Microsoft Surface and Windows 8...Are you starting to learn to code for it?
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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. ;)
