Combating extremism
The formal unveiling of Windows 8 seems to have put the cat among the pigeons in the mobile device world, with Windows stalwarts getting a rare opportunity to throw bullish statements at Apple. Everyone else, meanwhile, has said let's see what happens when it eventually launches on devices in a year or so.
The implications for developers are especially pivotal when you consider their central role in the success or failure of a platform. One software consultant took to the Guardian to put forward his perspective on this, packaging it as ‘A coder's guide'. But on reading the piece, the app developers at Mubaloo thought it read more like a polemic, and seemed biased in favour of Windows.
The author - Matthew Baxter-Reynolds - started by pointing out that the announcements made at the recent Microsoft Build conference are potentially good news for developers, especially those looking to work on some fun stuff when the day-to-day coding drudgery is done. He then led into an overview of developing for the major mobile platforms, starting with Apple's iOS.
"The only problem with writing software for iOS ... is that the development toolset and language is ... how to put this? ... horrendously, absolutely awful," said Baxter-Reynolds. We spoke to Brett Meader, who specialises in iOS at Mubaloo, and who unsurprisingly disagreed with this assessment. "I felt quite strongly against some of the things he said," said Meader. "A lot of people getting into developing might be put off. He obviously doesn't develop for the iPhone."
The Guardian piece said the language used for developing Apple apps - Objective-C - is used by a small proportion of programmers, and that the tools are generations behind. I'm not a developer, and if you put a gun to my head and demanded I write an app I'd probably work on my will instead. So many of Meader's extensive counter-arguments to this point went over my head. But the long and short of it was that if you know C and C++, Objective-C shouldn't be too hard to pick up.
In an attempt to steer the conversation onto slightly firmer ground for me I stepped back to the broader market. Also on the call was marketing manager Sarah Weller, and she confirmed that WP7.5 - Mango - is getting a lot of attention, especially in the past few weeks with the launch of new handsets and the buzz around the Windows 8 unveiling last week.
Among the things Mubaloo customers are excited by are the potential of gaming on WP7, the social media integration, and the general goodwill and loyalty that Microsoft can still count on from PC users and developers.
On that note I referred to the re-affirmation from Microsoft at Build that Windows 8 on ARM would not support legacy (x86) Windows applications. "We've been very clear since the very first CES demos and forward that the ARM product won't run any X86 applications," said Windows president Steven Sinofsky.
While many commentators seem to feel misled on this, Sinofsky has made the good point that a lot of these bits of software are too resource-intensive to play to the low-power strengths of ARM chips. Meader didn't see this as a big issue either, assuming Microsoft produces ARM versions of its major products, such as Office, a process that's already underway for WP7.
To conclude I pointed to the assumption made by Baxter-Reynolds, that for tablets, iOS is likely to own 80 percent of the consumer market for the foreseeable future, but that Windows 8 is likely to grab 80 percent of the business tablet space.
Both Meader and Weller were keen to point out that a lot of the work being given to Mubaloo involves developing business apps for both the iPad and Android tablets."I can't see Windows dominating any time soon because there's just so much demand for iOS and Android," said Meader.
As ever, if you want an idea of what's really happening look for a point roughly equidistant between the stances of the fundamentalists. Microsoft seems to have truly got its act together on mobile, and next year should be huge for the PC software giant, with the launch of Nokia WP7 handsets and the buzz around Windows 8. But let's not forget it's currently in a distant fourth place in mobile, and has a hell of a lot of ground to make up, no matter how pretty its new software is.
