Windows Phone 8 SDK — By Appointment Only

mikejuk writes "Developers worried about the changes that might be waiting for them in the new Windows Phone 8 API are going to have to wait even longer to find out. Microsoft has just announced that the SDK will be available soon, but only to the developers it approves. If you already have a published app, then you can apply to be part of the program. The announcement says, 'But I do want to set your expectations that program access will be limited.' The public SDK will be made available 'later this year,' which is behind the timetable that developers were led to expect. As you can imagine, the developer community, judging by the comment stream, is less than happy. What makes this whole development even stranger is that the announcement was made on the day Nokia previewed a range of WP8 devices. The Nokia launch got most of the publicity, so perhaps the idea was that a little negative news wouldn't be noticed. The real question is: why the limited availability?"

Re:Google Does This Too

[wanderfowl]

I think this is right choice from Microsoft. They know what's best for us developers. Hell, they made the best IDE on planet - Visual Studio - too!

I'm thinking that we need a new moderation: "-1 Shill"

Obviously not ready

[Missing.Matter]

It's obvious: WP8 isn't really ready yet. They gave a sneak preview a while back that only contained a few features, they've been coy about when the damn thing will be released, they only showed off a couple additional features at the Lumia event, and they still won't tell us when they'll be showing off the rest of the features (BUILD 2012? who knows?), when phones are being released, which carriers will be getting them etc. Look, I like WP, and I like developing for WP, and WP8 will be my next OS, but this is getting beyond stupid.

Re:Google Does This Too

[Reapman]

What are you going on about? Your comparing API access to G+ and GMail to an entire platforms SDK? Oranges and Apples. But you seem new to the internets, what with your only 2 posts ever made, so maybe you don't know how things work? Couldn't possibly be a shill..

The day Gingerbread/ICS/JB was announced I could develop for it - ok maybe there was a day or two while it was uploaded - but none of this "oh sorry, only a few developers are allowed to work on JB"

If anything wouldn't you want to get the SDK into developers hands ASAP so that, you know, apps can be written?

I'd be pissed if Google did this with Android 5.0, so why shouldn't developers for Win8 also be annoyed?

In other words....

[romanval]

we're rushing as fast as we can to put out the OS even if it's not entirely finished, but we'll gladly sell the phone anyways cause that's what software updates are made for.

It's probably not a huge deal since Apple didn't release a iPhone OS SDK until a year and a half after the iPhone was introduced.... except MS will needs every advantage they can get to make WP8 have a dent in the phone market...

Re:Google Does This Too

[tnk1]

I think this is right choice from Microsoft. They know what's best for us developers. Hell, they made the best IDE on planet - Visual Studio - too!

I'm thinking that we need a new moderation: "-1 Shill"

That or a sarcasm tag.

Quit trolling

[DJ Jones]

The summary is misleading. There's no "by appointment only" system. If you RTFA it says microsoft is releasing the API to all developers who have previously released apps. I don't think this is such a big "FU" to developers as you're making it out to be. If anything, they probably did it to reward early adopters which should be applauded. It's like saying "Hey, we're sorry we've gone and modified the entire API after you built an app so we're giving you a little extra time to upgrade your apps so that some other hot shot company can't come in and steal your product before you get a chance to upgrade". I see nothing wrong with this.

Re:Chicken and egg

[mystikkman]

http://allaboutwindowsphone.com/news/item/14960_100000_apps_published_to_Windo.php [allaboutwindowsphone.com]

Like that. The comments section for this article is full of of ignorant blowtard haters that fail at reading comprehension.