I work with a lot (80+ developers) in the Microsoft ecosystem. I haven't found a single one who is enthusiastic about Windows 8. Most are looking rather worried as yet again the rug has been pulled from underneath them. They got burned with Silverlight and the first drop of the Foundation series of products and Entity Framework.
Another incompatible API is just more shit to deal with.
> Most are looking rather worried as yet again the rug has been pulled from underneath them. They got burned with Silverlight and the first drop of the Foundation series of products and Entity Framework.
Not one dev saw that coming with those APIs? I don't believe it. Microsoft in the 2000s has been all about throwing APIs against the wall and then deprecating them. Anyone who has been around Microsoft knew this was a risk with Silverlight.
I think the real reason these particular devs got burned is because is because Windows today is like Mac before MacOS X: it's all about incompatibility with the rest of the world, "doing it better", crap like that. MVPs are happy to go along with it and adopt these technologies because they can keep their position of being important in the ecosystem. It's like Apple fans in the 90s. WPF, Silverlight, EF, all this stuff is akin to Apple's OpenDoc, or Dylan, or even Newton. It's shiny technology in an incompatible vacuum.
On the topic of the Windows app store. When Apple made iOS, they took components of MacOS X as the foundation of iOS. But when they released the Mac App Store, they didn't force developers on MacOS X develop to the iOS API. That's what Microsoft is trying to do here. Develop with RT or Metro or GTFO. Pure idiocy. The next step is predictable: Microsoft will have to step in like they have on WP7 and they'll start offering to pay for other people's development costs to do the port. I'd be surprised if they haven't already started offering that.
Another incompatible API is just more shit to deal with.
They are not happy.
I'm not either as I have to support these guys.