Build 2015 Keynote... WOW!
And that "wow" is mostly in a good way.
The big highlights for me would have to be the effort they put to draw developers from other platforms to, or back to, Windows. They've made efforts around this in the past, but they lacked a lot. HoloLens also continues to be one of the most exciting pieces of new tech despite having time to think about it.
The efforts to attract developers are crazy, ambitious and, should they fail this time around, prove that people can be mindlessly biased. Their approach is questionable. I would dub it the "Google" approach. In many ways what MS is doing now, is a reflection of what Google did when it unveiled Android. Android was based on Java... only it wasn't. Google duplicated Java's APIs so that any existing Java developer could be an Android developer. And, aside from the pending legal complications was a wild success.
From the sounds of it, Microsoft is effectively run their own Android Runtime Environment that should be able to run most apps that would run on an AOSP flavour of Android. I mentioned before, I'm not a huge fan of this. The reality is, even if it works REALLY well, it likely won't work as well as the average user will expect it to work. But! And this is a fairly huge one. Aside from Google Services, this will probably bridge 99%+ of the app gap.
If that sounds crazy though... even crazier is the objective-C stuff. This sounds like Roslyn under the covers, but the gist I got was that Visual Studio 2015 will allow you to write in Objective-C and have it output a Universal app. There are some caveats, mainly that it sounded like a small percentage of code may need to be rewritten. But, unlike the Google Services for the Android apps, it didn't sound like there were the same sorts of limitations at play here (though imagine there are some around things like Air Play and other Apple proprietary services).
And I could be wrong and maybe the Android thing is also a Roslyn related effort where Android code compiles to a Universal App.
But the reality is... coding for Windows is now even simpler than it was before (and it was already simpler than iOS or Android dev even in the early days of Win8 and Windows Phone). More than that though, it allows those with Android or iOS dev skills to use those skillsets in Windows. And that combination is why this *should* be more appealing to developers. Whether you want to take an app from another platform to Windows or even the other way around, there is now a way to do that, and one which streamlines the amount of code rewrite you need to be concerned about.
But, HoloLens was again the big surprise. The demos were much more "real" this time. And the one that excited me the most was one with ones of the developers roaming around a mock up of his apartment on stage. Seeing that it does a lot of the consumer related stuff I was hoping for has made me feel like I won't even care what it costs. I feel like I need to have one. All of a sudden I see my current setup in my office as a vast waste of space. If the product is reasonably priced I'll need to buy one for my wife as well.
It is crazy how exciting this is. What sealed the deal for me was pinning apps on walls around your house where you might make the most use of an app, and being able to make an app follow you and resize it to take up as much space as you'd like. Suddenly even a 60 inch TV seems like a waste by comparison.
And... this is a big "and". I don't care if the battery life is so terrible that it isn't feasible to use it untethered for more than an hour or two. I don't really see this as *that* sort of product. This is a productivity piece. This will become a massive white board in my office as well as my desktop display, and maybe a TV on the wall behind me and a stereo on the window sill... and ALL AT ONCE!
That isn't to say that if the size/form factor eventually became something more "roaming" friendly and the cost can justify taking it out in public that there aren't possibilities there as well. There certainly are. Just that from my perspective, I don't need to go beyond the applications in my home office to justify the device. And I could do that without any specialized holographic apps. Everything mentioned above are all apps that will be there in Windows 10 that I can simply pin where I want them.
The big highlights for me would have to be the effort they put to draw developers from other platforms to, or back to, Windows. They've made efforts around this in the past, but they lacked a lot. HoloLens also continues to be one of the most exciting pieces of new tech despite having time to think about it.
The efforts to attract developers are crazy, ambitious and, should they fail this time around, prove that people can be mindlessly biased. Their approach is questionable. I would dub it the "Google" approach. In many ways what MS is doing now, is a reflection of what Google did when it unveiled Android. Android was based on Java... only it wasn't. Google duplicated Java's APIs so that any existing Java developer could be an Android developer. And, aside from the pending legal complications was a wild success.
From the sounds of it, Microsoft is effectively run their own Android Runtime Environment that should be able to run most apps that would run on an AOSP flavour of Android. I mentioned before, I'm not a huge fan of this. The reality is, even if it works REALLY well, it likely won't work as well as the average user will expect it to work. But! And this is a fairly huge one. Aside from Google Services, this will probably bridge 99%+ of the app gap.
If that sounds crazy though... even crazier is the objective-C stuff. This sounds like Roslyn under the covers, but the gist I got was that Visual Studio 2015 will allow you to write in Objective-C and have it output a Universal app. There are some caveats, mainly that it sounded like a small percentage of code may need to be rewritten. But, unlike the Google Services for the Android apps, it didn't sound like there were the same sorts of limitations at play here (though imagine there are some around things like Air Play and other Apple proprietary services).
And I could be wrong and maybe the Android thing is also a Roslyn related effort where Android code compiles to a Universal App.
But the reality is... coding for Windows is now even simpler than it was before (and it was already simpler than iOS or Android dev even in the early days of Win8 and Windows Phone). More than that though, it allows those with Android or iOS dev skills to use those skillsets in Windows. And that combination is why this *should* be more appealing to developers. Whether you want to take an app from another platform to Windows or even the other way around, there is now a way to do that, and one which streamlines the amount of code rewrite you need to be concerned about.
But, HoloLens was again the big surprise. The demos were much more "real" this time. And the one that excited me the most was one with ones of the developers roaming around a mock up of his apartment on stage. Seeing that it does a lot of the consumer related stuff I was hoping for has made me feel like I won't even care what it costs. I feel like I need to have one. All of a sudden I see my current setup in my office as a vast waste of space. If the product is reasonably priced I'll need to buy one for my wife as well.
It is crazy how exciting this is. What sealed the deal for me was pinning apps on walls around your house where you might make the most use of an app, and being able to make an app follow you and resize it to take up as much space as you'd like. Suddenly even a 60 inch TV seems like a waste by comparison.
And... this is a big "and". I don't care if the battery life is so terrible that it isn't feasible to use it untethered for more than an hour or two. I don't really see this as *that* sort of product. This is a productivity piece. This will become a massive white board in my office as well as my desktop display, and maybe a TV on the wall behind me and a stereo on the window sill... and ALL AT ONCE!
That isn't to say that if the size/form factor eventually became something more "roaming" friendly and the cost can justify taking it out in public that there aren't possibilities there as well. There certainly are. Just that from my perspective, I don't need to go beyond the applications in my home office to justify the device. And I could do that without any specialized holographic apps. Everything mentioned above are all apps that will be there in Windows 10 that I can simply pin where I want them.
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