, drcjt wrote

As a long term windows developer I like to follow new tech coming out of MS and have been following windows 8 closely. I ran the WDP pretty much since it came out and I'm now running the CP on a laptop and my desktop PC.

My main problem with it is the direction MS is taking with Metro. It's becoming more evident by the day that MS views Metro as the future. However, the only official way to get Metro apps onto W8 PCs is via the App store. Now I understand the arguments about security and I'm not against online stores in general. However, the lock in to one MS controlled store is a problem - all of the openness that has gone with every single windows release so far is being swiped away in one go.

What incentive is there for small time developers, or non commercial devs to make metro apps? I can't just publish the app on the net somewhere for people to try out - I have to pay the W8 store "tax" - and not just once but every year.

Now the argument here is that most people just want their PCs to work, e.g. the 99% case, where joe bloggs wants to use his PC to get a job done, e.g. manage his photo library, listen to some music, watch a video. This is fine but there are still users who want to go beyond this - and it looks pretty clear now that MS is abandoning them. Essentially this is the commoditization of PCs. No longer will there be people pushing the boundaries of what they can do with the software and hardware under windows - as it's all going to be controlled by MS.

I just don't see much point with Metro given the above. We have yet to see a decent worthwhile app - its all just pretend games and simple demo style apps. The preview apps in the CP needed to be much more fully fledged to convince people that this is going to be the future.

I don't say the above lightly as I've made my career mostly out of software work on the MS platform. I was also a key developer on Visual Studio 2 & 4 back in the mid 90's working for MS.

However I'm amazed to date that all of the talk on W8 focuses on stuff that isn't that important, e.g. the start button's gone, don't like jarring transition to start screen, metro doesn't look good, etc... All of this is stuff that MS will tune and improve as they do with all of their products. However, the store and licensing model looks like its cast in concrete.

Isn't anyone else concerned that in the future you won't be able to just knock up a sample app using visual studio and send it to a friend/colleague etc over email and have them install it and use it?

When did MS decide they know more about how I use my PC than me?

 

 

I think the focus on the look and the start menu is based on this:

if the majority of the users doe not buy it then why bother wrting any apps for it ?

So far I do not see many users moving to Windows 8 so my first issues are with that.

I think this is a common worry.