So Microsoft's BUILD conference kicked off today with the
keynote presented by Steven Sinofsky, VP of Windows and Windows
Live.
As a developer by trade, I was excited as heck by the keynote,
and I'm frustrated as anything that I can't be there in person, to
get my hands on the Windows 8 tablets they're (allegedly) handing
out to attendees.
However, compared to keynotes by Google, Apple and all the other
giant multi-billion tech conglomerates, I was disappointed by the
lack of consumer focus. Microsoft wants people to upgrade to
Windows 8, they still have to sell to consumers. I appreciate their
value and their money is in pitching to developers who can add
value to the platform, but Apple comes out with devices "that just
work". I want to see more of that "it just works" stuff - I want to
see someone doing music playback, watching movies, writing school
essays, business reports, connecting to Wifi - all the stuff a
normal domestic user does.
Now that my big gripe is out of the way - WOWZERS. Windows 8
strikes me as a developer's dream. Here's a small selection of the
(pretty awesome) feature list from the first hour of the
keynote:
- Everything from Windows 7, runs on Windows 8;
- Visual Studio 11 for writing Windows 8 apps, can handle both
native HTML5/JS apps, Silverlight, and Winforms/WPF - and pass code
back and forth between it and Expression Blend for making your apps
both beautiful and functional;
- 30% lower memory footprint than Windows 7 out-of-the-box (404MB
compared to 280~ish MB in the demo);
- Windows APIs now support pushing services from apps
back into the native APIs for consuming from other
apps;
- Support for 256TB hard disks... (that's about a quarter of
Google's index size);
- A new Windows 8 App Store, which is optional
for developers to use - no more Apple- or Google-style monopolistic
control of the marketplace;
- 3 lines of code to hook up to device-centric sensors
(accelerometers, webcams, and so on).
So what does this actually mean for developers?
Well... I can write an HTML5/JS app, and it'll run natively on
the desktop, be consumed by the desktop's other apps, but can also
run standalone on my mobile phone, my tablet, my Linux PC, my Mac
PC (if you're so inclined... boo hiss). I can write a Silverlight
app and take full advantage of XNA on the desktop, XBox and Windows
Phone.
Windows has finally recognised that interoperability between
hardware platforms and applications is a must to stay ahead. This
is the most cohesive effort I've seen from them, Apple or Google to
unify the entire platform offering, giving developers (and their
employers) maximum freedom to experiment, innovate, and
inspire.
The Windows 8 developer preview will be
available at 8pm PST. I'm tempted to go to bed early and get up
at 4am local time just to download it.
The keynote's still going on at the time of posting, so I might
be back to update it with more cool stuff later as it's
announced.
Benjamin