Well, there are a few good reasons for that: coding for WinRT is harder than it should be, and the developers are not fans of the WinRT UI (so they don't use it).
I am in this very situation, with an app with has dozens of millions of users on Windows (and millions daily).
The first reason is the most important. WinRT requires a lot of rewrites of your code. (and the rationale behind some limitation are often political), and Microsoft is not helping or making it easy for you Notably for networking and multimedia.
Networking: everyone uses the BSD sockets, Win32, Linux, OSX, iOS, Android, Symbian, Bada, etc... And you cannot use them on WinRT. There is a very high chance that your code or one of your library uses it, of course.
But the bad part is that Microsoft does not make easy with a wrapper exposing WinSock-like API based on their new API. Not even a wrapper than does 80% of the needs.
Multimedia and Games: your videogame that works with a C++ engine and OpenGL ES for casual games that works on iOS, Android, Bada,... does not work under WinRT, because OpenGL is not allowed... And I don't even speak about Video acceleration.
Yes, they need to do a massive change in their APIs, but helping the transition would have been a good idea...
So yes, writing yet another Twitter client is easy on WinRT, for more complex applications, well, it is way too hard and difficult to do it this fast.
Well, there are a few good reasons for that: coding for WinRT is harder than it should be
A lot of us haven't even gotten far enough to figure that out. Microsoft just switched us all over to a new UI toolkit (Windows Presentation Foundation) with the release of .NET 3 five or so years ago. We've invested a lot of time and money into getting up to speed with this new technology. And now we're already being asked to migrate away from it and onto yet another Next Big Thing.
Meanwhile, Microsoft zinged its mobile developers (the very ones they're so desperate to court) even harder by deciding that the new mobile platform they brought out only two years ago would not be compatible with the new mobile platform they're bringing out now.
It was twelve years ago this month that Steve Ballmer did his famous monkey dance while repeatedly shouting "Developers!" and apparently slipping into some sort of fugue state. Well, it turns out that all those developers he wanted to make such a big deal of saying are such a big deal? They're are all kind of pissed off and disgruntled right now.
"So yes, writing yet another Twitter client is easy on WinRT, for more complex applications, well, it is way too hard and difficult to do it this fast."
Almost every Metro style application demo I've seen is some variant of a "social" app. Do they really think that the millions of windows developers all suddenly started working on social apps?
Every one of the pivots that they have made in the past few years has been in reaction to some external threat and the developers are in the crossfire. Windows developers are too weary to be excited about yet another wide ranging change.
Visual Studio 2008 to Visual Studio 2010 Professional upgrade price: $249. Visual Studio 2010 Professional to Visual Studio 2012 Professional upgrade price: $499.
I didn't even think of that, but all mobile games on iOS and Android are done with OpenGL ES, and Microsoft doesn't even support it. That could be a major problem for Microsoft.
You can use the ANGLE library [1] to translate OpenGL ES to DirectX. It's used by both Chrome and Firefox, so it's widely deployed and also tested for OpenGL ES conformance.
Re: networking, you are of course right. At the same time, I can sympathize with Microsoft's decision to abandon Winsock. Cross-platform use of BSD sockets is mired in a deplorable mess of #defines and '90s incompatibilities. For new code, the non-blocking WinRT API is a million times better -- the question is, what can Microsoft do to make porting easier?
Funny, I have exactly the opposite opinion: because Metro supports html + javascript it's very easy to get data-driven apps out with very little effort.
Of course if you're doing anything interesting then it's probably a nightmare.. but the vast majority of applications aren't doing anything interesting, so Win RT is great for them.
I'm one of those developers who was ready to jump right in and go crazy on the platform...until I fully realized how the ecosystem would function.
1. The Windows app store is Metro only.
2. Developers as well as normal users are actively looking for ways to avoid having to interact with Metro.
Developers have zero interest in personally using Metro, so they have less of an incentive to port their apps. Other desktop users will also not like being thrown into metro just to use a one-off application, maybe unless it's a game, so they'll continue looking for the desktop version of an app.
>> "2. Developers as well as normal users are actively looking for ways to avoid having to interact with Metro."
It hasn't been officially launched yet: how many normal users have spent more than a few minutes with it?
Personally after playing with it for a few weeks I really like it. I've just started developing for it too (being an iOS developer for the last 4 years) and within a few days I am up to speed.
>> "2. Developers as well as normal users are actively looking for ways to avoid having to interact with Metro."
I think this is good. It forces developers to have to learn the new API's. If they didn't do this people would continue to build desktop apps (largely because people are lazy and it's easier to continue working with what you know) and the best apps wouldn't turn metro. Nudging developers to go metro means that when Windows 9 comes around they can get rid of the stupid split (metro/desktop) interface.
The reason is the same that the OS X app store is heavily sandboxed. Microsoft does not want to distribute via its store BonziBuddy type borderline adware/spyware/bloatware/toolbars with always running processes and services and icons in the system tray. It's a pain to enforce on Desktop apps. Contrast that with WinRT apps which are totally self contained and sandboxed except for integrating via Charms.
>2. Developers as well as normal users are actively looking for ways to avoid having to interact with Metro.
Two thousand apps without even the OS really launching or the Surface being released is nothing to sneeze at.
I think the real differentiator will be how well the Windows RT and Windows 8 touch enabled laptops will sell over the holidays. If they sell well, developers and apps won't be far behind.
Yes I've trialled Windows 8 heavily for our environment and installed about 50 "popular highly rated apps". They are all simply put: shit. Flakey, broken, hard to use, slow, huge, not useful and poorly integrated and nothing inbetween. Even the microsoft provided apps with Windows 8 are really shoddy.
Seriously I'm a fan of Windows Phone 7.5 and own a handset with lots of apps installed but it doesn't scale up to the desktop at all.
Not a single existing Windows user is going to bother with this crap - it'll end up going to way desktop gadgets went except you can't turn it off any more.
OS X is still allowing regular people to install apps from whatever source they want, by default.
In Windows 8 you have to either check "Allow all trusted applications to install" in the Group Policy settings in Win Pro/Enterprise, or change a registry setting. This means users will have to go out of their way to install anything beyond what the App Store provides. Well, at least the option is still available.
Steam is an app store for games. Games purchases are impulse driven. When buying from Steam, you either go for a big title that you know you'll find on Steam or you go searching for something that triggers your interest.
On the other hand a large part of discovery on a regular app store is search-driven by actual needs of users that want to accomplish something very specific. Like, just the other day I searched for a way to view/manage my Picasa-stored photos on my iPad.
The number of apps is important for one because this means the app store doesn't solve many specific problems users are having and because Microsoft is known to have a big developer ecosystem since forever (building platforms is what they do best) - and so this lack of enthusiasm reflects badly on them and on Windows 8.
Wholly to be expected at this point. Until Windows 8 hits the shelves and people start using it there is little incentive to build specifically for it - and since Win7 apps run perfectly well in Win8 there is little reason to focus on Windows 8 by itself at this point.
Once the WinRT tablets get into peoples hands the call for RT-specific apps will increase.
Plus, the WinRT dev environment really isn't as fully baked as we've grown accustomed to in the Windows world. So many things just simply don't exist at this point. I've been looking at building a Javascript-based WinRT project - one of the suggested app build paths suggested by MS and discovered that there is no touch-and-drag support built in yet. You can roll your own using JS-events but .... really, things like that dampen the enthusiasm.
This. People don't even have Windows 8 tablets yet, and the OS itself is still only available to MSDN subscribers. Once the OS and devices hit store shelves development will ramp up exponentially.
Most iOS apps weren't developed before the iPhone was released. They were developed as a result of somebody getting an iPhone or an iPad, thinking "Why can't I do X with this?" and then building an app.
I work with a lot (80+ developers) in the Microsoft ecosystem. I haven't found a single one who is enthusiastic about Windows 8. Most are looking rather worried as yet again the rug has been pulled from underneath them. They got burned with Silverlight and the first drop of the Foundation series of products and Entity Framework.
Another incompatible API is just more shit to deal with.
> Most are looking rather worried as yet again the rug has been pulled from underneath them. They got burned with Silverlight and the first drop of the Foundation series of products and Entity Framework.
Not one dev saw that coming with those APIs? I don't believe it. Microsoft in the 2000s has been all about throwing APIs against the wall and then deprecating them. Anyone who has been around Microsoft knew this was a risk with Silverlight.
I think the real reason these particular devs got burned is because is because Windows today is like Mac before MacOS X: it's all about incompatibility with the rest of the world, "doing it better", crap like that. MVPs are happy to go along with it and adopt these technologies because they can keep their position of being important in the ecosystem. It's like Apple fans in the 90s. WPF, Silverlight, EF, all this stuff is akin to Apple's OpenDoc, or Dylan, or even Newton. It's shiny technology in an incompatible vacuum.
On the topic of the Windows app store. When Apple made iOS, they took components of MacOS X as the foundation of iOS. But when they released the Mac App Store, they didn't force developers on MacOS X develop to the iOS API. That's what Microsoft is trying to do here. Develop with RT or Metro or GTFO. Pure idiocy. The next step is predictable: Microsoft will have to step in like they have on WP7 and they'll start offering to pay for other people's development costs to do the port. I'd be surprised if they haven't already started offering that.
To be honest, do we really need so many apps? Yesterday I prepared the new phone (Galaxy Nexus) for my mum. I don't think I installed more than 7 apps from the market: Chrome browser, Google Sky Map, Rail navigator (for German railway tickets), Google Authenticator, Kindle reader, Öffi (public transport for a lot of cities), Google Goggles.
Did I miss anything important? Honest question - I'd like to prepare the phone as good as possible, it is her first smartphone. Perhaps some kind of news reader, but personally I don't use them, wouldn't know what news sources to set up.
"We need 1000s of apps" is just something Apple marketing has installed in our brains.
If Windows 8 comes with a decent browser, calendar and email app, they are good to go.
As for desktop PCs - I think only few people are still interested in creating desktop apps? Not counting games.
Individuals don't need that many apps. But since individuals need different sets, we need a large total. Your Mum needs rail navigator for German railway tickets. I need the Dublin Bus app. If you're exhibiting at the Munich Design Conference, you might need their useless lanyard scanning app.
Sometimes users need specific apps that are otherwise interchangeable. Kindle, for Kindle owners. Kobo For Kobo Owners. Gmail for Gmail people. Viber for friends of viber users. Whatsapp. LotusMessenger. Skype. Expensify for people who use expensify. You don't want your Mum to have to tell her friends to use Skype instead of LotusMessenger because her tablet doesn't have LotusMessenger, especially if she already uses it on her laptop or phone.
Raw numbers implicitly assume that the ratio of crap/important is the same across platforms. You could use the number of apps X each app's userbase to get the idea. The platforms are probably look more level if you look at numbers like that.
It's more critical now that people already have smartphones and they'll probably want the 5-10 apps they use to work on whatever tablet they buy.
- games/books/drawing apps/learning apps for your kids
- games for yourself
- music apps: cbc music, rdio & tunein radio for me
- off line reader: pocket or similar
- weather app
- justpictures. A flickr/picasa/facebook/many more picture viewing app. Provides notifications when people have uploaded new pictures, which is its killer feature.
- mx player
- aldiko/fbreader for reading books outside of the kindle walled garden
- atm locater app
- qrcode scanner, which is mostly used for installing apps from outside the store
"A lot of software developers are seduced by the old '80/20' rule. It seems to make a lot of sense: 80% of the people use 20% of the features. So you convince yourself that you only need to implement 20% of the features, and you can still sell 80% as many copies.
"Unfortunately, it's never the same 20%. Everybody uses a different set of features."
> "Did I miss anything important?"
Yes. These problems apply to Windows on the desktop as well.
And Windows exists as the 800 lb gorilla on the desktop for two big reasons:
1. massive numbers of legacy enterprise apps with mind-boggling levels of customization. (e.g. plugins, forms, scripts, macros, etc)
2. games
Making life easy for developers in updating/supporting those apps on new versions of Windows has been a huge part of maintaining their dominance. If Microsoft makes an upgrade even nearly as difficult as porting to a brand new platform, they're making a huge gamble that developers won't hedge toward cross-platform solutions and web apps.
Which, while great for consumers, would be disastrous for Microsoft.
Absolutely not, and I don't get the fascination with app number counts. I often hear people say "I got a new phone, what apps should I get?" Well, what problem do you need to solve? "Oh I just want more apps" is what they usually say. Then everyone wonders why their battery only lasts 7 hours.
I haven't looked in the Windows 8 store, but as long as it's not 2000 complete garbage apps like the pages and pages of ones you sift through on Play, I don't see the issue.
Well, the problem is that beside the most popular apps 'used by everyone' there are niche apps, used by just a bunch of people. And these make the difference.
Yeah, that's what I was thinking the whole time I was reading this article. "Only" 2000 apps? I'd rather have 200 well-designed and useful apps over 20,000 useless spam-ware ones any day of the week.
I've owned an Android device for a year or two and I can say that I have under 30 apps installed on the thing from the app store (and probably 5 of those are superfluous, I'm just too lazy to get rid of them). Yet, it has all the functionality I require. As nice as it is to have thousands upon thousands to choose from, honestly I think fewer can be better in some cases, especially from a consumer's perspective: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/27/your-money/27shortcuts.htm... Based on that article (I know it's NYT but it cites a good source or two), fewer apps might even result in more purchases overall.
MS doesn't give developers an option better than Apple's. Their platform (win RT) is as close as iOS. Oh, and that Metro. Do they really use this UI daily themselves? Or do they have a secret way to turn it off completely? Perhaps I am just too old to appreciate this new fashion.
"MS doesn't give developers an option better than Apple's. Their platform (win RT) is as close as iOS."
Sorry for disagree but between the other two (Android and WinRT) WinRT is fairly far away from iOS. Not mentioning that is way more comfortable to work on VS rather than Xcode.
It's very expected situation. Developers don't like WinRT and will stick to Win32 forever because Win32 is open platform (anyone can develop for it without paying Microsoft) and WinRT is closed platform where Microsoft can apply censorship in their "app shop". No developer in the whole world wants to be thrown out of that "shop" and supply ideas for next version of Windows for free.
To me, the biggest deal breaker is that having a Windows Phone developer account doesn't let you release applications for Windows 8.
It's a shame because many people including me could at least port some of their apps. An additional 99$/year for the Windows 8 store simply isn't worth it. If there's one major reason why the interest is so low then it's probably it.
I am definately going to stick with Windows Phone for the time being since it's been a great experience and the release of WP8 will bring some needed attention.
Microsoft loses developers by ignoring the installed base. XP held up WPF adoption, and Win7 will hold up WinRT. That's assuming anybody enjoys using it. It's still easier to ship on Win32 and not worry about these fragmented versions of the OS.
Also this is a tools question too: It's harder to make an app for two versions of Windows than it is to make an app for Windows and something else. The tools just don't make it easy to write conditional code.
When Apple released the App Store there were only 900 apps [1]. Which I believe shows that the number of apps is not a good measure of success. What is a good measure of success is that Apple had 10 million downloads in three days...
There would certainly be more apps in the store if they had opened the store up for more developers before now. They've only been accepting app submissions from most companies for about 45 days and individual developers were only allowed to submit apps 14 days ago.
How can they claim that developer interest is 'stagnant'? The number of apps is steadily increasing. What makes them think that Microsoft is worried? This story has almost no basis in fact.
Another report of this story on another tech news site did point out that developers may be aiming their releases for the date when Win 8 is generally available. So we may see an increase in the rate of releases as that date approaches. This is just speculation, just like the story, but at least it brings some balance to the argument.
So what? 2000 is a huge number. I can't even imagine scratching the surface of those, in terms of actually using them. I know they fill different niches, but on my desktop I use maybe about 2 dozen applications on a regular basis. Those 2000 apps could be far better on average than the half-million-or-so in the App Store or Google Play.
Or they could all be junk, and Windows Store is doomed.
Things don't really work like that. You don't want your platform to only have 1000-2000 apps. Why? Because you'll never get the "top 1000" apps in there. Plus, people have different needs for apps. On the real Windows you can find a program for just about anything. You won't be able to say that for the Windows store and Windows RT.
It's not about having the "top 10 apps". It's about having "all the apps you could ever need". And if there are 2000 apps, it most likely doesn't mean that it contains "all the apps you'll ever need". And which platform would you go with? One that has and will have all the apps you'll need or one that has "2000 apps"?
Disagree. First, the hypothesis that the quality distribution within the 2000 is substantially better than within the half-million-or-so is unlikely to be true, at least there's no evidence why it should be so.
Second, the 2000 is absolutely certain not to cover the long tail. The 2 dozen applications you use are not the half a dozen applications I use. Those car engine bluetooth+OBD monitors and bike repair apps are definitely not in the 2000 pool. Not to mention the variety of games out there.
Yeah, it's not the quantity, it's the quality. If there is a large subset of quality Windows 8 applications that's good.
Not everyone is going to put their applications on there straight away - how many put it onto the MacOS Store straight away (though there was A LOT of hype around the mac store).
Mobile application numbers don't really compare to desktop apps, noone really needs a fart app on their PC.
They should give away the professional version of visual studio for free. I think more people will start to write apps for Windows 8. They also should Webmatrix 2 IDE turn into a IDE for JavaScript developers compare able with visual studio. With all fancy auto completion, docs and helpers. And it should be super easy to "export" Windows 8 Apps with Webmatrix 2.
I mean... isn't developer interest in desktop platforms stagnant? I mean... what "apps" do desktop users buy aside from games and the MS Office suite and Adobe? Forgive me if this is massively ignorant of the giant world of desktop software I haven't installed.
[+] [-] jbk|13 years ago|reply
I am in this very situation, with an app with has dozens of millions of users on Windows (and millions daily).
The first reason is the most important. WinRT requires a lot of rewrites of your code. (and the rationale behind some limitation are often political), and Microsoft is not helping or making it easy for you Notably for networking and multimedia.
Networking: everyone uses the BSD sockets, Win32, Linux, OSX, iOS, Android, Symbian, Bada, etc... And you cannot use them on WinRT. There is a very high chance that your code or one of your library uses it, of course. But the bad part is that Microsoft does not make easy with a wrapper exposing WinSock-like API based on their new API. Not even a wrapper than does 80% of the needs.
Multimedia and Games: your videogame that works with a C++ engine and OpenGL ES for casual games that works on iOS, Android, Bada,... does not work under WinRT, because OpenGL is not allowed... And I don't even speak about Video acceleration.
Yes, they need to do a massive change in their APIs, but helping the transition would have been a good idea...
So yes, writing yet another Twitter client is easy on WinRT, for more complex applications, well, it is way too hard and difficult to do it this fast.
[+] [-] bunderbunder|13 years ago|reply
A lot of us haven't even gotten far enough to figure that out. Microsoft just switched us all over to a new UI toolkit (Windows Presentation Foundation) with the release of .NET 3 five or so years ago. We've invested a lot of time and money into getting up to speed with this new technology. And now we're already being asked to migrate away from it and onto yet another Next Big Thing.
Meanwhile, Microsoft zinged its mobile developers (the very ones they're so desperate to court) even harder by deciding that the new mobile platform they brought out only two years ago would not be compatible with the new mobile platform they're bringing out now.
It was twelve years ago this month that Steve Ballmer did his famous monkey dance while repeatedly shouting "Developers!" and apparently slipping into some sort of fugue state. Well, it turns out that all those developers he wanted to make such a big deal of saying are such a big deal? They're are all kind of pissed off and disgruntled right now.
[+] [-] partisan|13 years ago|reply
Almost every Metro style application demo I've seen is some variant of a "social" app. Do they really think that the millions of windows developers all suddenly started working on social apps?
Every one of the pivots that they have made in the past few years has been in reaction to some external threat and the developers are in the crossfire. Windows developers are too weary to be excited about yet another wide ranging change.
[+] [-] sageikosa|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mtgx|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pavlov|13 years ago|reply
Re: networking, you are of course right. At the same time, I can sympathize with Microsoft's decision to abandon Winsock. Cross-platform use of BSD sockets is mired in a deplorable mess of #defines and '90s incompatibilities. For new code, the non-blocking WinRT API is a million times better -- the question is, what can Microsoft do to make porting easier?
[1] http://code.google.com/p/angleproject/
[+] [-] davedx|13 years ago|reply
Wow. That's pretty ridiculous. So DirectX is allowed?
OK if you're a triple A studio with a cross-platform engine. Show stopper for most other devs.
[+] [-] radicalbyte|13 years ago|reply
Of course if you're doing anything interesting then it's probably a nightmare.. but the vast majority of applications aren't doing anything interesting, so Win RT is great for them.
[+] [-] bornhuetter|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] supersaiyan|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seanalltogether|13 years ago|reply
1. The Windows app store is Metro only.
2. Developers as well as normal users are actively looking for ways to avoid having to interact with Metro.
Developers have zero interest in personally using Metro, so they have less of an incentive to port their apps. Other desktop users will also not like being thrown into metro just to use a one-off application, maybe unless it's a game, so they'll continue looking for the desktop version of an app.
The whole ecosystem is really a buzzkill for me.
[+] [-] alexro|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nhebb|13 years ago|reply
They allow Desktop Apps as well.
[+] [-] k-mcgrady|13 years ago|reply
It hasn't been officially launched yet: how many normal users have spent more than a few minutes with it?
Personally after playing with it for a few weeks I really like it. I've just started developing for it too (being an iOS developer for the last 4 years) and within a few days I am up to speed.
>> "2. Developers as well as normal users are actively looking for ways to avoid having to interact with Metro."
I think this is good. It forces developers to have to learn the new API's. If they didn't do this people would continue to build desktop apps (largely because people are lazy and it's easier to continue working with what you know) and the best apps wouldn't turn metro. Nudging developers to go metro means that when Windows 9 comes around they can get rid of the stupid split (metro/desktop) interface.
[+] [-] cooldeal|13 years ago|reply
Well, the app store can link to desktop apps.
The reason is the same that the OS X app store is heavily sandboxed. Microsoft does not want to distribute via its store BonziBuddy type borderline adware/spyware/bloatware/toolbars with always running processes and services and icons in the system tray. It's a pain to enforce on Desktop apps. Contrast that with WinRT apps which are totally self contained and sandboxed except for integrating via Charms.
>2. Developers as well as normal users are actively looking for ways to avoid having to interact with Metro.
That may be true to some extent, but developers seem to be catching on. Jeff Atwood is upbeat: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/07/betting-the-company...
Two thousand apps without even the OS really launching or the Surface being released is nothing to sneeze at.
I think the real differentiator will be how well the Windows RT and Windows 8 touch enabled laptops will sell over the holidays. If they sell well, developers and apps won't be far behind.
[+] [-] bornhuetter|13 years ago|reply
Steam has less than 2,000 apps, and no-one would say that it feels empty.
The Mac app store launched with only 1,000 apps.
I don't think that the number of apps is particularly important as long as the quality stuff is there - can anyone who has used it comment?
[+] [-] eckyptang|13 years ago|reply
Seriously I'm a fan of Windows Phone 7.5 and own a handset with lots of apps installed but it doesn't scale up to the desktop at all.
Not a single existing Windows user is going to bother with this crap - it'll end up going to way desktop gadgets went except you can't turn it off any more.
[+] [-] bad_user|13 years ago|reply
In Windows 8 you have to either check "Allow all trusted applications to install" in the Group Policy settings in Win Pro/Enterprise, or change a registry setting. This means users will have to go out of their way to install anything beyond what the App Store provides. Well, at least the option is still available.
Steam is an app store for games. Games purchases are impulse driven. When buying from Steam, you either go for a big title that you know you'll find on Steam or you go searching for something that triggers your interest.
On the other hand a large part of discovery on a regular app store is search-driven by actual needs of users that want to accomplish something very specific. Like, just the other day I searched for a way to view/manage my Picasa-stored photos on my iPad.
The number of apps is important for one because this means the app store doesn't solve many specific problems users are having and because Microsoft is known to have a big developer ecosystem since forever (building platforms is what they do best) - and so this lack of enthusiasm reflects badly on them and on Windows 8.
[+] [-] the_unknown|13 years ago|reply
Once the WinRT tablets get into peoples hands the call for RT-specific apps will increase.
Plus, the WinRT dev environment really isn't as fully baked as we've grown accustomed to in the Windows world. So many things just simply don't exist at this point. I've been looking at building a Javascript-based WinRT project - one of the suggested app build paths suggested by MS and discovered that there is no touch-and-drag support built in yet. You can roll your own using JS-events but .... really, things like that dampen the enthusiasm.
[+] [-] bradwestness|13 years ago|reply
Most iOS apps weren't developed before the iPhone was released. They were developed as a result of somebody getting an iPhone or an iPad, thinking "Why can't I do X with this?" and then building an app.
[+] [-] eckyptang|13 years ago|reply
Another incompatible API is just more shit to deal with.
They are not happy.
I'm not either as I have to support these guys.
[+] [-] trimbo|13 years ago|reply
Not one dev saw that coming with those APIs? I don't believe it. Microsoft in the 2000s has been all about throwing APIs against the wall and then deprecating them. Anyone who has been around Microsoft knew this was a risk with Silverlight.
I think the real reason these particular devs got burned is because is because Windows today is like Mac before MacOS X: it's all about incompatibility with the rest of the world, "doing it better", crap like that. MVPs are happy to go along with it and adopt these technologies because they can keep their position of being important in the ecosystem. It's like Apple fans in the 90s. WPF, Silverlight, EF, all this stuff is akin to Apple's OpenDoc, or Dylan, or even Newton. It's shiny technology in an incompatible vacuum.
On the topic of the Windows app store. When Apple made iOS, they took components of MacOS X as the foundation of iOS. But when they released the Mac App Store, they didn't force developers on MacOS X develop to the iOS API. That's what Microsoft is trying to do here. Develop with RT or Metro or GTFO. Pure idiocy. The next step is predictable: Microsoft will have to step in like they have on WP7 and they'll start offering to pay for other people's development costs to do the port. I'd be surprised if they haven't already started offering that.
[+] [-] Tichy|13 years ago|reply
Did I miss anything important? Honest question - I'd like to prepare the phone as good as possible, it is her first smartphone. Perhaps some kind of news reader, but personally I don't use them, wouldn't know what news sources to set up.
"We need 1000s of apps" is just something Apple marketing has installed in our brains.
If Windows 8 comes with a decent browser, calendar and email app, they are good to go.
As for desktop PCs - I think only few people are still interested in creating desktop apps? Not counting games.
[+] [-] netcan|13 years ago|reply
Sometimes users need specific apps that are otherwise interchangeable. Kindle, for Kindle owners. Kobo For Kobo Owners. Gmail for Gmail people. Viber for friends of viber users. Whatsapp. LotusMessenger. Skype. Expensify for people who use expensify. You don't want your Mum to have to tell her friends to use Skype instead of LotusMessenger because her tablet doesn't have LotusMessenger, especially if she already uses it on her laptop or phone.
Raw numbers implicitly assume that the ratio of crap/important is the same across platforms. You could use the number of apps X each app's userbase to get the idea. The platforms are probably look more level if you look at numbers like that.
It's more critical now that people already have smartphones and they'll probably want the 5-10 apps they use to work on whatever tablet they buy.
[+] [-] bryanlarsen|13 years ago|reply
- Screen Filter
- Flipboard
- games/books/drawing apps/learning apps for your kids
- games for yourself
- music apps: cbc music, rdio & tunein radio for me
- off line reader: pocket or similar
- weather app
- justpictures. A flickr/picasa/facebook/many more picture viewing app. Provides notifications when people have uploaded new pictures, which is its killer feature.
- mx player
- aldiko/fbreader for reading books outside of the kindle walled garden
- atm locater app
- qrcode scanner, which is mostly used for installing apps from outside the store
- good calculator (droid48 for me)
- connectbot (ssh)
- good alarm app (double twist for me)
- skype, voip app (I use Bria)
- shared grocery lists: our groceries. indispensable.
- todo app (i use got to do)
gimmicky apps that are worth installing if you have lots of room: (granted, I paid 10cents for much of these)
- star chart
- sound hound or similar
- flight track
- camera app a la instagram (camera zoom fx, paper camera)
And that's just what's on my front screen. There are more, but most could be easily uninstalled.
p.s. how do you format lists on HN?
[+] [-] RyanMcGreal|13 years ago|reply
"Unfortunately, it's never the same 20%. Everybody uses a different set of features."
-- Joel Spolsky http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000020.html
[+] [-] roc|13 years ago|reply
And Windows exists as the 800 lb gorilla on the desktop for two big reasons:
1. massive numbers of legacy enterprise apps with mind-boggling levels of customization. (e.g. plugins, forms, scripts, macros, etc)
2. games
Making life easy for developers in updating/supporting those apps on new versions of Windows has been a huge part of maintaining their dominance. If Microsoft makes an upgrade even nearly as difficult as porting to a brand new platform, they're making a huge gamble that developers won't hedge toward cross-platform solutions and web apps.
Which, while great for consumers, would be disastrous for Microsoft.
[+] [-] briancurtin|13 years ago|reply
Absolutely not, and I don't get the fascination with app number counts. I often hear people say "I got a new phone, what apps should I get?" Well, what problem do you need to solve? "Oh I just want more apps" is what they usually say. Then everyone wonders why their battery only lasts 7 hours.
I haven't looked in the Windows 8 store, but as long as it's not 2000 complete garbage apps like the pages and pages of ones you sift through on Play, I don't see the issue.
[+] [-] bgarbiak|13 years ago|reply
Classic example of 80/20 rule.
[+] [-] Nav_Panel|13 years ago|reply
I've owned an Android device for a year or two and I can say that I have under 30 apps installed on the thing from the app store (and probably 5 of those are superfluous, I'm just too lazy to get rid of them). Yet, it has all the functionality I require. As nice as it is to have thousands upon thousands to choose from, honestly I think fewer can be better in some cases, especially from a consumer's perspective: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/27/your-money/27shortcuts.htm... Based on that article (I know it's NYT but it cites a good source or two), fewer apps might even result in more purchases overall.
[+] [-] yarrel|13 years ago|reply
Said every Mac user in the 90s (myself included).
[+] [-] chj|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] IanDrake|13 years ago|reply
I say this after having the first iPhone, the GS, and the 4.
[+] [-] pmelendez|13 years ago|reply
Sorry for disagree but between the other two (Android and WinRT) WinRT is fairly far away from iOS. Not mentioning that is way more comfortable to work on VS rather than Xcode.
[+] [-] steve_colton|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] candl|13 years ago|reply
It's a shame because many people including me could at least port some of their apps. An additional 99$/year for the Windows 8 store simply isn't worth it. If there's one major reason why the interest is so low then it's probably it.
I am definately going to stick with Windows Phone for the time being since it's been a great experience and the release of WP8 will bring some needed attention.
[+] [-] wolfgke|13 years ago|reply
* I can't write my own JIT compiler because of a lack of VirtualAlloc() and VirtualProtect() functions
* I don't have access to some other lowlevel functions not available in WinRT that exist in WinAPI
* I am forced to use Microsoft's App Store to provide my Metro applications
I am not in the slightest interested in writing applications for WinRT.
See http://www.freelists.org/post/luajit/FYI-No-JIT-on-Windows-8... for explanations to the first point.
[+] [-] herf|13 years ago|reply
Also this is a tools question too: It's harder to make an app for two versions of Windows than it is to make an app for Windows and something else. The tools just don't make it easy to write conditional code.
[+] [-] jonaldomo|13 years ago|reply
[1] http://www.macstories.net/stories/four-years-of-app-store-de...
[+] [-] nhebb|13 years ago|reply
http://weblogs.asp.net/fbouma/archive/2012/09/12/the-windows...
The process looks completely messed up and will likely turn off many Windows developers (like myself).
[+] [-] ja27|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rhengles|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] IanDrake|13 years ago|reply
If I remember correctly the iPhone launched with no app store. I realize the author's point, but it's offered as fact with little to back it.
[+] [-] kristianp|13 years ago|reply
Another report of this story on another tech news site did point out that developers may be aiming their releases for the date when Win 8 is generally available. So we may see an increase in the rate of releases as that date approaches. This is just speculation, just like the story, but at least it brings some balance to the argument.
[+] [-] jcromartie|13 years ago|reply
Or they could all be junk, and Windows Store is doomed.
The numbers don't mean much.
[+] [-] mtgx|13 years ago|reply
It's not about having the "top 10 apps". It's about having "all the apps you could ever need". And if there are 2000 apps, it most likely doesn't mean that it contains "all the apps you'll ever need". And which platform would you go with? One that has and will have all the apps you'll need or one that has "2000 apps"?
[+] [-] praptak|13 years ago|reply
Second, the 2000 is absolutely certain not to cover the long tail. The 2 dozen applications you use are not the half a dozen applications I use. Those car engine bluetooth+OBD monitors and bike repair apps are definitely not in the 2000 pool. Not to mention the variety of games out there.
2000 is a really crappy number of apps to have.
[+] [-] thejosh|13 years ago|reply
Not everyone is going to put their applications on there straight away - how many put it onto the MacOS Store straight away (though there was A LOT of hype around the mac store).
Mobile application numbers don't really compare to desktop apps, noone really needs a fart app on their PC.
[+] [-] SunboX|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bicknergseng|13 years ago|reply