Windows 8

Hey all,

I went to the Build 2014 conference this year in San Fran. Good times. A few fun things from it you might not have seen stressed as much in the media...

Windows 8.1 with the start menu returning will be an update to 8.1, not immediately on release of 8.1. Same as the Metro apps in a window mode. They seem to have reversed direction while still pushing Metro. They are making it much more friendly to mouse/keyboard and desktop users, so this is quite welcome.

Universal Apps is badass, both as a developer and as a user. The general idea here is for a dev to write an app on one platform and easily port it to another -- in other words, a lot of what you buy from the windows store will be available to you as a metro app, windows phone 8.1 app, windows tablet app, and in most cases the Xbox One -- all with the same experience and same purchase - no more needing to buy it multiple times. Jelly moment: They gave everyone that attended a free Xbone. Sad Moment: Realization that you got Xboned. The bad thing about Universal Apps that they never mentioned, of course -- is that it doesn't apply to true desktop programs. It's only for metro. I'm pretty sure they are doing this as a means of ultimately having Windows an app based platform, but I hope they do not permanently go this way -- hopefully learned their lesson from Win 8.

On the topic of Universal Apps, using Xamarin also allows devs to very easily port their apps in VS to iOS and Android -- we saw numerous examples of this in the classes as well. It was very cool, so as a dev its a nice way to cross platform your items.

Windows Azure was pushed really hard -- in fact the second day keynote was almost devoted to it. They mentioned how Titanfall worked with Windows Azure, and if it does truly work like that, it's a phenomenal architecture that will be used a lot more. It's no longer an EC2 clone, for sure. They went into all the dashboards, monitoring, fun stuff, and works really well.

If you're a dork and you want to see more, the best was the first day keynote - thats where you saw all the awesome stuff.

The Windows 8.1 stuff starts at 57m 30s
The Cross-Platform talk was at 1h 41m
Future roadmap/plans is at 1h 50m
Windows 8.1 new start menu (with the highest applause from audience) is at 2h 08m 45s

You can watch that, along with everything else from build 2014 here:

Build 2014 Channel 9

Jysin_sl said:

Sounds to me like they haven't learned a damn thing. Still trying to force Metro down everyone's throats when its clearly not wanted.

Click to expand...

I think you misunderstand here. I don't think they are trying to force metro down their throat -- but for Universal Apps, yes, they do. But then again, watch the video. It's absurdly easy to code something once, and poop it out for the Phone, Tablet, and Xbox. It's impressive, but it's a price to pay. A generic win32 app isn't going to be ported to say.. Windows phone 8.1 That would be a terrible experience.

I don't think they can ever truly eliminate the desktop, but it will likely play a less of a role as time goes on, just like a computer in general does these days.