Microsoft Releases Windows 8 Developer Preview 266
New submitter Tonyd0311 writes "Microsoft has just released the Windows 8 Developer Preview in both x86 and x64 formats. The download includes an SDK for Metro-style apps, and 28 example apps. It also has 'developer preview' versions of Expression Blend 5 and Visual Studio 11 Express."
Whew! (Score:5, Interesting)
I was starting to worry that we'd have to go a whole 12 hours before we got another Windows 8 story.
To be fair to MS (Score:5, Interesting)
They at least are showing there is more than one way to develop a touch-enabled and touch-optimised smartphone. I'm on the fence as to whether it's the correct UI for the desktop, but anything that makes life simpler for the few relatives still holding out and not going Mac is a boon to me.
Redmond definitely didn't "photocopy" this UI, and I like the look of it - fresh, well thought out, and novel. You're not taking away my iPhone just yet, though :)
Simon
Re:Windows 8 (Score:2, Interesting)
Ah, slashdot, giving a honest opinion about Microsoft's product
Don't blame us Slashdotters.
Your own marketing team is shooting you in the back because you didn't gratuitously say "Windows" often enough. Windows.
Re:"Metro." They did this before. (Score:4, Interesting)
This think of this as a good thing. All native desktop environments are going to the big harry fad of tablet computing. WHEN the fad fizzles out and people stop buying consumption devices and companies realize that they have to to start making -productivity- tools again, their desktop platforms will be dead and anyone developing interesting and usable UI systems will be doing so on the web instead.
Re:Too late (Score:3, Interesting)
Really?
Our small group has developed a few mobile apps, and we've done well enough on markets that don't have Apple's huge user base. Building a reasonably decent app for us have sold well when ported to Palm's market. Though now it's all but dead, the windows market will make a lot of people a lot of money before critical mass lands. Pushing prejudice aside, and not taking into consideration some groups already considerable investment in the marketing strategies and loyal customer base for the iOS platform (which is my personal favorite environment to build for), it's silly to call a company like microsoft too late to the game to make a business selling applications on.
Decent money is being made right now on the windows market place, even with a low usage base, and with the sheer mindshare they have of folks that are windows programmers not wanting to re-tool over to MacOS to write iOS apps is going to create a decent ecosystem of applications, which is what will truly drive the demand for their handsets.
I haven't sat down and wrote software personally for WinMo7, but I watched a guy on our team re-write a Android app that we have on the market in Visual studio in about 1/5 the time it took to write a similar application in XCode for Mac, and that was fumbling through C# and a new toolset. Overall to compare the development environment that Win7 programmers enjoy, you could almost call it penis envy.
Yeah, I know this is Slashdot, and I have invested MANY years into Linux/Java and more recently iOS/ObjC.. but I'm pretty shocked how nice it appears to work in Visual Studio, and more importantly how effective a decent programmer can be using the tools even with absolutely no experience working with it. If MS can get the handsets to the masses, they will I believe really give Apple a serious run for its money.
That said, automated reference counting (garbage collection) in iOS5 and the new Storyboard layout in xcode is a godsend for productivity. It's definitely going to bring ObjC to new higher levels of productivity for experienced iphone devs, and reduce the barrier to entry for new programmers wanting to pick it up and learn it. What an interesting time we live in! We're seeing the true benefit of competition reward us as engineers by giving us GREAT choices in platform development!
I would hate a world where Apple is running unchecked or being stuck with buggy android phones as the only platform of choice .. and we all know what life was like when MS was the only real game in town.
Long live competition! Let's hope all the major players do well and prosper.
Yeah, except it wasn't (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe if you got your head out of MS fanboy land for a while you would have noticed that the general opinion about KDE4, Gnome 3 and Unity is NEGATIVE on slashdot. There was no praise and now that even the old stable desktop gnome has gone there is a lot of protest.
So your idea of funny is that people who protest about useless gunk on Linux desktops also complain about useless gunk on the Windows desktop...
Don't quit your day job to do standup... oh you don't have a day job. Funny that.