Firstly, I want to thank everybody who responded to my last blog post: From Mac to Windows: Why is Microsoft making it so hard? There is always a risk that any post dealing with a Mac versus Windows topic could descend into a flame war, so I was very appreciative of the intelligent thoughts and suggestions offered by everyone who commented on the blog.
Secondly, I will apologise for taking so long posting this follow up blog post. I have been sitting on this blog post for a couple of months waiting for permission to include a few quotes from Chris Bernard, a Chief Experience Evangelist at Microsoft, but after not hearing back, I have decided to publish the post without them.
In that time, Microsoft has abandoned the Metro name, but I will continue to use it here in lieu of a non-Wordy alternative.
Back in July, I spoke to Chris for an hour about the direction Microsoft is taking. I certainly wasn’t expecting to receive that kind of pro-active response. If we are still talking pros and cons between Apple and Microsoft, it seems unlikely that someone from Apple would have been as supportive in this way (again, I may be just as ignorant of the support channels Apple provides).
As a developer looking to move across to the Windows platform, there are two partially-related decisions I need to make:
- Which Windows platform should I target, and given the imminent release of Windows 8, should I make a Desktop or a Metro application?
- Which framework and language should I use to develop that application?
Since numerous people have asked me for a follow up, in this post I will discuss what I have drawn from my conversation with Chris, as well as my own experiences with Windows 8 to answer the first of these questions.
I will cover specific frameworks and technology choices in a separate post.
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