nigelsampson

My understanding was this was the first pass with adding patterns to the language with later versions potentially extending the types of patterns and / or where patterns can be used in the language.

It looks like the article was written in 2012 where the crashing behaviour was normal in Windows 8.0, this changed in Windows 8.1

The Surface Pro's come with only one USB port on the device, they make it up for it with having one on the power brick which I think is an awesome idea.

That age old saying, "Change you job, or change your job."

Also the management portal hasn't required Silverlight for at least a year now, it's all HTML5.

And if you don't want to use the portal then there's command line tools for both Node and Powershell.

99% of WP7 apps worked perfectly well on WP8. The only ones that had issues were usually the ones that had managed to get exemptions from Microsoft to use underlying private APIs that may have changed (hence private).

Yup that gesture (swipe from the left hand side) switches between the active running apps (the desktop counts as one "app"). If you swipe slowly then you can dock the app to either side.

Potentially, because the join between the type cover and tablet is obviously flexible it moves a lot when laying on a non uniform surface (my thighs).

Also because of it's width I feel like I need to sit with my knees together to try and balance it, trying on one leg feels stupidly awkward.

I like the stylus for scribbling notes / impromptu architecture diagrams in one note, especially in meetings.

I definitely view it as an ultrabook replacement. My only major gripe is that it's not a comfortable machine for on the lap work compared to a proper laptop.

Yes and No :-)

Most utility apps that aren't supporting an existing brand will often support both themes. However I've noticed that apps that are already branded will go along with only the theme that works best with their brand.

The market certainly seems to be agreeing with you in that the 520 and 620 are the most popular models.

Realising this was one of the best things in my career, it helped me increase my confidence in job interviews. They now weren't just me desperately selling myself to the company, but also them trying to sell me on why I should work there.

Nice app, if people are looking for something similar for Xaml based apps (WPF, Silverlight, Windows Phone and Windows 8) I highly recommend Xaml Spy http://xamlspy.com/

Agreed it's still frustrating, but it's no where near the clusterfuck the OP implies.

This one is certainly not true as a developer who spends his day job building Windows Store apps.

You will need an internet connection to acquire a developer license once every thirty days but that takes about two minutes and that's about it.

Having arbitrary sizes for icons / tiles I think is still required. I'd maybe go with a consistent gradient / no gradient approach.

Personally I'd go with no gradient and a flat colour.

Looks good, I'd change the link to http://www.windowsphone.com/s?appid=57a88f24-7dce-47cb-b322-... which doesn't include region that ends up telling me the app isn't available for my region (en-NZ).

Might just be the screen on my phone (Lumia 920) but the orange seems very flouro compared the screenshots.

Good to see some Windows Phone apps on HN.

Interestingly I saw the news tonight here in New Zealand that BRCA test is paid for by the government if you have some risk factors for breast cancer (I believe they mentioned having two relatives affected by the disease).

Dropbox for Wi-Fi seems a more confusing description that just "Wi-Fi password sync".

This happens out of the box on Windows 8 (when tied to a Microsoft account) and freaked me out a little when it first happened. Took a work tablet home for some testing and found it connected to my Wi-Fi automatically. Had me hunting for security problems before I realised what had happened.

I must be getting old, or it's late here but I didn't get the "penis" joke till you mentioned it.

We had a game like that in our Halls of Residence at university. One night a name was slipped under your door, you had to get your target wet by any means but only outside. When you "killed" your target you took their target. The names were arranged so that eventually it came down to two people hunting each other. I lasted about a week the years I played but the game usually lasted around a month.

No one ever remembers the predictions you got wrong, just the ones you got right. It's the basis of all punditry.

It can be, although to help I created an app that turns Github issues into a kanban/trello style board http://compiledexperience.com/windows-apps/hub-bug

I've run into this problem as well, for me the easiest solution was to run Skydrive for personal and Dropbox teams for work.

I'm using it on my website as it seems one of the closer ones to Segoe for "metro" style websites.

Nice to see NZ on the front page for something other than Kim Dotcom.

I was considering moving from Google Apps to the offering from Microsoft when they released the new outlook.com, however http://domains.live.com doesn't support a catch all email address and I really can't remember all the email addresses I've put out into the wild.

Codeplex supports Git, Mercurial, Subversion and TFS. Up the project owner, heck some MS projects are hosted on GitHub.

One nice thing about Windows 8 app development is that they provide a method through WebAuthenticationBroker to have the browser instance hosted in a secure separate process from your app to prevent any shenanigans.

With products like XamlSpy http://xamlspy.com/ you can achieve some great live debug scenarios on most of the xaml style platforms.