{"id":52,"date":"2011-09-20T09:21:03","date_gmt":"2011-09-20T09:21:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/miraclestudios.co.uk\/gavinwadeblog\/?p=52"},"modified":"2011-09-20T15:18:50","modified_gmt":"2011-09-20T15:18:50","slug":"windows-8-developer-preview-not-so-shiny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/miraclestudios.co.uk\/gavinwadeblog\/?p=52","title":{"rendered":"Windows 8 Developer Preview, not so shiny?"},"content":{"rendered":"

As everyone is probably aware by\u00a0now, Microsoft made a Developer Preview of Windows 8<\/a> available last week during their Build 2011 <\/a>event. Microsoft has clearly learnt a lot from Apple and Google about hosting such events, even stretching to a Google style hardware give away for lucky attendees (grrr!). The keynote and workshop presentations are thick with enthusiastic evangelising of the \u2018new\u2019 (some previously available) technologies included in the platform, and I admit to being swept along with their enthusiasm.<\/p>\n

I think the Metro platform is a good idea for Windows, even more so as a new API is available that sidesteps some of the monolithic Win32 code. Microsoft might have a chance of actually catching up (and even passing) Apple\/Google in the \u2018slate\u2019 (note not-pad) race, although hardware\/software price is likely to be a limiting factor for the initial year after the OS is released. Windows is one of those things you \u2018just upgrade\u2019, only occasionally is a release so bad you give it a break, people even upgraded to Vista before discovering it was just a little bit slow (much slower than the prior beta releases).<\/p>\n

As a developer I\u2019ve enthusiastically watched the announcements regarding the Windows Store, the Xbox Live integration (which I\u2019m sure was already available on Windows but maybe it was all a dream?), and the accessible Metro platform, but as I\u2019ve watched and researched the example code doubts have started to slip in.<\/p>\n

I hope I\u2019m not breaking any license agreement by discussing this and it seems to me other people are being pretty vocal on Microsoft\u2019s feedback pages about topics raised so my current concerns are\u2026<\/p>\n

The Store \u2013 This is seems to be a closed space, where approval is required. Ok, I guess this is a good idea, because who can find anything useful on an Android device? It\u2019s pretty hard to be seen. But equally, I see the same problem on my Windows 7 phone. The Xbox Live labelled content gets centre stage, promoted heavily by Microsoft and drowning other content. Indie developers even have to resort to including an \u2018Xbox Live\u2019 like banner in their app icon, in the hope of getting taken more seriously.<\/p>\n

Related to this is the issue of getting apps into the Metro interface. As a \u2018Windows\u2019 OS I\u2019d assumed you could install your software, like you\u2019ve been able to do for decades now, and it\u2019d appear on your \u2018start menu\u2019, now the Metro interface. It seems this might not be the case, at least if you\u2019ve created a Metro specific app. My understanding is Metro apps will only be available via the store, with developers able to \u2018sideload\u2019 their apps.<\/p>\n

App Development and Deployment – This brings the worry of a Windows Phone style app limit, where currently only 10 developer apps can be deployed \u2013 it\u2019s a real pain. Often I\u2019ll have several experiments on the go, in addition to my active titles in development, and I have to delete unfinished tests to try something else. This\u2019d be too much to take if it was applied for Metro on Windows also. Then there\u2019s App approval, currently Windows Phone Apps (plus Xbox Community Apps) are submitted through a portal at create.msdn.com. It\u2019s not the most stable window on Microsoft and my experience has been prone to technical errors (including issuing 3 rather than 10 app deployments to Windows Phone), delays in responses for support or rapid pruning of forums.<\/p>\n

C++What? \u2013 Taking a look at some of the Metro sample code, I had to do a double-take to check that I\u2019d actually downloaded the C++ versions of the apps. What I seemed to be looking at was C#!? Given I have limited spare time to keep up to date, I\u2019d assumed that the official specification of C++ had been seriously updated and it was probably time for me to get an up to date book (something less that 10+ years old). But having checked out more of the content on the Build 2011 site, it seems clear from the many upset community posts that Microsoft has been language building again, seemingly creating their own C++# or C## (doesn\u2019t that already exist?). It\u2019s not clear at this point how much of a pain this is going to be to interface \u2018plain\u2019 C++ code with, but I\u2019m sure if something\u2019s simple to do, this won\u2019t be\u2026 (Yes, I\u2019m a half-empty type of guy).<\/p>\n

Xbox Live \u2013 I\u2019m sure the Xbox live API has been available on Windows for a while, even with the ability to play against X360 players? Wasn\u2019t there a FPS, which no one bought except me, that let you do this? Still we seem to be being told that this is available for the first time (maybe the first time in Metro?). I thought this \u2018first time\u2019 might indicate that it\u2019ll be an open API for the first time, so excitement was high, until I got to the end of the presentation on the topic, when it because clear this was the same story as usual, only certain games will be allowed access to the technology. To get into the club you need to engage Microsoft\u2019s interest, but I\u2019ve already discovered over many years, not being based in the U.S.A. makes your chances very slim. Where apps outside the U.S.A. have been accepted, especially regarding Windows Phone, these seem to have been prior proven apps from other platforms, or apps developed within Microsoft\u2019s group of companies. So there ends this excitement, unless I move to the U.S.A., San Francisco to be specific.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve installed the Windows 8 Preview on three machines, my aging gaming rig, my not so old gaming laptop and my really old and actually dead before last Saturday x32 bit only\u00a0XPS M1710 laptop (I finally attempted the GPU in the oven trick \u2013 and it worked). It ran well on all the platforms, although I had to do some trickery and use a hacked Windows 7 display driver to get GPU acceleration on the M1710. The only problem I encountered, which I would have realised if I\u2019d read everything posted on the preview distribution page, was that you can\u2019t build Metro apps on the x32 version of Windows 8, even if you install the Pro version of Visual Studio, which is a bit of a pain and I hope just a temporary issue due to the current distribution disk images. Still I hope to use this machine as a remote debug target, assuming it\u2019ll be allowed to launch the Metro apps sent from an x64 machine.<\/p>\n

So to conclude, I am still very interested and excited about the possibilities, but I\u2019m worried this could still become a U.S.A. only club, as feels the case on Microsoft\u2019s other stores platforms. The development experience could be ruined if they impose silly app deployment\u00a0limits (an attempt to stop piracy, which probably won\u2019t I expect) and issues of compatibility caused by \u2018new\u2019 versions of C++. The store could be swamped with Official Microsoft Approved Apps, drowning others, making developing content pointless.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s hope Microsoft listen to the community, as they currently present themselves as doing, and make a few tweaks before release.<\/p>\n

A free Samsung Windows 8 slate would be deeply appreciated, thank you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As everyone is probably aware by\u00a0now, Microsoft made a Developer Preview of Windows 8 available last week during their Build… Read more Windows 8 Developer Preview, not so shiny?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-metro","category-windows"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/miraclestudios.co.uk\/gavinwadeblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/miraclestudios.co.uk\/gavinwadeblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/miraclestudios.co.uk\/gavinwadeblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/miraclestudios.co.uk\/gavinwadeblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/miraclestudios.co.uk\/gavinwadeblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=52"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/miraclestudios.co.uk\/gavinwadeblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59,"href":"http:\/\/miraclestudios.co.uk\/gavinwadeblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52\/revisions\/59"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/miraclestudios.co.uk\/gavinwadeblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=52"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/miraclestudios.co.uk\/gavinwadeblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=52"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/miraclestudios.co.uk\/gavinwadeblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=52"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}