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Not widely known - MSFT was throwing around cash at developers and brands to make apps for windows phone. Even providing developer shops to code it. MSFT hande

by gdilla 9y ago

Not widely known - MSFT was throwing around cash at developers and brands to make apps for windows phone. Even providing developer shops to code it. MSFT handed us a check and a dev shop to pay with it. We designed the app in their ui paradigm and had fun doing it. Had enough money left over to take the team out for a fancy dinner when it was all done.

Ologn 9y ago
They did this later on. In 2011, Android Market (Google play) cost $25 for a lifetime developer account. You could develop apps on Windows, Mac or Linux. It came with an emulator. So for the cost of $25, anyone on any major developer platform could write an app. In 2011, you could only program Windows Phone app on Windows (I don't even have a Windows machine where I live). Windows Phone Marketplace charged $99 a year for a developer account. You can say Apple did this to, or that it should be nothing, but apparently it was not a winning strategy. I know a college student who shelled out the $25 back then and published an app on Google Play, now he works as an Android developer for a Fortune 500 company. Perhaps the idea paying four times that, and on a yearly basis no less, to Microsoft, was off-putting. People can straighten their tie and say any business going off on such a venture can afford $100 a year as a gatekeeper, but it didn't work out so well for Microsoft. Apple was already in the pole position so they could get away with it. But you're right, after throwing up these barriers to developer entry at first, they started raining cash on developers to make apps, providing developer shops to code it and so on.
- seanmcdirmid 9y ago
  They were priming the app pump at the same time they were charging $100 for dev accounts, it wasn't something that came later.
- scarface74 9y ago
  I doubt that many developers saw having a Windows machine as an impediment to building apps. Microsoft does still have 90% market share in PCs.
  - jhasse 9y ago
    What's the marketshare on developer machines though? And build servers? What about Docker? It's so nice to be able to have any CI build your Android apps and Travis CI supports building iOS apps, too.
    - scarface74 9y ago
      As I said in another post, you can get a hosted build server from Visualstudio.com (VSTS) with unlimited Git repos, with 5 users and a hosted build server with 240 minutes per month. You can get a hosted build server with unlimited minutes for $40 a month. If you need more than one simultaneous build - buy more build agents. VSTS has hosted build servers for Windows, IOS, Linux, and Android. It's even nicer not to have to maintain servers at all. I try to avoid maintaining servers. We are moving to serverless functions with Lambda and serverless Docker with AWS Fargate.
    - pjmlp 9y ago
      Pretty much the same regarding developer machines. Besides my stay at research institutes, I never worked on companies where IT allowed anything other than Windows as development machines. Linux when required is only VM based or servers accessed via ssh. Macs are only allowed on macOS/iOS related projects. Docker remains a buzzword for the majority of customers, another box to tick besides big data and ML on slideware.
      - scarface74 9y ago
        I wouldn't go that far. I often see cited that 60%+ Of commits on Github come from Macs.
        pjmlp 9y ago
        Github is a very lousy metric to measure anything relevant to typical enterprise development.
        9y ago
system16 9y ago
I can confirm this. I worked for a major game publisher at the time, and MSFT threw significant money at us to port iOS/Android titles to Windows Phone. I think their gamble was once our - and the hundreds of other developers' - titles were on their platform, users would migrate to it. We'd then hopefully see promising numbers and decide to update the titles on our own accord, keeping them in sync with iOS/Android. Unfortunately for MSFT, that didn't happen. Aside from their hefty payment to get the 1.0 out, after that there was zero incentive to update as often as iOS/Android (platforms that actually brought in revenue) so after the initial release the titles stagnated. They did offer payment for additional point updates, but these were separate contracts that would take months to sign-off (MSFT moved VERY slow), and in the fast-moving mobile world, the WP port gathered dust. Xbox Live support which sounded like a great idea at the time and edge over the other platforms, turned out to be a nightmare. Rather than come up with a mobile-specific review policy, we had to go through the same approval process as Xbox console publishers do to get the titles signed off, and this took many weeks or months of tedious back and forth with their review team who didn't 'get' mobile. Titles would occasionally get rejected for reasons irrelevant to mobile, and then take weeks to be resolved. Ultimately, the few Windows users we did have (IIRC our metrics showed a few thousand DAU on our major titles vs. iOS/Android in the low millions) became frustrated because Windows Phone versions lagged significantly behind iOS/Android releases (which were in sync) and had less features.

by gdilla 9y ago

Ologn 9y ago

They did this later on. In 2011, Android Market (Google play) cost $25 for a lifetime developer account. You could develop apps on Windows, Mac or Linux. It came with an emulator. So for the cost of $25, anyone on any major developer platform could write an app. In 2011, you could only program Windows Phone app on Windows (I don't even have a Windows machine where I live). Windows Phone Marketplace charged $99 a year for a developer account. You can say Apple did this to, or that it should be nothing, but apparently it was not a winning strategy. I know a college student who shelled out the $25 back then and published an app on Google Play, now he works as an Android developer for a Fortune 500 company. Perhaps the idea paying four times that, and on a yearly basis no less, to Microsoft, was off-putting. People can straighten their tie and say any business going off on such a venture can afford $100 a year as a gatekeeper, but it didn't work out so well for Microsoft. Apple was already in the pole position so they could get away with it. But you're right, after throwing up these barriers to developer entry at first, they started raining cash on developers to make apps, providing developer shops to code it and so on.

seanmcdirmid 9y ago
They were priming the app pump at the same time they were charging $100 for dev accounts, it wasn't something that came later.
scarface74 9y ago
I doubt that many developers saw having a Windows machine as an impediment to building apps. Microsoft does still have 90% market share in PCs.
- jhasse 9y ago
  What's the marketshare on developer machines though? And build servers? What about Docker? It's so nice to be able to have any CI build your Android apps and Travis CI supports building iOS apps, too.
  - scarface74 9y ago
    As I said in another post, you can get a hosted build server from Visualstudio.com (VSTS) with unlimited Git repos, with 5 users and a hosted build server with 240 minutes per month. You can get a hosted build server with unlimited minutes for $40 a month. If you need more than one simultaneous build - buy more build agents. VSTS has hosted build servers for Windows, IOS, Linux, and Android. It's even nicer not to have to maintain servers at all. I try to avoid maintaining servers. We are moving to serverless functions with Lambda and serverless Docker with AWS Fargate.
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    Pretty much the same regarding developer machines. Besides my stay at research institutes, I never worked on companies where IT allowed anything other than Windows as development machines. Linux when required is only VM based or servers accessed via ssh. Macs are only allowed on macOS/iOS related projects. Docker remains a buzzword for the majority of customers, another box to tick besides big data and ML on slideware.
    - scarface74 9y ago
      I wouldn't go that far. I often see cited that 60%+ Of commits on Github come from Macs.
      - pjmlp 9y ago
        Github is a very lousy metric to measure anything relevant to typical enterprise development.
        9y ago

system16 9y ago

I can confirm this. I worked for a major game publisher at the time, and MSFT threw significant money at us to port iOS/Android titles to Windows Phone. I think their gamble was once our - and the hundreds of other developers' - titles were on their platform, users would migrate to it. We'd then hopefully see promising numbers and decide to update the titles on our own accord, keeping them in sync with iOS/Android. Unfortunately for MSFT, that didn't happen. Aside from their hefty payment to get the 1.0 out, after that there was zero incentive to update as often as iOS/Android (platforms that actually brought in revenue) so after the initial release the titles stagnated. They did offer payment for additional point updates, but these were separate contracts that would take months to sign-off (MSFT moved VERY slow), and in the fast-moving mobile world, the WP port gathered dust. Xbox Live support which sounded like a great idea at the time and edge over the other platforms, turned out to be a nightmare. Rather than come up with a mobile-specific review policy, we had to go through the same approval process as Xbox console publishers do to get the titles signed off, and this took many weeks or months of tedious back and forth with their review team who didn't 'get' mobile. Titles would occasionally get rejected for reasons irrelevant to mobile, and then take weeks to be resolved. Ultimately, the few Windows users we did have (IIRC our metrics showed a few thousand DAU on our major titles vs. iOS/Android in the low millions) became frustrated because Windows Phone versions lagged significantly behind iOS/Android releases (which were in sync) and had less features.