Windows mobile, I dont remember the OS of the more recent phone tho, it was the HTC Pro 2 for t-mobile I had it for liek 2 or 3 days before I had to return it, so I dont remember if it was mobile or phone 7 (phone 7 might of not been out at the time as it was like a year ago)

I think MS needs to quit trying to be in every hardware market and focus on what they are good at.

Why would I buy a Windows tablet after seeing how bad they screwed up Zune and Windows Phones.

I wish they would spend their creative energy on making Windows 8 a better product for desktop users instead.

A large proportion of PC users are families with laptops, who use them to surf the web, send emails and watch videos/listen to music. All these roles are very easily done by tablets, and as such the predictions are that laptop sales will plummet in future, with tablet sales rocketing. Why would microsoft choose to ignore a market that is about to sky rocket?

Also, once people start using apple/android tablets, if they do decide their needs are not met and they need a proper PC, then they will look first at apple/google based PCs. If people switch to using such systems at home, companies will find a lot more people demanding they have apple/google PCs at work.

If microsoft doesnt get into the tablet market, then they may find themselves getting left behind, and may have to watch their market almost dissapear on them.

Now I realise that there will always be native and .net client development on windows. No-one is going to write Visual Studio in javascript (or at least, it's highly unlikely), but if HTML5 is "the way", well, ask a wpf developer how confident they feel about Microsofts commitment to that platform.

CodeRun

Compilr


Granted they aren't full blown IDE the way VS is, but I would say that it's possible to get VS like functionality out of a JS + HTML interface. Javascript is mostly a great language, and there are some excellent frameworks that help avoid some of the problems of Javascript. It really just needs better tools. If there was level of syntax highlighting, code completion and refactoring support for javascript that there is for C#, I think it would get a lot more love.

[quote name='Antheus' timestamp='1307630191' post='4821324']WebGL is just a toy. It will make sure ads run at 60FPS. But little more beyond that.

I think you being a bit pessimistic. Games on social networking sites are already doing well, and for it to get any better, WebGL will pave the way.
[/quote]
That's the problem. He's seeing WebGL for what it is. A toy. Due to fear of security and things like unique identifiers (I know your video card, your browser, how much ram you have.... etc which can be used by ad services to uniquely identify you online) you'll never see WebGL become powerful.

I loved WebGL when they hadn't placed restrictions on the shaders. You could write shader model 4 or 5 shaders and if a person supported them then it would run. They purposely chose to target "OpenGL ES 2.0" and the lowest common denominator of users. In doing so they basically said "yeah WebGL won't be used for games. It's more for rotating phones on a shopping site. We're not trying to one up flash or anything." Flash on the other hand created their Molehill project which from the looks of it kills the features that WebGL has.

All I wanted from WebGL was a nice system for targetting any shader version and any OpenGL version without restrictions, but it turned out to be far from that.

Speaking of that though someone on the chrome team picked up my mouse lock prototype request for locking the mouse to DOM elements for games and getting mouse delta offsets.

[quote name='ChaosEngine' timestamp='1307621079' post='4821275']
Now I realise that there will always be native and .net client development on windows. No-one is going to write Visual Studio in javascript (or at least, it's highly unlikely), but if HTML5 is "the way", well, ask a wpf developer how confident they feel about Microsofts commitment to that platform.

CodeRun

Compilr


Granted they aren't full blown IDE the way VS is, but I would say that it's possible to get VS like functionality out of a JS + HTML interface. Javascript is mostly a great language, and there are some excellent frameworks that help avoid some of the problems of Javascript. It really just needs better tools. If there was level of syntax highlighting, code completion and refactoring support for javascript that there is for C#, I think it would get a lot more love.
[/quote]

While I wouldn't say javascript is a great language (IMHO it lags way behind C#), I do think the situation would be hugely improved if there was better tooling.

[quote name='ChurchSkiz' timestamp='1307624290' post='4821297']
I think MS needs to quit trying to be in every hardware market and focus on what they are good at.

Why would I buy a Windows tablet after seeing how bad they screwed up Zune and Windows Phones.

I wish they would spend their creative energy on making Windows 8 a better product for desktop users instead.

Microsoft has been in the tablet market longer than anyone and their tablets are actually a lot better than most of the android/iOS tablets you see out in the wild.

And they didn't really screw up the Zune and Windows Phone 7. They are both solid products. They were just both released into hugely competitive markets and could have had better marketing strategies.
[/quote]

I take it you don't actually own either of those products. They screwed the pooch with both. You don't spend millions on a product in a competitive market and then not push updates that your customers demand. I'm certainly not going to rush out to buy a Windows tablet after those fiascos.

I take it you don't actually own either of those products. They screwed the pooch with both. You don't spend millions on a product in a competitive market and then not push updates that your customers demand. I'm certainly not going to rush out to buy a Windows tablet after those fiascos.

It seems to work just fine for apple.

I still don't see how the zune was a fiasco. I don't especially think the WP7 was a fiasco either, but I guess some people did so to each his own.

[quote name='ChurchSkiz' timestamp='1307662688' post='4821524']
I take it you don't actually own either of those products. They screwed the pooch with both. You don't spend millions on a product in a competitive market and then not push updates that your customers demand. I'm certainly not going to rush out to buy a Windows tablet after those fiascos.

It seems to work just fine for apple.

I still don't see how the zune was a fiasco. I don't especially think the WP7 was a fiasco either, but I guess some people did so to each his own.
[/quote]

I paid $200+ for a device that enables me to use XNA apps, and yet they never enabled an app portal or even an app store (not including the 20 apps that were available since launch). If you wanted to play an XNA game on your zune, you had to compile and distribute it to your own device. How did they address the problem? They basically ditched the device and started pushing WP7 instead.

WP7 is just starting to be a fiasco for similar reasons. The updates they are FINALLY pushing are for fixes from launch. Copy & paste? Thanks guys, I'm pretty sure people were complaining about that before they even held the phone in their hands. In a market where Android is in a pissing contest with Apple over what phone will be the first to take over your lawn mower and mow your lawn for you, Microsoft is sitting in their back office pretending not to hear the screams of their phone customers. Sounds a lot like what happened with the Zune...

Now everyone and their mom is getting into the tablet market. That's all manufacturers are talking about. Why would I drop a few hondo on a companies platform that royally screwed their last two major products? It would take years of waiting and watching before I would consider it.

I'm kind of jaded though. I'm a rabid XNA fan and I caught the vision MS was laying down. Develop a game (or app with silverlight) on your PC and push it to Xbox, Zune, your phone. It could be a developers Utopia. Certainly more friendly then the native Droid and iPhone development. All they had to do was get out of their own way.

ChurchSkiz & w2l2c, can you two take the windows phone derail elsewhere?

I recently had to do some design work (CAD + images). It was for print as well, so 25,000 x 15,000 images.

Not very interesting work, but a harsh reality check. Web is OK for CRUD applications. But it is several light years behind meeting even the most elementary needs of such tasks. Aka - utterly useless.

WebGL is just a toy. It will make sure ads run at 60FPS. But little more beyond that.

The problem is same as with 3D graphics in general. Sure, you can get photorealistic experience in Crysis. But what about 95% of your users who run on integrated Intel cards, 5400 rpm drive and 512MB memory? Because as soon as you get out of hardcore gaming, such specs become higher end.

Things will change and slightly improve in 10 years. But by then, landscape will look much different than it does now in everything, from user interfaces to hardware used to vendors.

So what does that mean then for that kind of application? If someone asked you to build such an app now,what kind of platform would you use?

I paid $200+ for a device that enables me to use XNA apps, and yet they never enabled an app portal or even an app store (not including the 20 apps that were available since launch). If you wanted to play an XNA game on your zune, you had to compile and distribute it to your own device. How did they address the problem? They basically ditched the device and started pushing WP7 instead.

That does kind of suck, but I wouldn't really consider it a fiasco because they don't have an XNA distribution channel. I still consider it to be a better device than most versions of the ipod.

WP7 is just starting to be a fiasco for similar reasons. The updates they are FINALLY pushing are for fixes from launch. Copy & paste? Thanks guys, I'm pretty sure people were complaining about that before they even held the phone in their hands. In a market where Android is in a pissing contest with Apple over what phone will be the first to take over your lawn mower and mow your lawn for you, Microsoft is sitting in their back office pretending not to hear the screams of their phone customers. Sounds a lot like what happened with the Zune...[/quote]
It's been out for only 6 months. Android and iOs devices have been out almost 3 years.

Now everyone and their mom is getting into the tablet market. That's all manufacturers are talking about. Why would I drop a few hondo on a companies platform that royally screwed their last two major products? It would take years of waiting and watching before I would consider it.
[/quote]
Microsoft was already in the tablet market. They've been in the tablet market for more than a decade.