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via Jeff Hadfield, who's at BUILD keeping an eye on things for The Code Project:
By now, and especially if you have been following @thecodeproject on Twitter, you’ve seen a lot of Tuesday’s Windows 8 developer preview news.
Microsoft billed this developer-focused launch as a “new opportunity for developers.” And that it is, but exactly what the opportunity is remains to be seen. To their credit, the Microsoft teams have certainly done a lot of work on building new UI foundations, making touch an equal partner with keyboard/mouse. And the new hardware is also impressive. But while the pieces are all there, many questions remain to be resolved between now and when Windows 8 finally ships (we’re guessing in about a year).
There’s plenty of coverage about the new UI, and a lot of it can be found on the official Windows sites. We’ve taken careful notes – and we’re happy to add any commentary if you’d like, but rather than rehash the #bldwin Twitter hashtag (re-hashtag?), a few words of perspective might be better.
Our friend David Platt reminded us of his recent MSDN Magazine article and emphasized his admonitions there – about making sure the war hasn’t moved to new fronts while Microsoft continues to fight the same battle in the same place. Has the market moved on? Maybe. Can Microsoft lead the market again? Maybe. The company has a strong history of letting others blaze the way and then stepping ahead, much like stepping in front of a parade already in process. (Which in turn reminds us of the final scenes of Animal House, but with less debauchery.)
Developer buzz is mixed – excitement about the opportunity, sure, but fears also about it being too late. Here’s the thing: Windows still has dominant market share worldwide. In today’s presentations, Microsoft claimed over 450 million Windows 7 licenses sold, making it – as of last Friday – more in use than Windows XP. That’s a lot of seats, and a lot of opportunity for line of business apps and consumer apps.
But many, including me, express some skepticism about how ubiquitous and affordable touch-based PCs will become in the short term. Will they be more than a niche product? Perhaps, but the iPad, for example, is still not affordable for most. Get a nice Windows 8 slate/convertible at the $400-$500 USD price point, though, by next fall, and you’ve got a winner.
Again: metric tonnes of great new features and tonnes of “goodness” included in the APIs and UI guidelines. We’re anxious to get to play with the bits. Unsure how they will play on today’s hardware systems – dev bits and the Windows 8 slates were not available for press, so we won’t be trying any apps on our own. Let us know how you fare.
Finally, a few useful articles:
Sorry Apple, Windows 8 ushers in the post-post-PC era[^] The point here? That a capable computing device should be all things to all people, not a dumbed-down device that’s hard to do “real work” on. Agreed: I like my iPad, but as an authoring tool it’s a train wreck.
My friend Sean Gallagher has a more cynical look[^], but wisely points out that the big news is that Web developers who know JavaScript and HTML are now on an equal footing with traditional .NET (C#/C++/VB) devs. Interesting, and at least one of my developer friends expressed some concern about how that will affect traditional Windows developers. As I see it, Microsoft had no choice but to try to co-opt these “Web developers” in order to increase market share. The overall worldwide growth in ‘developers’ in general is coming from areas outside of the traditional .NET stack – so this is really their only choice.
There’s also a nice post at the Windows Team blog that shows a bunch of the UI updates[^]. If you can’t spare the time to watch the keynote (two and a half hours, seriously), read this but grab a few minutes to see the UI in motion in one of the videos.
And let’s say you’ve downloaded the bits already[^]. What to do? Try our friend Scott Hanselman’s guide (you’ll put your eye out, no warranties express or implied, YMMV) to running Win 8 from a VHD[^].
As always, let us know your experience, and post your tips and how-tos on the site.
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We were at Microsoft's BUILD conference keynote address today and had a chance to see (and tweet about) some of the features revealed for Windows 8. Here's a rundown of the highlights:
Starting out, Steve Sinofsky discussed WIndows 8 on ARM processors, not that it's "equally at home on ARM and x86". Hardware graphics acceleration is "baked in" to the OS.
As you've probably already heard - it wasn't a secret going into BUILD - the Metro UI introduced with Windows Phone 7 is being adopted in Windows 8. The Metro-style even extends to the remote desktop app, which supports remote touch.
Of course, you're probably interested in the developer side of things. To paraphrase a tweet from @DavidJKelley: programming becomes a life style choice in Windows 8 - HTML5, Silverlight, C++/XAML its all good. The new version of Expression Blend will now work with HTML5/CSS as well as XAML, and they demo'd converting a Silverlight app to a Win8 app by just changing some using statements.
Developers also now have acces to SkyDrive access just like local file system through APIs.
There's a lot more, and we'll be covering much of it in the Daily Insider[^] tomorrow, so make sure you're subscribed.
Finally, if you're ready to play, you can get your Widows 8 dev preview tonight at dev.windows.com. No activation needed (though no support provided, either).
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Over the next few weeks we're going to be posting a series of blogs outlining what we're up to (and the how and why) to give you more insight into what goes on behind the large orange doors of CodeProject central.
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