back to article Can Windows 8 developers be ‘the new rock stars’?

One of the odder things to transpire at TechEd Australia this week was Microsoft’s insistence that developers are the new rock stars. Kids these days, The Reg was told by a middle-aged product manager for Visual Studio, aren’t interested in electric guitars, turning it up to 11, leather jackets, attracting members of the …

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  1. Thorne

    How can you be a rockstar if nobody has heard of you?

    New pickup line

    Man "Hi I'm one of the developer who wrote Angry Birds"

    Woman "Lets have sex now"

    Might for for actual rockstars, not going to work for programmers

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

      1. JDX Gold badge

        No, you'll just be able to pay for hookers.

  2. Tom 7

    Just like modern rockstars

    what paid less that 7% of the revenue generated by a zero cost industry?

  3. Richard 12 Silver badge

    Notch?

    Definitely had (has?) groupies, and at one point his avatar did grace some posters.

    More seriously, the difference is actually social - music and film stars do tv appearances and tours, and much of their fame is based on that projected stage persona(s) rather than their raw skill in music/acting.

    Thus people know what they look like and think they know the person as well. They don't of course, but hey, a fake personality generally beats a real one anyway.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What?

    You need a domain attached enterprise client to load your own software onto a W8 desktop?

    And that's "a new technique" called "sideloading"?

    Shirley you can't be serious!

    Please tell me I missed something!

  5. ChrisInBelgium
    Windows

    Not soon though

    Of all these millions and millions of PC's running Windows, how many are in the hands of company IT departments and are 100 locked down? Meaning, as a user (you know, those millions of users) you can barely use them properly, let alone install something on it.

    Reality is that I can tell you - working for a large wordwide company using Windows PCs with several tens of thousands of users - we all still use Windows XP Service Pack 3, and apparently we might migrate 'soon' (meaning somewhere in 2013) to Windows 7. It has taken our central IT department all this time to completely lock the thing down (screw it up).

    So, installing apps from the Microsoft store on Windows 8? Maybe at home, certainly not in the enterprise environment. That is unfortunately the reality we live in.

    1. JDX Gold badge

      Re: Not soon though

      Yes but MS will be happy to you to upgrade to W7. It's still money... in fact a lot more money.

      Businesses which haven't yet started looking at a W7 migration MIGHT figure it's better to jump to W8 though, rather than upgrade to something already outdated.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Not soon though

        I don't think it works like that with Windows.. Windows doesn't go insta-obselete it's more "about release quality, finally" after a few years, as a rule. Win 7 came out of the box almost usable in many respects, but it still needed some rough edges sorting.

      2. Richard Plinston

        Re: Not soon though

        > Yes but MS will be happy to you to upgrade to W7. It's still money... in fact a lot more money.

        Will that difference make enterprises look at Win8 ?

        Perhaps they will drop the expensive move to Windows 7 that was supposed to take place next year and start planning for Win8 deployment in 2 or 3 years time. Of course that may mean they never get there.

  6. TeeCee Gold badge
    Happy

    "Upgrade rates for Windows 7 users are also an unknowable."

    Put me down for a tenner on "as near sod-all as makes no odds" please.

  7. Spearchucker Jones
    Meh

    I'm a Win8 dev but...

    ...sadly, the answer to any article who's title poses a question is invariably "no".

    If the answer were a yes, the title would've been something like "W8 DEVS ARE THE NEW ROCK STARS" with herds of exclamation marks or something. Shitty click-baiting at best, crap journalism at worst (because such an article belies a slow day at the office).

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Win 8 developers the new rockstars?

    More like the group of 5 paunchy old geezers in sky-blue tuxedos playing greatest hit medleys at weddings.

    1. Robert Helpmann??
      Childcatcher

      Re: Win 8 developers the new rockstars?

      "Has any developer, anywhere, in this or any other space-time continuum, ever had a even a single groupie?"

      Linus Torvalds? Tim Berners-Lee? Though perhaps a different grade of groupie...

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Actually

    Jeff Minter has had groupies/sycophants. Of course, they are mostly crusty potheads, but still..

  10. Irongut

    I'm a developer and I've had groupies

    Admitedly that was back in my Uni days when I was part of a rock band but still I think it counts.

  11. Miek
    Linux

    "Has any developer, anywhere, in this or any other space-time continuum, ever had a even a single groupie?" -- Torvalds ?

  12. Christian Berger

    It's to late for that

    The App-Bubble probably will burst in a year or so anyhow. LTE is around the corner and already being widely deployed. You can have decent browsers like Firefox on mobile phones now. There's less and less space for the classical "App". Eventually it will be absorbed by the web.

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