
Developer interest in Windows 8 is stagnant, new line of worry for Microsoft - mtgx
http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2012/09/25/developer-interest-windows-8-appears-subdued-opening-new-line-worry-microsoft/
======
jbk
Well, there are a few good reasons for that: coding for WinRT is harder than
it should be, and the developers are not fans of the WinRT UI (so they don't
use it).

I am in this very situation, with an app with has dozens of millions of users
on Windows (and millions daily).

The first reason is the most important. WinRT requires a lot of rewrites of
your code. (and the rationale behind some limitation are often political), and
Microsoft is not helping or making it easy for you Notably for networking and
multimedia.

Networking: everyone uses the BSD sockets, Win32, Linux, OSX, iOS, Android,
Symbian, Bada, etc... And you cannot use them on WinRT. There is a very high
chance that your code or one of your library uses it, of course. But the bad
part is that Microsoft does not make easy with a wrapper exposing WinSock-like
API based on their new API. Not even a wrapper than does 80% of the needs.

Multimedia and Games: your videogame that works with a C++ engine and OpenGL
ES for casual games that works on iOS, Android, Bada,... does not work under
WinRT, because OpenGL is not allowed... And I don't even speak about Video
acceleration.

Yes, they need to do a massive change in their APIs, but helping the
transition would have been a good idea...

So yes, writing yet another Twitter client is easy on WinRT, for more complex
applications, well, it is way too hard and difficult to do it this fast.

~~~
bunderbunder
_Well, there are a few good reasons for that: coding for WinRT is harder than
it should be_

A lot of us haven't even gotten far enough to figure that out. Microsoft just
switched us all over to a new UI toolkit (Windows Presentation Foundation)
with the release of .NET 3 five or so years ago. We've invested a lot of time
and money into getting up to speed with this new technology. And now we're
already being asked to migrate away from it and onto yet another Next Big
Thing.

Meanwhile, Microsoft zinged its mobile developers (the very ones they're so
desperate to court) even harder by deciding that the new mobile platform they
brought out only two years ago would not be compatible with the new mobile
platform they're bringing out now.

It was twelve years ago this month that Steve Ballmer did his famous monkey
dance while repeatedly shouting "Developers!" and apparently slipping into
some sort of fugue state. Well, it turns out that all those developers he
wanted to make such a big deal of saying are such a big deal? They're are all
kind of pissed off and disgruntled right now.

~~~
narrator
Way back in the day I used to be a Microsoft developer. I got tired of them
changing the database API every other year. All the open sources platforms are
much more stable. Knowledge in these other platforms doesn't decay as quickly
or is at least somewhat useful even after 10 years.

In contrast, Microsoft will just go and kill whole platforms from time to time
(e.g Visual Basic) rendering useless years of experience building deep
understanding of a platform.

~~~
elorant
I used to be a vb.net developer and I'm glad they killed the language. C# is
far more elegant and sophisticated.

~~~
bryanlarsen
Nobody mourns vb.net which is essentially a bastardized C#. Many mourn the
original Visual Basic which was killed off by vb.net.

~~~
EdiX
The original VB was a far worse language than VB.net ever was.

~~~
smacktoward
A far worse language with _enormous hordes of programmers who had bet their
careers on it._

"Classic" VB was the PHP of the client/server era: ugly, reasonably capable,
and _everywhere._

Imagine the screams you would be hearing across the Internet if the PHP core
devs all decided _en masse_ to go work on something else, and PHP was under a
closed, proprietary license so nobody could fork it, and you get a sense for
what it was like when Microsoft killed VB.

------
seanalltogether
I'm one of those developers who was ready to jump right in and go crazy on the
platform...until I fully realized how the ecosystem would function.

1\. The Windows app store is Metro only.

2\. Developers as well as normal users are actively looking for ways to avoid
having to interact with Metro.

Developers have zero interest in personally using Metro, so they have less of
an incentive to port their apps. Other desktop users will also not like being
thrown into metro just to use a one-off application, maybe unless it's a game,
so they'll continue looking for the desktop version of an app.

The whole ecosystem is really a buzzkill for me.

~~~
nhebb
> 1\. The Windows app store is Metro only.

They allow Desktop Apps as well.

~~~
bunderbunder
But they have to be written using WinRT.

Microsoft muddied the waters a bit with this word that they aren't even
allowed to use anymore. It's variously been used to describe a set of design
principles, a UI development toolkit, and a particular subset of Windows
software that is designed to run well on tablets and is put together using the
aforementioned design principles and framework.

Windows App store apps are Metro-only under one of those three definitions:
The framework that we're now supposed to call WinRT.

Which is, of course, not at all the same thing as Windows RT.

~~~
cooldeal
>But they have to be written using WinRT.

No, they don't have to be. The Windows 8 app store on non-Windows RT devices
will have links to desktop apps.

[http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9227907/Microsoft_tip...](http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9227907/Microsoft_tips_how_Windows_8_store_will_promote_desktop_apps)

HN comments on Microsoft related stories(only negative ones i.e, the positive
ones are usually flagged to death even if they rarely get on the front page)
sometimes remind me of the blind leading the blind. Some people who don't even
use or follow Microsoft technologies are the first to vote up such stories and
then comment snarkingly in the comments about things that they seem to have no
clue about .

~~~
bunderbunder
Like you said, they're just links. You can't distribute or sell your apps
through the store.

~~~
cooldeal
Which also means you don't have to pay the 30% tax common with the other app
stores.

------
bornhuetter
There's not much comment in the article on the quality of the applications
that are on there.

Steam has less than 2,000 apps, and no-one would say that it feels empty.

The Mac app store launched with only 1,000 apps.

I don't think that the number of apps is particularly important as long as the
quality stuff is there - can anyone who has used it comment?

~~~
bad_user
OS X is still allowing regular people to install apps from whatever source
they want, by default.

In Windows 8 you have to either check "Allow all trusted applications to
install" in the Group Policy settings in Win Pro/Enterprise, or change a
registry setting. This means users will have to go out of their way to install
anything beyond what the App Store provides. Well, at least the option is
still available.

Steam is an app store for games. Games purchases are impulse driven. When
buying from Steam, you either go for a big title that you know you'll find on
Steam or you go searching for something that triggers your interest.

On the other hand a large part of discovery on a regular app store is search-
driven by actual needs of users that want to accomplish something very
specific. Like, just the other day I searched for a way to view/manage my
Picasa-stored photos on my iPad.

The number of apps is important for one because this means the app store
doesn't solve many specific problems users are having and because Microsoft is
known to have a big developer ecosystem since forever (building platforms is
what they do best) - and so this lack of enthusiasm reflects badly on them and
on Windows 8.

~~~
psykotic
> OS X is still allowing regular people to install apps from whatever source
> they want, by default.

You must not have used Mountain Lion. By default it won't let you run unsigned
apps. You can turn that off in System Preferences under Security & Privacy,
but would casual users know how to do that?

------
the_unknown
Wholly to be expected at this point. Until Windows 8 hits the shelves and
people start using it there is little incentive to build specifically for it -
and since Win7 apps run perfectly well in Win8 there is little reason to focus
on Windows 8 by itself at this point.

Once the WinRT tablets get into peoples hands the call for RT-specific apps
will increase.

Plus, the WinRT dev environment really isn't as fully baked as we've grown
accustomed to in the Windows world. So many things just simply don't exist at
this point. I've been looking at building a Javascript-based WinRT project -
one of the suggested app build paths suggested by MS and discovered that there
is no touch-and-drag support built in yet. You can roll your own using JS-
events but .... really, things like that dampen the enthusiasm.

~~~
bradwestness
This. People don't even have Windows 8 tablets yet, and the OS itself is still
only available to MSDN subscribers. Once the OS and devices hit store shelves
development will ramp up exponentially.

Most iOS apps weren't developed before the iPhone was released. They were
developed as a result of somebody getting an iPhone or an iPad, thinking "Why
can't I do X with this?" and _then_ building an app.

~~~
WiseWeasel
You couldn't even build apps when the iPhone was released. The web was our
API, according to Jobs. The homebrew/jailbreak community started up almost
immediately to fill that gap until iOS 2 was beta tested and released with 3rd
party app support a year later. So yeah, by the time 3rd party devs were
brought onboard, there were lots of devices in people's hands. The trick is to
have killer first-party apps, which the web browser and maps very much were on
the original iPhone. Nowadays, exclusive killer apps are a bit harder to come
by.

------
eckyptang
I work with a lot (80+ developers) in the Microsoft ecosystem. I haven't found
a single one who is enthusiastic about Windows 8. Most are looking rather
worried as yet again the rug has been pulled from underneath them. They got
burned with Silverlight and the first drop of the Foundation series of
products and Entity Framework.

Another incompatible API is just more shit to deal with.

They are not happy.

I'm not either as I have to support these guys.

~~~
trimbo
> Most are looking rather worried as yet again the rug has been pulled from
> underneath them. They got burned with Silverlight and the first drop of the
> Foundation series of products and Entity Framework.

Not one dev saw that coming with those APIs? I don't believe it. Microsoft in
the 2000s has been all about throwing APIs against the wall and then
deprecating them. Anyone who has been around Microsoft knew this was a risk
with Silverlight.

I think the real reason these particular devs got burned is because is because
Windows today is like Mac before MacOS X: it's all about incompatibility with
the rest of the world, "doing it better", crap like that. MVPs are happy to go
along with it and adopt these technologies because they can keep their
position of being important in the ecosystem. It's like Apple fans in the 90s.
WPF, Silverlight, EF, all this stuff is akin to Apple's OpenDoc, or Dylan, or
even Newton. It's shiny technology in an incompatible vacuum.

On the topic of the Windows app store. When Apple made iOS, they took
components of MacOS X as the foundation of iOS. But when they released the Mac
App Store, they didn't force developers on MacOS X develop to the iOS API.
That's what Microsoft is trying to do here. Develop with RT or Metro or GTFO.
Pure idiocy. The next step is predictable: Microsoft will have to step in like
they have on WP7 and they'll start offering to pay for other people's
development costs to do the port. I'd be surprised if they haven't already
started offering that.

------
Tichy
To be honest, do we really need so many apps? Yesterday I prepared the new
phone (Galaxy Nexus) for my mum. I don't think I installed more than 7 apps
from the market: Chrome browser, Google Sky Map, Rail navigator (for German
railway tickets), Google Authenticator, Kindle reader, Öffi (public transport
for a lot of cities), Google Goggles.

Did I miss anything important? Honest question - I'd like to prepare the phone
as good as possible, it is her first smartphone. Perhaps some kind of news
reader, but personally I don't use them, wouldn't know what news sources to
set up.

"We need 1000s of apps" is just something Apple marketing has installed in our
brains.

If Windows 8 comes with a decent browser, calendar and email app, they are
good to go.

As for desktop PCs - I think only few people are still interested in creating
desktop apps? Not counting games.

~~~
bryanlarsen
What you don't have that I would miss

\- Screen Filter

\- Flipboard

\- games/books/drawing apps/learning apps for your kids

\- games for yourself

\- music apps: cbc music, rdio & tunein radio for me

\- off line reader: pocket or similar

\- weather app

\- justpictures. A flickr/picasa/facebook/many more picture viewing app.
Provides notifications when people have uploaded new pictures, which is its
killer feature.

\- mx player

\- aldiko/fbreader for reading books outside of the kindle walled garden

\- atm locater app

\- qrcode scanner, which is mostly used for installing apps from outside the
store

\- good calculator (droid48 for me)

\- connectbot (ssh)

\- good alarm app (double twist for me)

\- skype, voip app (I use Bria)

\- shared grocery lists: our groceries. indispensable.

\- todo app (i use got to do)

gimmicky apps that are worth installing if you have lots of room: (granted, I
paid 10cents for much of these)

\- star chart

\- sound hound or similar

\- flight track

\- camera app a la instagram (camera zoom fx, paper camera)

And that's just what's on my front screen. There are more, but most could be
easily uninstalled.

p.s. how do you format lists on HN?

~~~
Tichy
Thanks, I will check some of them out.

I admit the one thing I miss is good games for my kid (toddler age). It seems
most serious publishers tried the iPad first for such things, Android is
lacking behind.

Not a concern for my mum atm, though.

Discovery of apps is actually a real problem for me. I don't have the time to
follow app review blogs.

I think Google Goggles also does QR Codes. Not sure if Connect is also an
offline reader? I ended up being too lazy to mark articles for later reading,
so I just keep some ebooks on the phone for boring situations without
internet.

------
chj
MS doesn't give developers an option better than Apple's. Their platform (win
RT) is as close as iOS. Oh, and that Metro. Do they really use this UI daily
themselves? Or do they have a secret way to turn it off completely? Perhaps I
am just too old to appreciate this new fashion.

~~~
IanDrake
It grows on you. The only thing I don't like about my windows phone is that
it's on AT&T.

I say this after having the first iPhone, the GS, and the 4.

------
steve_colton
It's very expected situation. Developers don't like WinRT and will stick to
Win32 forever because Win32 is open platform (anyone can develop for it
without paying Microsoft) and WinRT is closed platform where Microsoft can
apply censorship in their "app shop". No developer in the whole world wants to
be thrown out of that "shop" and supply ideas for next version of Windows for
free.

------
candl
To me, the biggest deal breaker is that having a Windows Phone developer
account doesn't let you release applications for Windows 8.

It's a shame because many people including me could at least port some of
their apps. An additional 99$/year for the Windows 8 store simply isn't worth
it. If there's one major reason why the interest is so low then it's probably
it.

I am definately going to stick with Windows Phone for the time being since
it's been a great experience and the release of WP8 will bring some needed
attention.

------
wolfgke
As long as

* I can't write my own JIT compiler because of a lack of VirtualAlloc() and VirtualProtect() functions

* I don't have access to some other lowlevel functions not available in WinRT that exist in WinAPI

* I am forced to use Microsoft's App Store to provide my Metro applications

I am not in the slightest interested in writing applications for WinRT.

See [http://www.freelists.org/post/luajit/FYI-No-JIT-on-
Windows-8...](http://www.freelists.org/post/luajit/FYI-No-JIT-on-
Windows-8-for-ARM) for explanations to the first point.

~~~
quotemstr
> lack of VirtualAlloc() and VirtualProtect() functions

While these API not be in the "modern" SDK, the system calls behind them still
work just fine. (They have to: otherwise, malloc wouldn't work.)

You can walk ntdll's export table manually and find NtProtectVirtualMemory and
friends.

Also, SYSENTER is a thing.

~~~
wolfgke
But you are forced to use Microsoft's App Store for Metro applications. Even
if this works (I haven't tested it, but it seems plausible) you'll probably
never able to get your application through Microsoft's certification
process... :-(

~~~
quotemstr
How would they know?

------
herf
Microsoft loses developers by ignoring the installed base. XP held up WPF
adoption, and Win7 will hold up WinRT. That's assuming anybody enjoys using
it. It's still easier to ship on Win32 and not worry about these fragmented
versions of the OS.

Also this is a tools question too: It's harder to make an app for two versions
of Windows than it is to make an app for Windows and something else. The tools
just don't make it easy to write conditional code.

------
jonaldomo
When Apple released the App Store there were only 900 apps [1]. Which I
believe shows that the number of apps is not a good measure of success. What
is a good measure of success is that Apple had 10 million downloads in three
days...

[1] [http://www.macstories.net/stories/four-years-of-app-store-
de...](http://www.macstories.net/stories/four-years-of-app-store-developers-
weigh-in-on-search-discovery-and-curation/)

------
nhebb
On a related note, the folks at LLBLGen wrote a post on getting a non-WinRT
desktop app listed in the Windows Store:

[http://weblogs.asp.net/fbouma/archive/2012/09/12/the-
windows...](http://weblogs.asp.net/fbouma/archive/2012/09/12/the-windows-
store-why-did-i-sign-up-with-this-mess-again.aspx)

The process looks completely messed up and will likely turn off many Windows
developers (like myself).

------
ja27
There would certainly be more apps in the store if they had opened the store
up for more developers before now. They've only been accepting app submissions
from most companies for about 45 days and individual developers were only
allowed to submit apps 14 days ago.

------
rhengles
Lowering the 30% tax would be a very good first step.

~~~
rbanffy
If they want to subsidize ARM devices, they'll need to make money off the app
market. If they don't subsidize, their stance on UEFI secure boot will be
seriously weakened and open an avenue for questioning by the DoJ or the EU.

------
IanDrake
> Thus, for Windows 8 to break the five-figure app threshold – in a world in
> which it’s six figures or bust – by launch

If I remember correctly the iPhone launched with no app store. I realize the
author's point, but it's offered as fact with little to back it.

------
kristianp
How can they claim that developer interest is 'stagnant'? The number of apps
is steadily increasing. What makes them think that Microsoft is worried? This
story has almost no basis in fact.

Another report of this story on another tech news site did point out that
developers may be aiming their releases for the date when Win 8 is generally
available. So we may see an increase in the rate of releases as that date
approaches. This is just speculation, just like the story, but at least it
brings some balance to the argument.

------
jcromartie
So what? 2000 is a huge number. I can't even imagine scratching the surface of
those, in terms of actually using them. I know they fill different niches, but
on my desktop I use maybe about 2 dozen applications on a regular basis. Those
2000 apps could be far better on average than the half-million-or-so in the
App Store or Google Play.

Or they could all be junk, and Windows Store is doomed.

The numbers don't mean much.

~~~
mtgx
Things don't really work like that. You don't want your platform to only have
1000-2000 apps. Why? Because you'll never get the "top 1000" apps in there.
Plus, people have different needs for apps. On the real Windows you can find a
program for just about anything. You won't be able to say that for the Windows
store and Windows RT.

It's not about having the "top 10 apps". It's about having "all the apps you
could ever need". And if there are 2000 apps, it most likely doesn't mean that
it contains "all the apps you'll ever need". And which platform would you go
with? One that has and will have all the apps you'll need or one that has
"2000 apps"?

------
SunboX
They should give away the professional version of visual studio for free. I
think more people will start to write apps for Windows 8. They also should
Webmatrix 2 IDE turn into a IDE for JavaScript developers compare able with
visual studio. With all fancy auto completion, docs and helpers. And it should
be super easy to "export" Windows 8 Apps with Webmatrix 2.

------
bicknergseng
I mean... isn't developer interest in desktop platforms stagnant? I mean...
what "apps" do desktop users buy aside from games and the MS Office suite and
Adobe? Forgive me if this is massively ignorant of the giant world of desktop
software I haven't installed.

------
venomsnake
First - I think that the quality is more important than quantity and countless
me too's.

So it depends which these 2000 are - if 100 of them are good,polished and they
cover wide spectrum of needed functionality its more than enough.

The real problem is the lockdown of the system.

------
alpeb
An OS that will soon be used by hundreds of millions of people, with a
depleted app store. Seems to me like a huge opportunity for devs, as opposed
to following the herd into the overcrowded iOS and android stores.

------
chaostheory
I'm even not a Windows guy but I feel it's too early to tell whether or not
Windows 8 is stagnant. There's less than a month's worth of data. I think I'd
be more interested in either a November or January update.

------
Havoc
After using it fro ~3 months I can conclusively say that anybody writing apps
for it should book an appointment with a shrink. Hell the _only_ metro tile I
use is the show desktop one.

------
TomFrost
Clearly, the next logical step is to make a love song for developers.

------
axusgrad
MS has lots of employees that worked on Windows 8, maybe they can give them
some "free time" for a month to write apps.

------
JimmaDaRustla
First world problems: Launch day of a whole new operating system. Only 7000
apps to choose from. T______T

------
scrrr
Off topic: Am I the only one for whom the page doesn't scroll smoothly? It
seems badly programmed.

~~~
bradmccarty
Give us a couple days. We're undergoing some back-end changes and it's causing
the pages to have a jerky scroll for some. Apologies for the inconvenience in
the meantime.

~~~
scrrr
Great. Thought I'd mention it, as I can't be the only one. :)

------
dclowd9901
How about 5 free copies of Windows 8 for any developer who ports their app to
it?

------
onetwothreefour
Why give MS 30% of your revenue when you don't have to?

------
cooldeal
How many tablet apps did Android have while launching tablets? How many are
even tablet compatible now?

Why should developers launch now instead of polishing their apps and launching
at RTM?

I think this is much ado about nothing, once the platform launches and people
start buying laptops with touchscreens and tablets, the number of apps will
also go up.

