Windows 8 applications - what's different?

[AlphaJohn]

Very bad review. UAC is defo not worse then in Win7 and does he care about security? UAC DOES have a purpose.

Well not so much UAC but it has another beast hiding in its belly, Secure boot with signed hardware, yes now its volantree on x86, not sum much on ARM, the question is when will they force PC's to go the same route? Buy a PC with "Windows 9 or 10" on it and thats it, no more reloading with an OS of your choice....

Blaming slow network copying on Windows 8. Hahaha! Yeah right.

DRM check on media is baaaack by the looks of things.....

I never had a blue sceen in Windows 8 yet. Is his PC even Windows 8 capable?

As he said nope, just that when the app crash you see a black screen an no indication of what happened. Will have to wait and see what Windows 8 does on bad hardware like ram as that cryptic IO errors could always lead a proper tech into the right direction of what to replace.

Screw the start menu. It is soooo old!

So is a spare wheel in the trunk, if it doesn't get used much and is old does not equate to its not needed anymore.

So there are two control panels. Who gives a rats ass.

Helpdesk does, I guess you think in personal view terms only? Do not give a rats ass about the corporate world and how things function outside your little world.

/off topic. Do not bother with reviews. They are just personal opinions. I don't give a rats ass about someones personal opinions. Keep it to yourself.

Oh wait, I was right. You seem to live in your own little bubble. Good luck with that.

 

[backstreetboy]

Well not so much UAC but it has another beast hiding in its belly, Secure boot with signed hardware, yes now its volantree on x86, not sum much on ARM, the question is when will they force PC's to go the same route? Buy a PC with "Windows 9 or 10" on it and thats it, no more reloading with an OS of your choice....


DRM check on media is baaaack by the looks of things.....


As he said nope, just that when the app crash you see a black screen an no indication of what happened. Will have to wait and see what Windows 8 does on bad hardware like ram as that cryptic IO errors could always lead a proper tech into the right direction of what to replace.


So is a spare wheel in the trunk, if it doesn't get used much and is old does not equate to its not needed anymore.


Helpdesk does, I guess you think in personal view terms only? Do not give a rats ass about the corporate world and how things function outside your little world.


Oh wait, I was right. You seem to live in your own little bubble. Good luck with that.

Well there is the "metro" settings and the control panel. They are both different. Have different functions. If you are working for a helpdesk you just take the client to the normal Control Panel.

With regards to the spare wheel. Sure if it's not there you are stuck but with Win 8 there is the modern UI and a search function.

Anyway thanks it's working great for me.

 

[AlphaJohn]

Relevant:

"This blog post from an un-happy Microsoft developer highlights many of the problems that developers are having with submitting to the new Windows store. His app, that won 2 App X challenges from Microsoft, has been rejected 6 times over 2 months with no clear indications as to the cause. This is even after going through a rigorous early-certification process. With Windows RT relying solely on apps from the store, and there being just over 7,000 apps total, Microsoft could have a big problem here."

Full article here: http://themissingbit.blogspot.com/2012/10/windows-8-doesnt-want-your-app-try.html via slashdot

The Short Version
What I Did to Get Ready For Submission

• I started working on Memorylage back in December, with the Developer Preview. I have been programming for Windows for 17 years, with C# for the last 6, so I wasn’t starting from scratch
• I read through all of the their design and coding documentation, trying to really create something that showed off Windows 8’s features, and its design style
• I re-wrote the app for the Consumer Preview when it was released, since a lot had changed, and the new version of Visual Studio wouldn’t even open up files from the Developer Preview anyways
• I attended a 3-day App Excellence lab at Microsoft’s Waltham MA office, where Memorylage won the App X challenge at the end of it
• I also setup a meeting with a Microsoft Field Engineer to review my app, so that I could get early access to the store. This process was extremely detailed, with a 60+ point checklist of criteria that my app needed to meet to get it. I had three things that I needed to fix when I first met him, but I passed the second time
• I continued working on the app without actually submitting yet, because I wanted to make sure that it was fully polished and feature complete
• I signed up for Microsoft’s 30-To-Launch program, which helps developers go through all of the steps necessary to get into the store. I already had gone through everything that they showed, but I figured it couldn’t hurt anyways, in case there was something new
• I went to a Microsoft hosted Hackathon at the Museum of Science in Boston, where Memorylage again won the App X challenge at the end. This time, I netted a $1,200 Samsung Series 7 Slate with dock, a $500 gift card and an XBox game
• I met several Microsoft people (and others) there that were encouraging me to submit my app to the store immediately, since they thought it was ready, and was something they wanted in the store
• After another two weeks of polishing, I finally submitted my app on August 29th (almost a full two months before the release of Windows 8)

What Happened After Submission

• The app failed for 4 reasons, 3 of which gave me no real idea of what caused the failure. The failures were for stopping responding (when did this happen?), performance (performance of what?), Direct 3D (I don’t use Direct 3D) and having an incomplete web site (I had it finished a day later)
• I went through all of my code, cleaning up performance anywhere I could, and tried to fix anything that I wasn’t 100% happy with
• I submitted again, and failed again for the same 3 reasons (minus the web site issue)
• I emailed Bob, a developer evangelist who I met at the Boston Hackathon, who said that he would escalate the issue internally
• I re-submitted again, but only for x86, thinking it may be an issue with ARM (since no developers had access to ARM to test with), but it still failed for the same reasons
• I posted multiple thread in the support forums, asking for help with what I thought was an issue with the startup time (the performance failure) and the Direct 3D failure
• Matt, who works at Microsoft and replied to the app startup post, asked me to send him my app, so he could test it in his own personal store. It passed all tests for him though, so I didn’t find out anything new
• I went to Microsoft’s support site, and used one of my two free help requests to talk to someone directly through chat. They couldn’t help me, but escalated me to someone on the store team, who would get back to me via email
• A few days later, I got an email from John, the person my support ticket was escalated to, saying that he thinks everything should be all set now, and to just re-submit. He never said what he thought was wrong in the first place
• I resubmit and fail again for the same reasons. This time, it took 6 days to fail, since everyone had access to the store now. Each submission was now becoming a lot more costly as the release of Windows 8 was starting to get closer
• John tells me that the failure is because I submitted a neutral app, which will be tested against ARM, but that can’t be it, because I had already tested as x86 only (the third submission). He also said that the Direct 3D failure was because I didn’t have a check against the feature level, and not because I used any Direct 3D features. This was also incorrect, as the documentation clearly states that you only need to check the feature level if using Direct X 10 or up
• I get to talk to John on the phone, and he tells me that they couldn’t find out much information about my failures (even after pulling server logs), except that the app was apparently crashing during startup on a low-powered machine
• I cripple my VM, so that it is SUPER slow, and run the WACK (Windows Application Certification Kit), which finally causes it to fail. The failure is due to taking too long to suspend, and the information it gives allows me to fix it in under a half hour. Why the store hides this information, and just gives a generic “Performance” error is beyond me
• I also remove the Microsoft Ad SDK, since I have a feeling that it might be causing the Direct 3D failure
• I re-submit, and wait another 5 days for it to fail again. The performance and Direct 3D issues were gone though, so it was just the crashing failure that was left
• I find that my code has a leftover call to CurrentAppSimulator.LicenseInformation from initial development of the licensing code, and I know that this will cause the app to fail certification, but has no effect when running it on my own (making it very hard to catch)
• I re-submit, and am hopeful that this will have fixed all of the issues, but after 10 days of waiting, it fails again with the same crashing issue
• Allan (another developer evangelist that had been helping me a lot) says that he has escalated my issue to his boss’ boss’ boss’ boss (a corporate VP), and will still try to get it through before launch (this is now the 17th of October, 9 days until launch)
• I meet Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell from Dot Net Rocks, at a live recording in Boston, who I got to show my app to, and tell about my issues. They say they will try to get someone to help, and initially just talk to some developer evangelist that they meet in New York about it, but Richard then decides to email Steven Sinofsky himself (head of the entire Windows Division) about the issue
• Also, while at the Dot Net Rocks event, I meet Chris, who ran the App Excellence lab I went to, and he let me test Memorylage on his ARM tablet, and it worked perfectly, so the issues were not ARM based
• Sinofsky actually responds the next day, saying that they will get back to me directly (I never hear back though)
• I attend a webcast from Microsoft about common pitfalls of submitting to the store. The issue of calling the CurrentAppSimulator object is in the top 5 causes of failure, but thry still won’t catch that in any of the tests, or even tell you that was a cause for failure. The developer is left to figure it out on their own
• John asks me to send him my app again, so he can look into it again (I haven’t heard back from him yet)
• Allan tells me that I am on the docket for some critical store meeting, so they are working on it
• Allan forwards me an email, asking me to re-submit my app, and they will prioritize the certification process
• I am still waiting to hear back on that (it is now just past midnight on the 25th, with just under 24 hours until launch), but that was only yesterday, so I am actually confident I will hear back soon
• So far, I have sent/received 131 emails back and forth with various people within Microsoft
• I have given my app, and even my source code, to multiple people within Microsoft. To date, not a single one of them has been able to cause it to crash, or fail a single test. Every issue that I have figured out, I found on my own, but the store still fails it. How do you debug that?

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