Windows Phone:
Surprisingly Easy to Develop For

While I am happy to hear that Windows Phone is easy to develop for I don't see myself doing any development for it. I attended the GDC recently and there was a lot of buzz around tablets and phones as games platforms. Microsoft had a big presence there with the XBox but I didn't see anything about the Windows Phone platform. A missed opportunity in my mind. I need a reason to consider experimenting with Windows Phone. Put a nice phone in my hand, show me why it will be a great device to develop for and there is a good chance that as I look at prototyping some apps for phones and tablets I'll take a look at the platform.

So far I only know one person with a Windows Phone and that was given to him by a relative at Microsoft.

Making it easy to develop for is one thing, making it easy to get a device and giving me a reason to work on one is something else. At this point I think MS needs people like me to consider ensuring that apps work on their device more than I need to make sure that what I plan to work on works on the platform.

That said, tablets based on WOA are very interesting. I wouldn't buy one but can't wait to play with one.

So, it's easy to develop for the Windows Phone in part because you can use C# and .NET. But I thought the whole point of Metro on the desktop (replacing C# and .NET with Javascript and HTML5) was for the _sake_ of commonality with mobile applications! If Windows Phone used C# and .NET, wouldn't we have more commonality if desktop development stayed with C# and .NET?

The point Dino is making is that the CUSTOMER has tu run Zune and Visual Studio in order to install the in-development app. On iOS is very simple to send development builds to your customers. We just pack them as a .ipa file and they sync their phones with iTunes, no matter the OS. This worked for us at Mobile Touch since 2008 with no problem. However, I can really feel the pain of unlocking Windows Phone devices and Microsoft should put some effort into this.

Dino said: "However, it requires that the customer run Zune and Visual Studio tools on some computer, and not all customers are Windows-based."

The same complaint applies to iOS -- dev tools only run on Mac. No Windows, no Unix. Just Mac. The only Apple product I have is my iPhone for which I want to develop but which am restricted from doing.