I can't find separate figures - so Microsoft's lack of success is even more significant).
I disagree with the sentiments here that MS is a battleship that can force itself into the market.
MS have proven themselves to be very poor at updating Windows Phone. They simply aren't light enough on their feet.
Their battle ship did not help the Zune.
And their ideas on tablet interfaces are STILL centred around matching desktop power and features.... They were arrogant and dismissive towards the iPad, and Windows on tablets will definitely be a bloodied nose for them if they believe they can drop in desktop applications onto curated experiences like tablets.
The only chance I can see, is if they position themselves as a simpler alternative to Android.
> The only chance I can see, is if they position themselves as a simpler alternative to Android.
Which is damn hard to do because Android is open-source and you don't want to even talk to Google unless you want to put Google-branded software on your thingie. It's hardly noticeable, but Android powers all Nook devices, including the first dual-screen one.
They just partnered with Nokia that still makes 1/3 of all phones globally. They just purchased the fastest growing telecom company in the world (Skype).
Microsoft is a battleship. It moves incredibly slowly, but once it turns, and sets its guns on something it brings an immense amount of firepower to bear.
Years ago, people complained about Microsoft's take on security. Win 7 is now one of the most secure OS's on the market. People a couple years ago were complaining about how ugly Windows was... Win 7 mobile is gorgeous, and previews show that Metro is going to be prominent in Win 8. I'd bet that Windows is going to be a force to be reckoned with in mobile, but it's going to take a couple of years.
Win 7 is now one of the most secure OS's on the marketWin 7 is now one of the most secure OS's on the market
Yep, that's why it took two weeks for my wife's machine to be compromised with malware, and it was back to Ubuntu for her. Windows 7 is definitely an improvement, but for the two years she's run Ubuntu, there have been absolutely no malware issues. Now, if all the damned video codecs worked appropriately...
I can't believe Apotheker made such stridently pro-webOS comments just a month ago about how much HP is behind the platform, just to pull the rug from underneath.
I would agree. The main problem at HP has been the board which has destroyed this company. They've hired the worst CEO's possible for the past fifteen years. They've gone to one of the most respected companies in the world to a laughing stock among many business people.
Maybe all that they have left is the business sector but they will be far less successful than IBM.
You never buy DNA. It has to be there in you. Tell me one example who bought a plaform in and made it successful. HP never had a chance. Leo was dreaming when he bought WebOS. I'm glad the dream is over sooner than later.
Are you comparing an OS a single guy wrote with WebOS?
...and here we go down the rabbit hole. If I answer your question, which expands the scope of discussion beyond what the GP post was requesting and beyond the scope of my comment, then you respond, and I respond again, by the end of the thread we could be discussing the relative merits of tuna versus salmon.
I was responding with a specific counterexample to a specific point (which I quoted) raised in the original post. Nothing more.
Or, if you prefer a one-word answer: "yes." Now, I'm going to leave this thread to its proper place in my mind, which is to say, out of it :).
I was telling you the example is bad because it's not like Microsoft made a complex acquisition of a company with a product line with QDOS. They just bought a couple thousand lines of x86 code any single person could read and understand completely.
I disagree. I think the market has truly changed. Back in the feature phone days, it really did matter whether you had an LG, Samsung, or Nokia phone. Now, not so much. You either have an iPhone, an Android phone, or a Blackberry. Nokia's done some great things in the past, but their brand alone won't be enough to cover for the weakness of the WP7 ecosystem.
Nokia's success depends far more on the strength of WP7 than does WP7's success rely upon the strength of Nokia.
IMO It's a chicken and egg situation, developers will go where the users are. I think Nokias brand name will generate a decent bump in sales, enough to get apps flowing through. As long as the major apps are in the store, the average user who might otherwise buy an Android device won't know the difference (at least not at the time of purchasing).
I hear it's different in the USA, but here in Australia many people would LOVE to buy a Nokia, their brand name is associated with 'quality'. If Nokia can hit the right price points, I can see users who have been disappointed with their budget Android devices heading to the 'safe haven' of a Nokia device.
It will take a while to gain momentum, but I'm optimistic on the outcome. I hope they go well because I'd love to develop for WP7.
I don't think he's referring to Nokia's brand name. Personally I'm looking forward to the Nokia phones, though not holding my breath on their success.
Given the pseudo-acquisition of Nokia, MSFT has a golden opportunity here to create an end-to-end appliance the way Apple does; to make sure that they're selling a sexy package, instead of selling a sexy OS in blah hardware (i.e., all of the WP7 launch phones) or a blah OS in sexy hardware.
They can finally do the vertical integration that IMHO is sorely needed if anyone hopes to compete at Apple's level.
Buuuuut given MSFT's track record in recent years, and with the departure of some key heads (who pushed for vertically integrated "experience"-building, instead of OEM licensing), I'm not banking on it happening this way.
It's been less than a year since it launched. The T-Mobile G1 and Android took 1+ years before it escaped its stagnant adoption rates. I remember poking fun at the G1 long after its release and about how I only ever saw one in the wild.
And still, in terms of competition for the "smartphone" customer, it was essentially only competing with the iPhone, and losing on everything but price. It took a couple of years to be comparable in "attractiveness" (features+look+easy of use .. the mix that customers want). The W7 mobile phones are losing on everything including price to both iPhone and Android. That's a much harder fight.
Microsoft might still be a contender in this game -- they spent some $5B and managed to attain that position in gaming despite a very late start (compared to Sony and Nintendo). Though you should remember Sony were resting on their PS2 laurels, and Nintendo were licking their wounds at the time. Both Apple and Google are still with a cut-throat we-have-to-win-this attitude, and they are strong opponents.
It wasn't underpowered for its time. It exceeded its competitor, the iPhone 3G, in specifications. I think what really hurt it was Android's immaturity at the time.
The HTC Dream was an odd little device, but it still holds a special place in my heart (I ended up buying one dirt cheap to hack on, so I could use my N1 for daily use)
You are correct. The G1 sports hardware a little bit better than the iPhone 3G, but, remember, it ran most of the software through a non-JIT VM instead of natively. And Dalvik didn't make use of the Jazelle extensions present on the CPU (I am not sure if that's even possible), nor the software made use of its GPU. For that, they should have used much beefier hardware to present similar performance.
I wouldn't just point to Android's immaturity. The G1 is just not a great design. Perhaps, if Dalvik could make use of the Jazelle extensions or the presentation layer made use of the GPU, the G1 would present a better experience, but, overall, I wouldn't expect it to fly.
As an owner of one, the biggest issue isn't that there aren't enough apps -- it's that the biggies aren't there. Pandora? Nope. Spotify? Nope. The list goes on, and worse, the startups with a mobile component (think Uber) don't even seem to consider it a target platform.
I don't really care how many tip calculators or games there are. If you don't have the biggies, it's hardly more than mail+SMS, at least for me.
I did have the Zune Pass, though, which is a nice alternative to all of the music apps. But, it doesn't work on OSX (can't stream under silverlight; the windows phone connector can't browse/copy media), so it meant booting up my gaming machine any time I wanted to put more music on it.
> Sorry for the snark - I like WP7, I think it's a refreshing take on smartphone UI, but adoption is really at a standstill.
It's worse than that for WP7. Even Samsung's Bada has more marketshare than Microsoft. That puts Microsoft in fifth place, and without even any momentum.
To be honest, I'm rather interested in trying out a WP7 phone. The problem that I have is the fact that it's a huge barrier to entry to dish out hundreds of dollars just to test out a small device. I'm not in a position to be able to just dish money out like that, and I assume there are many people in the same boat as me. I guess that's the greatest burden to anyone trying to break into this market - everyone questions why they should dish out the same amount of money for x phone, when they could just get an iPhone for approximately the same amount of money - they already know everyone loves the iphone.
With that being said, I think Brandon Watson is doing his job extremely well - he is eliminating that barrier to entry and getting hackers using WP7 devices. Perhaps creating evangelists.
On a side note, Windows 7 has got me to switch back to a Windows OS, from Debian, that I had been running as my main OS since Vista came out. I'm just one guy, but Microsoft is doing some things right. Maybe they can make WP7 work?
FWIW, you can commonly score an HTC Surround for about $100 on Craigslist, and they are completely capable, albeit unsexy, devices. I never experience the slightest lag or slowdown with Mango on mine, and it feels much faster than my iPhone 4.
I currently run an unsexy Android phone, so I could bare with something less than optimal. It runs, makes phone calls and I can play with it, so I am happy and fairly easy to please. With that being said, I just checked ebay and you're right, the surround is listed quite cheap. I'm currently in Canada (for now) so I wonder how easy it is to unlock so I can run it on a Canadian carrier?
I paid $25 USD to get mine unlocked from htcimeiunlock.com. I'm told you can get them for half that price. Got an unlock code back about 15 minutes after I paid for it.
That's neat and I'm glad to see it's so high-touch. I tried writing an app for my phone, but got stymied... by the sign-up/verification process. Tried using DreamSpark (https://www.dreamspark.com/default.aspx ), and unlike the Apple sign-up there's this weird third party verification that you're a real human developer or something and after weeks of trying to figure out how to get them to actually validate me so I could install apps onto my phone, I just gave up.
And mind you, I pretty much know what I'm doing. I was on the Visual Studio team for 7 years, I sold > $100k in iPhone apps, and I do work on compilers towards my PhD right now. A poor undergrad might not even be able to get as far as I did...
After seeing this I installed Windows (shocking, I haven't used Windows since Windows 2000) and installed the express SDK to check it out.
I have to admit I'm actually liking what's there. While I didn't quite have my webOS apps ready to be published, so I don't really qualify for this I guess, I might have to consider the platform. The UI itself is fresh and much better than what I saw from CE on PocketPCs years ago. Of course, not having an actual phone hurts so maybe I'll wait and see how things evolve with the mango release first; I'm still feeling pretty burnt on investing in webOS hardware.
What is the deal with companies who have dominated the mobile sector, Palm, Nokia, Microsoft, just losing focus, ignoring it for a while, and then letting someone else come in and start making all this money.
Will Apple and Google head down this path? Unlikely, it seems to be worth more money now than ever.
They start thinking the whole world revolves around them. They fail to take competition seriously and fail to employ disruptive innovation to create their next generation products. They forget people are buying usefulness and think their clients want their products. The average user doesn't want a computer/PDA/whatever - the average user wants to do the things they once needed computers/PDAs/whatever for.
Will it happen to Apple and Google? Not sure. Possibly.
When companies get big, they start to abhor change. Change is what keeps companies smart.
It may be sarcasm, but WP7 is quite a bit different than WinMo 6. Different tools, different design, etc. Developing for WinMo 6 wasn't a hardship, if you knew most of the windows APIs. That said, you had to develop using a lot of familiar Windows APIs.
WP7 is supposed to be cleaner. I don't use it currently, but will be interested when I have the chance (probably later this year).
In a sense, each platform requires that you "adopt" their platform of choice. iOS - OSX, WinCE - Windows, Android - Eclipse (and you aren't going to tell me Eclipse is actually superior to OSX or WinX or Linux -- it is bloated, kludgy, and has it's own quirks -- but it is the easiest platform for android dev)...
That said, the worst mobile dev. platform I've ever used was Symbian. On Windows it was a jumble, on *nix/OSX it was a trip into insanity.
Actually, with the exception of the visual layout tools, I find IntelliJ better in just about every way than Eclipse for Android coding. And it's so much better than XCode 4 that I wouldn't know where to start enumerating the differences.
I know a lot of people are happily coding Android apps with Vim or Emacs and command line tools too.
Are you referring to the IntelliJ community edition? I program on the 3 major smartphone platforms (iOS, Android, an WP7) and Android is perhaps the most painful with Eclipse. I'd be interested in IntelliJ if I could use the free version (but I don't see any reference to Android)
Yeah. Android development is completely supported in the free version. Give it a shot. I've been an IDE hater for most of my career but IntelliJ really does increase my productivity.
I would take whatever Brandon or other WP7 dev team managers say or promise with a heavy grain of salt.
Recently, I was in discussions with a couple people at Microsoft to swing one of the free developer phones they were offering on Twitter.
They speak of giving one away like it's no big deal. So I had some back and forth with them on an app, and they said something like "Ok, get a MVP and we'll see about getting you some goodies". I got the MVP done and sent off emails and haven't heard back from them in weeks. Not even a "no".
So yeah, I feel a little bitter about it all. It's not like they owe me anything, but just take whatever Brandon, Ben, and gang say with a great big grain of salt.
I see a lot of talk about supporting developers from Microsoft, but not a lot of action.