Windows Phone app developers: These games are made for you The Register has teamed up with Nokia UK to promote the firm’s rewards programme for Windows Phone app devs. Called DVLUP (geddit?), the programme has already been running for about a year, but Nokia is now taking it up a couple of notches with some new promo opportunities, including placement in TV, print and digital …
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But thats just a problem for Microsoft. End users aren't bothered what chips their devices run on, they just want a healthy selection of quality apps.
Microsofts current OS variety is a complete mess, and is stopping developers from committing to them fully. They need a unified phone and tablet OS, and they need it quick.
Surface 2 is going to be just as big a failure as the first time around.
My Windows Phone is stuffed full of Apps. Apart from Sky Go (which will come in 2014) can't think of any of the proper and needed applications that are missing.
Most IT departments I know of are considering alternatives to Blackberry.
All of them looking at iPhone or Windows Phone. Android is too insecure and too fragmented for Enterprise IT with no consistent MDM APIs.
Its "trendy" to diss MS. But I'd have a Windows Phone over a pikey Android device any day.
I doubt that not having it run on Surface (or even Nokia's RT slab) will bother a developer, there are too few about and any decent app aimed at multiple screen formats requires a fair bit of extra effort anyway.
PS: I did read that there is overlap in the APIs so, presumably, it is possible to code for both if the App is not too complex.
Also, bear in mind, that RT is full Windows ported to ARM, it is more logical to run Windows programs. The desktop display mode is almost identical to regular Win8, it even run two screens. There is no fair comparison to make with a phone.
The only reason an iPad can easily run phone apps is that it is basically a big iPhone without a GSM/3G/LTE phone stack, it is not comparable with a Surface despite what reviewers say.
That is why it doesn't support USB devices like a mouse, keyboard and memory sticks, additional monitors, external storage etc., the list is very long.
> Also, bear in mind, that RT is full Windows ported to ARM, it is more logical to run Windows programs.
No it isn't. It has a cut down Win32 API that is restricted to being only available to Microsoft products*.
> That is why it doesn't support USB devices like a mouse, keyboard and memory sticks, additional monitors, external storage etc., the list is very long.
Various tablets are _portable_ devices. Carrying around all those so you can connect them via USB makes them less portable. In any case keyboards connect via bluetooth, external storage via WiFi, 'monitors' via HDMI. There is no need for a long list.
* there are ways of hacking this restriction.
external storage via WiFi
Not too many thumb drives have WiFi. It seems a bit daft to argue that having a USB port somehow makes a tablet less portable; do mini-HDMI / DP ports have the same effect?
Here's one use for the USB on the move: copying files from the camera SDHC card while on holiday.
> Not too many thumb drives have WiFi.
'Thumb drives' are not the only 'external storage', but if you really want that then you can have it without cables: http://www.hypershop.com/
> It seems a bit daft to argue that having a USB port somehow makes a tablet less portable;
No, it is all the hundreds of devices that you seem to want to connect that does that, and all the USB cables.
> do mini-HDMI / DP ports have the same effect?
There are other ways of connecting devices than a USB port that you seem fixated on. Many of those don't require a nest of USB cables (granted HDMI does require a cable).
> Here's one use for the USB on the move: copying files from the camera SDHC card while on holiday.
My camera (Panasonic) has WiFi (host or client) and can send photos to my tablet or phone (or other) while I take photos, and can also be remotely controlled from the phone - without a USB cable - use Lumix Link.
There are other ways of connecting devices than a USB port that you seem fixated on.
Huh? I've mildly suggested that having a USB port is useful and given a real example; your Jobs-like insistance that they somehow make a tablet "less portable" is the fixation.
My camera (Panasonic) has WiFi (host or client) and can send photos to my tablet or phone (or other) while I take photos, and can also be remotely controlled from the phone - without a USB cable - use Lumix Link.
Swell. You'll also note that there are many more cameras and devices that don't have WiFi.
My partner's camera is a Nikon D90 with no WiFi but a mint body and a grand worth of lenses. When we were in Peru & Bolivia this year it was useful for me to take copies of her pictures with me when I left a week before her. Couldn't have done it if my tablet didn't have a USB port.
... if you've got your eyes shut, your fingers stuck in your ears, and are busily shouting "la la la, Microsoft are the only evil out there, I believe in fairies"... and so forth.
I'll be the first to admit that they're nowhere near as prevalent as iPhones, nor the zillions of Android variants out there - but they're there... or have my 250,000 downloads (reported by my own call-home tracking as well as the MS dashboard) magically appeared from nowhere?
Personally, I'd recommend WinPhone app development to anyone. And before the cries of "shill" start up, it's nothing to do with Microsoft and everything to do with how easy it is to get into. Cost to get started is minimal - SDKs are free, there are schemes for getting access to developer devices at no cost and it's $19/year for a developer account.
On top of that, Nokia have been nothing short of brilliant in terms of support (my label's games are regularly featured on the marketplace). Both Microsoft and Nokia know that to make this work, they need apps on the WinPhone, so the amount of support out there for the taking is crazy - a developer's market, so to speak.
Yes, there are downsides: Microsoft's in-app advertising is quite frankly rubbish, and there have been a number of outages in the developer dashboard over the last year which have hurt downloads and rankings when they've hit. But the support I've had - especially in marketing my games - has more than made up for this.
"Do your WinPhone apps work on Surface?"
No idea - I haven't tested. Maybe I'll get round to it at some point, but to be honest, I'm more interested in getting everything working on iOS.
I was always happy that the WinPhone was a viable market - people always carry their phones. Tablets... not so much. Especially with the farce that Surface seems to be heading towards (only seen one in use in the wild).
"Cost to get started is minimal - SDKs are free - How is that different from any other phone development system ?"
Oh, sorry, maybe I should have posted it like this:
"SDKs are free, there are schemes for getting access to developer devices at no cost and it's $19/year for a developer account."
I actually own a Windows Phone (Samsung Omnia) and also quite like it. Still running WP7.5 because I don't consider the upgrade to 7.8 to be all that wonderful (I like having 8 medium sized tiles on my start screen at the same time. 7.8 can't do that anymore; either you get 6 large icons or a whole lot of small ones (or a combination)).
But the thing is; Microsoft lost my interest to develop for this phone a long time ago. When I just got it I was quite eager; got the free Visual Studio, the SDK with the emulator: everything I needed to get started. An experience I also quite enjoyed too, their tools are pretty straight forward in my opinion.
And then I tried hooking up my phone to my Windows 7 machine; I wanted to try running some system calls (so running a program on my PC which would control my phone). That's when I discovered the "developer lock". A few minutes later I discovered that Microsoft only wanted a "meagre" E 100,- / year before they'd consider unlocking my phone.
Dunno about you, but E 100,- merely to try if something actually works and if you'll like working on it is a bit too expensive for me, so I passed.
Sure; later they started their "promotions": Get a discount and only pay E 10,-. Of course you still had to cough up E 100,- but Microsoft promised that they'd refund the E 90,- at a later time. Yeah, that's something I'm so going to rely on. NOT.
I only wanted a developer unlock and not a subscription to their developers platform.
And that's where we are today. Nowadays you can get a phone unlock for free if you got a Microsoft account; you only need to register your phone.
Of course the main problem now, as mentioned earlier, is that I lost interest in developing for this phone almost 1.5 years ago. The SDK has long been removed, my Visual Studio does not support WP development and I never really felt to be missing out on something.
THAT is what Microsoft still doesn't seem to get. It's the first impression which counts.
So my friend comes over with his Android phone, he connects that to Windows 7 and what do you think he can do with it? Just about anything he likes, and he didn't have to pay anything for it either (perhaps apart from allowing Google-brother a permanent peek into his life).
Yeah, it's a real mystery why Android has become so popular with the geeks...
No idea what you are talking about here - the kernel is common across Windows 8, Windows Phone 8, Windows RT and Xbox. The kernel is very compact and optimised - hence why Windows Phone requires less RAM and outperforms Android devices on similar hardware and why Windows 8.1 outperforms the latest Linux Mint in key benchmarks like graphics and large file transfers...
developers! developers! developers! developers! developers! developers! developers! developers! developers! developers! developers! developers! developers! developers! developers! developers! developers! developers! developers! developers! developers! developers! developers! developers! developers! developers! developers! developers! developers! developers! developers! developers! developers! developers! developers! developers! developers! developers! developers! developers! developers! developers! ...
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