Microsoft Surface and Windows 8...Are you starting to learn to code for it?
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BobJanova wrote:
No, but I haven't been jumping on the mobile or tablet bandwagon anyway.
Me neither. I do own an iPhone4S and a new iPad but as far as development goes I'm still back-end Windows/SQL Server/Business Intelligence kind of stuff. I've got a copy of NSBasic that I tinker with from time-to-time (which allows writing to iOS) but that's a hobby thing. Sooner or later you begin to realize that you can't do it ALL. -CB ;-)
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LOL! Let that tree grow baby ... I'll be retired by the time that rope even develops any tension! ;-) I guess after having been at this for 35 years+ I'm just getting to the point where I'm not as interested in chasing the "bleeding edge" as I used to be. The younger "kids" all want to have a hand in the latest and greatest stuff all the time. That's fine. As for myself I stay informed of the technology changes and, if necessary, I'll pick up a new tool when the situation warrants. However right now I'm finding that I have plenty to do. There is always going to be plenty to do in this field. Some of those old COBOL guys make $200K just because they're willing to work on slightly less "glorious" stuff. -CB :-)
CodeBubba wrote:
Let that tree grow baby
What i didn't tell you is that is a genetic enhanced tree that grows 10 times faster than usual ;P, althought i believe it still doesn't matter. :laugh:
CodeBubba wrote:
Some of those old COBOL guys make $200K just because they're willing to work on slightly less "glorious" stuff.
I know it, and, sadly, i prefer to "suffer" with C# and the Metroverse than learn COBOL. :( Only i wish i knew this before starting to learn Java and C#. :)
CEO at: - Rafaga Systems - Para Facturas - Modern Components for the moment...
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Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:
However, it will be tough to overtake iPad
It doesn't need to overtake or even catch it. It just needs to be successful enough to be relevant. Quite possibly it will do better than Android tablets. But I suspect Apple customers are quite sticky and will continue to buy iPads in their tens of millions.
Kevin
Kevin McFarlane wrote:
But I suspect Apple customers are quite sticky and will continue to buy iPads in their tens of millions.
Some will, some won't. My wife (who uses an Apple Airbook, an iPad, an iPhones, etc.) saw the Surface demo, the form factor, etc. and said flat out that she wants one. No questions, no qualifications. Just flat out "I want one!" and yes, the exclamation point is there to indicate the tone in which she said it. And she's already picked out a cover/keyboard color. Then there are the ABMers who feel that because it says Microsoft on it it *MUST* be substandard and is to not only be avoided, but MUST be ridiculed.
Mike Poz
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The ARM based one nope but the "Intel inside" one should be able to port win 7 apps. Mind you, should. :)
All the best, Dan
Dan Mos wrote:
e "...the Intel inside" one should be able to port win 7 apps.
By port do you mean new lipstick on an existing x86/x64 app to make it appear Metro style (which is basically a new UI but no functional code changes) or are you talking a true Metro app (which means an app re-write and so would work on either ARM or Intel)?
Mike Poz
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Kevin McFarlane wrote:
But I suspect Apple customers are quite sticky and will continue to buy iPads in their tens of millions.
Some will, some won't. My wife (who uses an Apple Airbook, an iPad, an iPhones, etc.) saw the Surface demo, the form factor, etc. and said flat out that she wants one. No questions, no qualifications. Just flat out "I want one!" and yes, the exclamation point is there to indicate the tone in which she said it. And she's already picked out a cover/keyboard color. Then there are the ABMers who feel that because it says Microsoft on it it *MUST* be substandard and is to not only be avoided, but MUST be ridiculed.
Mike Poz
Mike Poz wrote:
My wife (who uses an Apple Airbook, an iPad, an iPhones, etc.) saw the Surface demo, the form factor, etc. and said flat out that she wants one. No questions, no qualifications. Just flat out "I want one!"
Many Apple fans have said nice things about WP, so doesn't surprise me. My brother, who's an Apple fan boy and generally dislikes MS, has been complimentary. However, it doesn't mean he's about to dump Apple. Like Steve Wozniak he might just get another device! :)
Kevin
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chuckforest wrote:
I've always wished I could run my IDE on my tablet.
Good luck with that (and with trying to put the cursor exactly after the variable you want to delete).
CEO at: - Rafaga Systems - Para Facturas - Modern Components for the moment...
RafagaX wrote:
Good luck with that (and with trying to put the cursor exactly after the variable you want to delete).
Have you used a Windows Phone 7.5 device yet? If not, it's acutally very easy, just tap and hold, then when the text cursor appears about a second later, drag it to where you want it. It would be incredibly surprising if they didn't do the same thing for this.
Mike Poz
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RafagaX wrote:
Good luck with that (and with trying to put the cursor exactly after the variable you want to delete).
Have you used a Windows Phone 7.5 device yet? If not, it's acutally very easy, just tap and hold, then when the text cursor appears about a second later, drag it to where you want it. It would be incredibly surprising if they didn't do the same thing for this.
Mike Poz
I haven't had the pleasure, but i agree if they have done it before i see no reason not to do it in the new Windows 8, althought, the target size in Metro is bigger than in the Desktop, so you will need far more precisión.
CEO at: - Rafaga Systems - Para Facturas - Modern Components for the moment...
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I think that even though Microsoft Surface is a copycat of iPad in some ways, I think that Microsoft will still be here to stay because of their huge enterprise PC user base still has plenty of software written on the Microsoft stack and still needs maintaining. As developers, are we going to see Microsoft go bankrupt becuase it isn't cool anymore, or are you in the middle of developing your Windows 8 sample apps and such, in anticipation of snagging that super high paying job from the next client you come to who says they love Windows 8 and will pay you beaucoupx bux to develop them a snazzy new app? I predict that Microsoft simply has too huge an installed user base of Windows to go away anytime soon.
Sincerely Yours, Brian Hart
For the market my company serves, there's no point in considering any tablet as a deployment target. Our customers won't be using our tools on tablets any time soon. That said, we definitely prefer to work in C#+WPF, so I guess you could say we're more or less ready for WinRT/Metro should it ever become an issue for us. We do custom tools development, so language and platform are driven by our customer's needs. On a personal level I find Surface interesting, and that's clearly what Win8 was meant for. Had Surface existed when I got my netbook 3+ years ago, I would have seriously considered it. At this point, though, it doesn't address any need I have that isn't addressed just as well by any other tablet on the market, or my laptop (which I expect does a lot more than the current incarnation of Surface will). As to your larger question about the future of Microsoft, I don't see Surface being big enough to make up for Microsoft's failure to make the desktop a first class citizen in Win8 on PCs. By forcing Metro on non-tablet users, they're generating tremendous resistance to Win8 in the enterprise market. I expect it will play out similar to Vista, only more so since the changes are so drastic in terms of how the user interacts with the system. Whether Win9 will be the new Win7 will largely depend on whether MS can learn from their mistake and stop trying to pretend that there exists a universal, one-size-fits-all UI paradigm that fits both desktops and tablets/phones.
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Not planning on it any time soon. To be honest I'm pretty much fed up with the state of affairs in programming for mobile devices now, as soon as I can start re-using code between Apple/Android/Windows devices I might get interested again. Until that happens though I'm looking at HTML5 as the way forward simply because all of the devices have a web browser.
Have a look at qooxdoo plus Apache Cordova/PhoneGap. Even if there was a way to reuse code across the three platforms, I see no point in it. Building apps with qooxdoo in Javascript is a marvel, PhoneGap gives you access to platform-specific features, and as long as you can simply deploy them to any device, why bother?
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For the market my company serves, there's no point in considering any tablet as a deployment target. Our customers won't be using our tools on tablets any time soon. That said, we definitely prefer to work in C#+WPF, so I guess you could say we're more or less ready for WinRT/Metro should it ever become an issue for us. We do custom tools development, so language and platform are driven by our customer's needs. On a personal level I find Surface interesting, and that's clearly what Win8 was meant for. Had Surface existed when I got my netbook 3+ years ago, I would have seriously considered it. At this point, though, it doesn't address any need I have that isn't addressed just as well by any other tablet on the market, or my laptop (which I expect does a lot more than the current incarnation of Surface will). As to your larger question about the future of Microsoft, I don't see Surface being big enough to make up for Microsoft's failure to make the desktop a first class citizen in Win8 on PCs. By forcing Metro on non-tablet users, they're generating tremendous resistance to Win8 in the enterprise market. I expect it will play out similar to Vista, only more so since the changes are so drastic in terms of how the user interacts with the system. Whether Win9 will be the new Win7 will largely depend on whether MS can learn from their mistake and stop trying to pretend that there exists a universal, one-size-fits-all UI paradigm that fits both desktops and tablets/phones.
I think this applies to most enterprise software. However, if you think of things like Jira or Confluence - which is what very many enterprises use for issue management and wiki, it absolutely makes sense to provide a tablet UI. Then there's calendaring, docs, and whatever internal systems integrate with these. Therefore, I think no one will be able to avoid doing something for tablets in the long run. And given the "bring your own device" trend and the spread of market share across platforms, IMO it won't be enough to focus on just one platform.
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I think that even though Microsoft Surface is a copycat of iPad in some ways, I think that Microsoft will still be here to stay because of their huge enterprise PC user base still has plenty of software written on the Microsoft stack and still needs maintaining. As developers, are we going to see Microsoft go bankrupt becuase it isn't cool anymore, or are you in the middle of developing your Windows 8 sample apps and such, in anticipation of snagging that super high paying job from the next client you come to who says they love Windows 8 and will pay you beaucoupx bux to develop them a snazzy new app? I predict that Microsoft simply has too huge an installed user base of Windows to go away anytime soon.
Sincerely Yours, Brian Hart
All the replies pertained to only the first question and hardly anyone answered the second! Have you started writing Metro apps? If yes, which technology are you using - HTML5+WinJS, C#+XAML, or some other? Have you attempted to get your app certified? Have you targeted the App Store? These are the questions we should be looking at now... In my case, it's yes only to the first and am using XAML+C#. Still a work in progress.
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I think that even though Microsoft Surface is a copycat of iPad in some ways, I think that Microsoft will still be here to stay because of their huge enterprise PC user base still has plenty of software written on the Microsoft stack and still needs maintaining. As developers, are we going to see Microsoft go bankrupt becuase it isn't cool anymore, or are you in the middle of developing your Windows 8 sample apps and such, in anticipation of snagging that super high paying job from the next client you come to who says they love Windows 8 and will pay you beaucoupx bux to develop them a snazzy new app? I predict that Microsoft simply has too huge an installed user base of Windows to go away anytime soon.
Sincerely Yours, Brian Hart
Brian C Hart wrote:
I think that even though Microsoft Surface is a copycat of iPad in some ways
Didn't Bill Gates (remember him) introduce a Microsoft tablet back around '02? Everyone yawned. Steve Jobs brings out a table (renamed to "pad") and everyone just about pee'd in their pants. Now we're back to Microsoft's tablet and suddenly they're stealing the idea from Apple. Maybe the iPad/Phone had a better shot at it because it was wrapped around a cell phone concept, which many people had already accepted. Kind of the carrot in front of the mule.
I'm not a programmer but I play one at the office
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I think this applies to most enterprise software. However, if you think of things like Jira or Confluence - which is what very many enterprises use for issue management and wiki, it absolutely makes sense to provide a tablet UI. Then there's calendaring, docs, and whatever internal systems integrate with these. Therefore, I think no one will be able to avoid doing something for tablets in the long run. And given the "bring your own device" trend and the spread of market share across platforms, IMO it won't be enough to focus on just one platform.
That is certainly true for some markets, but I have my doubts about how much of an issue it really is. All my experience with Jira, for example, has been via the web interface, which is (largely) device agnostic. There's no need to consider Surface or Win8 specifically there, it's just a matter of making sure the web interface is usable on a phone- or tablet-sized touchscreen. (I confess ignorance of Jira beyond use of the web interface, so I could very well be missing something here.) My customers are AAA game developers. A niche market, to be sure, but I don't see them moving to Metro/Surface for any of their work any time soon. In fact, I'd be quite surprised if I see Win8 in a AAA studio outside of QA in the next 3 years. Metro is a decent environment for consuming media, but a very poor one for producing it. Yeah, Win8 has a desktop, but MS clearly doesn't view it as a first-class citizen. It's not an alternative to Metro (which it should be), but rather an ugly, half-baked compatibility mode. MS is alienating their existing base in order to gain a foothold in a new market, and I don't see that as a good strategy. As I said, I work in C#/WPF whenever I can talk the customer into it, so it's not a huge issue to me code-wise. As for the Metro style, I build the UI according mock-ups the customer provides, and so far none of them seem to be jumping on the Metro bandwagon. They all seem to be very fond of non-monochrome icons and being easily able to differentiate between elements that are actionable vs. merely informative. And they don't like anything in all caps. ;)
