12 minutes ago, blowdart wrote

I'd rather like a watch which had my live tiles mirrored to it. And appointments.

Nothing more. I don't want to read emails, or reddit, just the time, appointments, and maybe the weather, plus unread emails to prompt me to go to my phone to check them.

Add Nike Sports Watch type functionality and I'd be interested.

I use it because I'm the kind of programmer who doesn't enjoy doing all the typing. So if I have large table which needs to have data stored in it, i'll create the table and then auto generated the SQL Upsert script, the C# SQL access code and the POC.

I find that lots of code I write usually follows some kind of pattern, and if it uses a pattern then you can usually figure out a way for the code to be generated for you.

Of course, with things like Entity Framework then I don't need to use my own tools as much as EF do a lot of the boring stuff for me.

The code generation I use is usually a one off and I don't expect the tool to be able to cope with my manual changes. They are just "wizards" to get the boring boiler plate out of the way so I can get the app up and running and get on with the real business logic.

20 hours ago, kettch wrote

@Michael Butler: There's a comic book that explores the idea of a cloned Emperor and Luke briefly falling to the dark side.

Yeah. I read that one. Never enjoyed it. Always thought that the Clone Emperor storyline and Luke's flirt with the dark side kind of pissed over the actions and sacrifices of 'Return of the Jedi'.

I prefer the Tim Zahn and Mike Stackpole takes on post Jedi stories.

1 hour ago, Harlequin wrote

Well, we didn't actually see Darth Sidious die, he was just thrown over an edge...

Just before the Death Star was blown up. Even the Sith would struggle to survive both those things. Which is a shame because Ian McDiarmid was one of the greatest things about episodes 1-3 and number 6. Would we be happy if he'd cloned himself. Would seem like a cop out to me. 

16 minutes ago, magicalclick wrote

@Michael Butler:

I lost The Harvest (RPG), Tentacles, DoDon something something (that Japanese vertical airplane shooter game with tons of bullets all over the screen). I was quite excited to play that DoDon something game on my new phone because my older phone gets a bit slower when the screen gets too busy, but, I cannot find the game in the store anymore.

Yes. The Harvest is telling me

"Your version of the Windows Phone software is not supported by this application"

So maybe it will be available if/when they upgrade.

1 day ago, magicalclick wrote

Compare to my WinPh7, my winph8 is not doing what it should.

• auto-correction is not as good. Key cursor moves around in inappropriate places when I type this. Map doesn't have fav list. Map doesn't do turn by turn navigation anymore. Map direction is whacky. Music can't shuffle my entire collection. Music cannot do FM radio. And three of my Xbox Live games I bought can no longer be found on the marketplace.

Is my WinPh8 dying on me? Or he just hates me?

I've lost my two XBox Star Wars games. Both the Hoth thing and Cantina thing won't reinstall as they are no longer published. Oh and the XBox Live Full house Poker won't install either but I haven't checked that one for a week or so.

Which games have you lost?

43 minutes ago, contextfree` wrote

Good luck to Julie, Jensen & co.  ... please follow through on what you started with Windows 8.

Seconded. We've still got very talented people in charge at Windows. Believe in your vision. The only thing I'd ask you to change, is to be more open and follow the example of Scott Guthrie and his teams.

One of the smoothest upgrades yet.

Are Microsoft not risking the wrath of the EU by "bundling" a free ad supported streaming app with Windows 8?

16 hours ago, DeathByVisualStudio wrote

*snip*

Yeah nobody needs tools and menus anymore. We should all memorize every shortcut key VS has to offer. Then there would be no fussing about icon color nor menu casing. I guess that would give us something like this (but without the menu of course). Content is king!

 

I was only speaking from personal experience. I've been using Visual Studio since it was called Visual C++. Over the years, I've found that the shortcut keys are just more natural especially as most of my time I'm typing rather than mousing. (Maybe a hangover from my DOS days)

But as for icon colour, yes that was an issue. But the new release candidate seems to have sorted out the issues i had with the colouring (or lack of it)

http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0790145369079.do

The apps that are available, or should I say 'App Previews' are the weak link. Very few of them are actually functional enough to use properly. The only Metro app that I use regular is IE10.

From a development stand point, I've built a few prototype applications and have done since the original developer preview. It is a frustrating experience, given the lack of any real decent samples or of any developer documentation. WinRT/XAML is just different enough from WPF/XAML to be incredibly frustrating. Trying to work out which of the new controls is best for certain types of UX and what properties you actually need to set is very annoying. Couple that with the rather bland Visual Studio 11, it's not always a lot of fun to write code on Windows 8.

The lack of support for things like Xbox Live and other apps in the UK is also annoying. Not giving me a chance to give it a real; consumer test. I'm hoping to see more frequent app updates over the next month or so.

The OS itself works and does the job well, it's just the applications currently available that leave a bad taste in my mouth.

I agree with some of the Mail Horrors. I hooked my tablet up to the work's Exchange server, but had to change my password today and can't for the life of me figure out how to go in and update the password on my tablet.

My main issue at the minute is the lack of Xbox Live support in the UK and the poor support for Pictures stored on my Western Digital MyBook NAS.

Other than that, I'm enjoying the new experience, but hope for frequent app updates as some of them like People and Messaging seem a little half-baked.