Comment by programminggeek | Hacker News Reader

Comment by programminggeek | Hacker News Reader

programminggeek

This article is spot on, but it is easy to read it incorrectly. MSFT has a problem that the best/most popular consumer apps are being developed for the web or iOS, then Android, then far down the road they MIGHT make it to WP7 and someday maybe, eventually they show up on Windows proper.

For the last 2 decades MSFT's whole company strategy is to get developers to make apps for Windows Desktop. Name the last big "Windows App" that made you buy a copy of Windows? The web killed that and iOS and Android made it worse.

Now Microsoft needs devs to make Windows 8 apps and they are hoping that the inherently huge Windows Desktop ecosystem will make it so cheap to port to mobile that developers will build tablet and mobile apps from their Windows 8 codebase.

The only problem is if you have a native app you are talking about 3 or 4 codebases to deal with - iOS, Android, Windows (and its variants), and the web. As it stands now most devs will stop after doing iOS, Android, and web. Who knows if Windows App Store is going to sell enough software for it to be worthwhile to add a 4th codebase.

The opportunity in this is for shops who are willing to port popular Apps to Windows. At this point the only apps that are worthwhile to build Windows first are games.

Windows 7 sold 600 million copies. There's your motivation to create Windows 8 apps.

Edit: plus, if you're already on a .NET codebase, you can target all of those platforms with minimal fuss (and more).

And every single one of those apps that developers have made for Windows 7 are not "Metro" and not eligible for the Microsoft App Store or to run on mobile devices. Only a few of them are even dotnet. The rest will require a near complete rewrite.

Or, if applications were engineered properly, only UI part will need to be updated.

Have you ever tried porting code to Dotnet/CLR?

I think the point here is that if you have a properly architected .NET application, porting to any of the platforms supported either by microsoft or mono is relatively straight forward. So that would include Windows (all flavors), xbox, windows phone, os x, iOS, Android, linux, playstation, wii, and whatever else the mono folks are cooking up.

Are there any major publishers (or a large number of small ones) shipping apps that use Mono to run on non-Microsoft platforms?

Unity engine does it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unity_%28game_engine%29

What he meant was: if Windows 8 sells like Windows 7, and it will, there will be a mind boggling number of users to target. Windows 8 market will quickly be bigger than Mac OS X market because Windows 8 will ship on every new PC being sold.

And since there are no apps, there are lots of opportunities just writing the same kind of apps that people have written in the past, except for Metro. It'll be a new gold rush and you can trust me, developers will rush for that new gold.

Well, I don't think anyone's expecting it to sell like Windows 7. They're expecting it to 'flop' like Vista. i.e. sell quite a lot but have a large user base sit on Windows 7 waiting for Windows 9 as people sat on XP after Vista.

"Name the last big "Windows App" that made you buy a copy of Windows?"

I have Windows in case I ever need to use FrameMaker again. Sometimes I boot into Windows to play Portal.

So basically none.

1) Microsoft Office

2) Windows Media Center

3) VS.NET

4) Games

>Name the last big "Windows App" that made you buy a copy of Windows?

Visible Analyst 2008

Net Weaver

SAP client

CoD Black Ops

CoD MW3

Insert tons of other video games

Internet Explorer

And that is just what I personally need a copy of Windows to run.

Why is IE on that list? Is it substantially better than Chrome or Firefox as to be considered a must have app?

You are correct about enterprise apps and (many) games. If you are a big gamer, there is not much point to get a mac.

Get real. IE is must have if you're a web developer. Last time I checked, IE was still over 50% of the web. Web developers still need to check their website in a bunch of browsers--including multiple versions of IE since a lot of users are stuck on IE 7 and 8 for whatever reason.

I'm not a web developer. Nor do I use Windows at home. I guess your point is that in the enterprise or web developer industry, you need Windows PC, I can totally believe that. Also, if you are an aggressive gamer, you will probably be more happy with a PC than a Mac. If you are outside of those areas, you'll probably be happy with a Mac or whatever else you want to use. If you are a consumer/non-gamer, then it doesn't really matter unless you are into Office; I mean, the must have apps are already on the web (facebook).

There were several programs in my college classes (enterprise bullshit) that I needed IE to run. I didn't say it was a good thing, but that is the way it was.

Also for testing website as listed below.

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