Developers offered 80 percent cut of Windows Store app sales
geek.com
geek.com
Whether this is something worth pursuing or not is hard to judge at this point as we do not know what the adoption rate of Windows 8 is going to be. In particular what the adoption rate of the new Metro interface for Windows 8 will be.
Disclaimer: Microsoft employee here
Now, I personally see no problem with charging for tools, but if Microsoft wants to drive adoption at the same (or higher) rate as iOS/OSX/Android, they are going to have to make the tools free or very cheap. And BizSpark just isn't enough.
Developers are going to ignore the platform, end of story. This shouldn't be surprising. No offense, but this just strikes me as another instance of Microsoft "not getting it".
This is kind of like saying "I'll never edit a picture because Photoshop costs $600!" Yeah, you can edit a picture in Photoshop, or you can do the same thing with a free tool.
"You're right. I won't buy Visual Studio. And I won't use the Express Edition, because it is seriously limited when compared to even the low-end paid version of Visual Studio. And the Express Edition is seriously limited when compared to the functionality found in Xcode/Instruments.
And as a result, you won't get revenue from any apps I develop, because I'll happily ignore your platform".
Microsoft is free to shoot themselves in the foot. They've already done it with the Zune and with their fixation on stylus-based tablets this century. Do you really want to add this to the list? It just strikes me as silly on Microsoft's part. If you want to get developers interested in your platform again, you need to make concessions to sweeten the deal.
As for your claim that developers will ignore Windows, I think that's at best unlikely. Developers have embraced Windows with the same toolset split for a long time. And iOS with its $100 signup + 30/70 split has proven that developers will pay to develop for a platform if they believe it's worthwhile.
Xcode is a full-fledged development environment. Those things come standard in Xcode. VS Express, by comparison, is a kids toy. It is not a serious development environment.
Microsoft also thought huge iPhone/iPad adoption rates was "at best unlikely". Yes, developers had embraced Windows over the past two decades, but that all started to change with iOS/Android. You cannot seriously believe that the world is the same, and that developer's attitudes towards Windows is the same.
[$100 + 30/70 split] for iOS is a completely different story than [$49 + $479 + 30/70 split] for Windows. That price point is way to high to drive adoption.
Don't take my word for it, though - wait until developers find how disappointing the development experience is with Express.
For Memory/Performance profiling, go choose one of the many FREE tools available for Windows - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_performance_analysis_to...
What are you left with? What does "basic UX" even mean?
I agree those things are nice to have. I don't see that any of them are truly critical, though. The lack of these features is not crippling.
> Microsoft also thought huge iPhone/iPad adoption rates was "at best unlikely".
Doesn't that go against your argument? Didn't the iPhone prove that developers were very willing to pay to develops apps?
> [$100 + 30/70 split] for iOS is a completely different story than [$49 + $479 + 30/70 split] for Windows.
You keep insisting that the full version of VS is necessary, but that simply isn't true, and repeating it over and over again will not make it true.
$99. And only after being able to play with the full/complete development tools and simulator for free. If that's what Visual Studio cost, I'd pay it now.
> You keep insisting that the full version of VS is necessary, but that simply isn't true, and repeating it over and over again will not make it true.
As an non-MS developer that's just now working with Windows 7 and Visual Studio (C++, and the AVR Studio 5 that's built on top of the VS shell), I can state definitively that the full version is necessary to get any real work done.
At the very least, I need VCS integration, a profiler, and an x86-64 compiler.
The "full" tools isn't a fair comparison. Visual Studio is much more feature-rich than Xcode. Apple does not give away the equivalent of Visual Studio for free.
Maybe Microsoft will add some of the "must-have" features to VS Express in the 2011 edition.
> As an non-MS developer that's just now working with Windows 7 and Visual Studio (C++, and the AVR Studio 5 that's built on top of the VS shell), I can state definitively that the full version is necessary to get any real work done. At the very least, I need VCS integration, a profiler, and an x86-64 compiler.
From what I've read, it's possible to get Express to do amd64 compilation. There seem to be some gymnastics necessary, though. I'm not sure why it doesn't work out of the box.
As for VCS and a profiler, there are other profilers available, and VCS doesn't have to be integrated. These are not necessary features for the IDE.
Having worked on Unix for several years, I find all this "must-have" stuff bizarre. The tools might be necessary, but the idea that they must be integrated is pretty weak. Having a good IDE is very nice, but a text editor and a bunch of command-line tools can get the job done. (With that said, I definitely missed VS.)
When you're trying to attract developers, "get the job done" doesn't cut it.
I'm not a big fan of Xcode and Eclipse, but they meet my functional requirements without hoop-jumping.
Also, I'm surprised you're comparing Eclipse to Visual Studio. I've always found Eclipse unpleasant, to the point that I favor a text editor and the command line. I'd much rather use VS Express than Eclipse.
Now I am curious. There are many versions of VS available. Can you compare them with Xcode and point out what's missing?
http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/products/2010-ed...
Depending on how far up the hierarchy you want to go, the feature set is huge. Everything from static code analysis to virtual environment management.
Versus Xcode, the big thing is that Visual Studio has a very strong extension system. A lot of power is afforded here.
But then I am an Emacs guy who doesn't really use IDEs. My opinions should be taken with a grain of salt.
And all are tier 2 solutions. "You can make Visual Studio work with elbow grease" isn't the way to convince anyone to jump on the MS developer bandwagon.
You said that you needed those tools, so I tried to help. But this comment and your other comments make it clear that you don't really need them, you just want to prove a point.
No, I do need them, though I looked up the answers when I ran into the issues. I made do, but the VSE/MSDN experience left me with a bad taste in my mouth.
I'm mainly trying to prove a point, which is that VS Express is frustratingly hobbled, the non-hobbled version is unusually expensive, and that state of affairs is counter-productive to encouraging developer adoption.
I'm using Microsoft's tools as a hobbyist whose day job is in running a growing desktop & mobile software development company. If they got me onboard, I'd be all that more likely to consider jumping on the Microsoft bandwagon.
There's also profiling support (not included in VSE), an x86-64 compiler (also not included), etc.
Furthermore, VS Express can easily be configured to support 64 bit compilation. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1865069/compile-64-bit-ap...
Fortunately, those are the only too I need. I agree that Xcode would benefit plugins, but unlike VCE, the Xcode baseline is sufficient for my (and most people's) requirements.
> This is simply not a big deal in Windows where SCM can be directly integrated into the graphical file browser!!
Working with AVR Studio 5 (Visual Studio-based) and Visual Studio C++, I've found that IDE support for SVN makes a huge difference -- constantly falling back to TortoiseSVN is obtuse, annoying, and time consuming.
(and an unrelated rant: how come xcode can't build two completely unrelated projects at once?)
So that I can hit cmd-option-C (in Xcode), review my diffs and commit, all in less than ~10 seconds.
> Explorer integration on windows beats any IDE integration simply because you don't need to launch IDE with a correct project/workspace just to see if you have local changes or something. Once you have multiple sandboxes of different projects of a decent size, IDE integration doesn't cut it.
If I'm working on a project, I'm going to have the IDE running anyway. It sounds like you have a significantly different working model.
On OS X I'll fall back to the terminal for VCS without the IDE running, but it's not a replacement for in-IDE VCS.
Check in / check out isn't too valuable, but having add/delete automatically ripple through to source control is nice.
I suppose you could argue that "oh, with Apple I get it all in one package..." Big deal. You also have to buy an overpriced PC to run OS X and you can't even run the OS in a virtual machine via a hyper-visor.
iOS device emulation and Unix excepted, everything is sort of available from other sources, but, then, how much money would the time to assemble, learn and operate your duct-tape software development stack be worth?
$0 actually, the Xcode license is included in the OSX license. Xcode 4.0 (on Snow Leopard) was a bit of a special case, as it was a major Xcode release out of sync with OS releases and was thus sold for $5 as it was not covered by SL's Xcode 3 license[0], but it's gone back to free (and Lion only) as soon as Lion was released.
[0] all of this is according to Apple's legal and accounting, who are apparently a bunch of nutcase fruit-fuckers.
In this case, if an app developed by these tools and sold by Microsoft is a hit, Microsoft will be taking money from both sides.
Microsoft are free to do what they want, but if developers choose to use alternative platforms, then Microsoft lose out on the real profit centre of marketplace sales.
You might only be a hobbyist, but source code control is still good practice.
Either way, my point isn't really that the tools cost money, but that Microsoft will make more money from good quality apps being sold through their marketplace than they ever will do from sales of Visual studio to smaller developers.
This is especially true given that Microsoft are willing to almost give away Visual Studio in small licence quantities if you sign up as a Microsoft business partner.
> This is especially true given that Microsoft are willing to almost give away Visual Studio in small licence quantities if you sign up as a Microsoft business partner.
I think you've hit on the issue. My guess is that Microsoft doesn't mind giving VS to you for free. What they mind is giving VS to most companies for free. And when you release the product as "free for personal use', it becomes a major pain to make sure companies actually pay for it. It's easier to have a normal price and make specific exceptions (DreamSpark, BizSpark, etc.).
Developers are less likely (significantly so in my view) to invest their time in a platform that treats tinkerers and hobbyists as second class citizens by providing hamstrung free tools.
I've always firmly believed that the MS development stack is both impressive technically and wonderful to work in. It seems to me they could have a much more vibrant open source and free application community if they gave away full copies of Visual Studio to individuals and continued to charge businesses.
http://altdevblogaday.com/2011/12/03/you-should-be-using-mic...
I don't mind MS trashing where's it's due (crap js & imgs for code snippets for example), but don't spout total nonsense.
Also I paid nothing like the price you're quoting for my BizSpark subscription, MS offer different prices to startups. I believe there's a web focused one that's even cheaper, though I can't remember the name.
It's basically trial-ware. I have no problem with paying for tools, especially for commercial product development.
However, the price point is high for a hobbyist tool, and the free version is frustratingly hobbled.
Given that I can use IntelliJ, Eclipse, and Xcode for free (Android/iOS) -- it will hurt broad adoption.
How about - MSFT covers all costs for the first 2 years (keep 100% of what you make)? Heck, even a contest with some real prizes would be something...
Or do you think it's more likely that your average user (the same market that is abandoning the desktop in favor of the iPad) doesn't share your fear of a new, more friendly (to them) interface? Remember, the Internet pooh-poohed the iPad as just an oversized iPhone. That really hurt its sales.
Most likely scenario in my mind: Most people stay on older versions of Windows for quite some time to come, those who do use Windows 8 prefer to stick with the Windows interface they've used for the past 16 years.
Have you not thought "hmm, wonder why people are buying tablets in droves, while Windows sales are declining"? People _like_ the interface. The only people who don't like it are the people most notorious for hating change of any kind, and the people who they tell to hate it. It's gotta be tiring hating things that you've never used.
Also, people are buying iPads in droves. Other tablet sales are pretty anemic. And Metro looks nothing like the iPad, or even any of the iPad's closest competitors, so I don't know how you can conclude that "people like the interface" when people aren't using the interface.
Remember that Vista, a major flop, was the fastest selling version of Windows at one point. The enterprise skipped Vista but consumers did not because most consumers upgrade their OS when they upgrade their computers.
> those who do use Windows 8 prefer to stick with the Windows interface they've used for the past 16 years.
I assume you mean they will spend most of their time in Desktop. That's fine, but that's still a potential sale. The Metro start screen can't be avoided; the old start menu doesn't exist any more. So the "Windows Store" logo will be staring at users every time they go to launch an app (whether Metro or desktop). You can do the numbers and gather that there are going to be a lot of people at least exploring the Store at some point.
http://www.google.com/support/androidmarket/developer/bin/an...
$25,000 is a pipe dream for the vast, vast majority of mobile apps.
Already Posted (yesterday): http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3322320
Also, the current platforms are kind of the opposite of a commodity. Commodities are interchangeable.
Disclaimer: I work at Microsoft, but have no visibility into their Windows Store pricing.