20 replies to this topic

[PaulOBrien]

Microsoft have just released Visual Studio 2008 for download for their MSDN software subscription service members.

Full details on the new version are on the Visual Studio website,  we however are most interested in what VS2008 offers for Mobile Development right?

Well, the good news is that there are a whole bunch of new features in 2008 for mobile developers, including .net Compact Framework 3.5 (with WCF, LINQ), an updated emulator, a ton of under the hood improvements and much more.

So what's the bad news? The bad news is, if you're a mobile developer, the cost of entry to Visual Studio is going to be higher than before. With the release of Visual Studio 2005, Microsoft made mobile development possible in the 'Standard' version of VS. With 2008 however, it has once again been elevated to the 'Professional' product. Why MS why!



Here's why I think this REALLY sucks.

As a MS MVP, we get the opportunity to travel to MS now and again, and talk with the people responsible for the products we all use, be that Windows Mobile, Visual Studio or anything that MS produces. Not only that, we get to hear from MS execs, such as Steve Ballmer. Steve is very proud to tell MVPs that they can email him at any time, say they are an MVP, and get a reply. He's right, they do, and I did.

I wrote to Steve that although the progression of mobile development into 'Standard' was good, what really disappointed me was that it didn't make it into the free 'Express' products. Granted Windows Mobile isn't as new as it was, but I still think the developer ecosystem is massively important to a platform, and getting people in with a free development tool would make a great deal of sense. Steve replied, copied in the person responsible for such decisions, and I explained by case.

So now, here we are, with the next release of VS, and it's gone the other way! I still believe my reasoning is valid, and free / cheap development tools for a mobile platform are vital, but this hope seems further and further away from reality.



What are your thoughts on the situation?

P

Edit 1: Wait, it's not showing in MY MSDN yet! Watch this space...

Edit 2: Here's a relevant post from the Windows Mobile blog... the response to someone raising this same concern?

Microsoft said:

You're correct, you need the Professional version of Visual Studio 2008 to get the mobile development features.  The Visual Studio 2008 SKU structure is based on how our customers were using Visual Studio 2005.  Very few customers use Visual Studio 2005 Standard to build applications for Windows Mobile devices so in order to deliver a Standard SKU that is simplified and tuned to the customers that use it, Visual Studio 2008 Standard no longer includes support for mobile development.

If you're concerned about the cost of Visual Studio Professional, you should consider joining the ISV Empower Program which is designed for Independent Software Vendors and provides limited Microsoft software licenses – including Visual Studio – for internal use, development and testing and technical support.  Registration with the program costs around $375 for companies in the United States.  Please consult https://empower-isv....Help/en/rsc.htm for a list of other countries which have an ISV Empower Program.

Consider me unconvinced!

[Swampie]

That does seem quite lame that they moved the mobile stuff into Pro.  Pro does have some nice new features though - including moving of the Unit Testing features from the Team Edition products into Pro.


My free Team Suite subscription ends at the end of this month, so I'm pleased that I got to download the full version of VS2008 before it expired.  I won it at DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper last year - no way would I pay the £7k + VAT RRP!!!

[PaulOBrien]

Looks like i've been misinformed, I don't see it in my MSDN just yet...?

P

[doctormetal]

I currently use the vs2008 beta 2 and I though that no mobile support on the standard edition was an issue with the beta. It seems this is not the case.

I think they will piss off a lot of small software houses that develop for windows mobile who are now forced to buy an extremely expensive software suite with a lot of features they probably will never use.

For hobbyist the standard version is a lot of money, but the pro version is out of the question.

This move will surely put off a lot of ethousiasts.

[PaulOBrien]

It's on MSDN now!

P

[NuShrike]

So what does 2008 offer besides a lot of extra side fluff/convenience features (as far as I can read)?

o Does it have improved code generation?  I'm not impressed with the ARM/x86 code generation.
o Does it have increased processors support?  2005 only supported up to ARMv5T with the Windows Mobile 6 SDK.  I like to see up to ARM11 (aka ARMv6) for proper Kaiser support, or I might have to fall back to hand coding assembler sometime.  You might ask why, but I like to ask why is a 400MHz UI so sluggish?  May be all that .NET stuff.

At least I can access it through work's MSDN.

[chucky.egg]

I would love a free/cheap native application developer suite.
I haven't done any development for a long time now, and mostly I want to write Homebrew-type stuff (nothing of commercial value) so I can't see me paying much for it.

What's this $375 ISV thing?
Do I get a full copy of VS with support for mobile devices for that money?  

[FragMeister]

Microsoft will never ever recoup the development costs of writing new versions of VS IDE.

After all, the Framework is free. - and although it would be rather tricky, you need nothing more to develop .NET applications but a VB.NET/C# compiler, and Notepad.

VS IDE is a tool to allow us developers write applications better, faster and richer than previously.

I am sure (much like in Excel) we use only a small percentage of the features of Visual Studio, and as MS "give away" the Express editions for hobbyists to get into home-programming this realistically means that it is only companies which will buy even the Standard edition of VS.

Not that I particularly like the way that mobile development is no longer in the Standard edition, I can understand that it allows MS to differentiate the different versions more, and to get more people onto the Pro edition.

[MisfitKiwi]

It's a little crappy of them to not offer a way to write .NET applications on WM to hobby developers, there goes my idea of getting started on .NET WM development since I'm already semi familiar with C#. Why they don't just chuck out a reduced version of VC# express that supports mobile development is beyond me :S

Is it possible to use Embedded VC++ to build WM6 applications?

Edited by MisfitKiwi, 20 November 2007 - 09:28 AM.

[Swampie]

doctormetal, on Nov 19 2007, 18:48, said:

I think they will piss off a lot of small software houses that develop for windows mobile who are now forced to buy an extremely expensive software suite with a lot of features they probably will never use.

Pricing for 2005 (expect 2008 to be similar)

£200 for 2005 Standard
£540 for 2005 Pro
£370 for upgrade to Pro (which usually supports previous to newer editions - eg VS2005 Std to VS2008 Pro)

Not exactly "extremely expensive", even for small software houses.

[Swampie]

MisfitKiwi, on Nov 20 2007, 09:27, said:

It's a little crappy of them to not offer a way to write .NET applications on WM to hobby developers, there goes my idea of getting started on .NET WM development since I'm already semi familiar with C#. Why they don't just chuck out a reduced version of VC# express that supports mobile development is beyond me :S

Is it possible to use Embedded VC++ to build WM6 applications?

Quote

"eMbedded Visual C++ 4.0 and Native Development

Microsoft eMbedded Visual C++ 4.0 with Service Pack 4 supports native application development for Windows Mobile 2003 and Windows Mobile Second Edition software for devices. However, the release of Visual Studio 2005 provides new features for native code developers that eMbedded Visual C++ 4.0 does not, for example, Intellisense, the new ARM emulator, new versions of MFC and ATL, and improved wizards and design-time user interface.

You should use eMbedded Visual C++ 4.0 with Service Pack 4 when:

    * You do not want to target Windows Mobile 5.0 features in native code.
    * You do not want the improved native development features in Visual Studio 2005."

http://msdn2.microso...bileapps_topic2

I guess that would also apply to WM6.

[PaulOBrien]

200 quid to 540 quid is quite a jump. I want the WinMo platform to be attractive to hobbyist and freeware developers as well as software houses.

P

[FragMeister]

At the release of VS2005, MS gave away (well the DVD was free but I think postage was £8) a 180 Day "Trial" of VS2005.

Install this on a Virtual PC, and then once your 6 months are up, you could always "trial" again on another VHD, as you might not yet be convinced to buy it after the 6 months...

Not that I would *ever* do such a thing...

[Swampie]

Paul (MVP), on Nov 20 2007, 10:00, said:

200 quid to 540 quid is quite a jump. I want the WinMo platform to be attractive to hobbyist and freeware developers as well as software houses.

P

I agree it's a big jump for hobbyists etc - my point was that for software houses (which was put in the post I was replying to), it's not as significant a jump - especially considering some of the Unit Testing features which have filtered down into Pro now.

[Swampie]

FragMeister, on Nov 20 2007, 10:43, said:

At the release of VS2005, MS gave away (well the DVD was free but I think postage was £8) a 180 Day "Trial" of VS2005.

Install this on a Virtual PC, and then once your 6 months are up, you could always "trial" again on another VHD, as you might not yet be convinced to buy it after the 6 months...

Not that I would *ever* do such a thing...

I went to the launch of VS2005 (and SQL2005 and BizTalk) and was given a free copy of each including VS2005 Pro (well, a voucher which could be redeemed a number of weeks later).

As for the trials, they're doing the same this time - only 90 day trials (Pro not up yet, but the full Team Suite is).  See http://msdn2.microso...s/aa700831.aspx  At 4GB it's a big download though!

[Rolandhurt01]

All the forced use of VS 2008 Pro for mobile development is going to do is force people who could afford to pay for the Standard Edition of VS to allow them to create Freeware WM applications to download VS 2008 Pro from torrent sites which will then hit Microsoft's sales of VS 2008 and also open peoples computers up to other online nasties that they spend money on software that stops there computere getting infected with viruses that or out in the wilds of the net.  Will have to take a look at my local computer fare in a few months to see if there any cheap leagle VS 2008 Editions to be had.

Roland

P.S not that I have ever or would ever download VS off torrent sites.

[dom]

I think it could be the case that MS are being quite altruistic with this move.  They probably want to make it a little easier for Google to get into the smartphone market with their GPhone platform.  I bet that's the reason  for making VS2008 that bit more expensive.  Bless their little cotton socks

[Paulfo (Microsoft)]

For what it is worth guys I agree with you and will raise this question again inside the halls of MS Redmond.

I've worked at MS for a fair while, supporting enterprise and mobile developers (including a stint for the short lived Stockholm Mobile development centre) and now spend my time working with enthusiasts (hobbyists). Not having a tool accessible to them for mobile development is dumb. Hell - I can get  a tool (MS Robotics Studio) powerful enough to developer a robot car's software (Princeton University recently got to the DARPA Urban Challenge semi-finals with their MS Robotics based solution) for free (non-commercial license) - why not hobbyist development on mobile devices?

A +ve for all you VS pro devs working against Symbian as well as WM devices is that the change to the VS license covering IDE extensions. You can now build extensions that support non-Windows platforms, so the happy days of Symbian development with a good tool (like the old days of VC6) may well reoccur for VS2008  - we just need VSIP devs to take note and produce stuff for us.

[doctormetal]

Paulfo (Microsoft), on Nov 30 2007, 15:12, said:

For what it is worth guys I agree with you and will raise this question again inside the halls of MS Redmond.

Let's hope they will listen to you.
It would be nice to have something like an express edition for mobile for the hobbyists like me.

[PaulOBrien]

A free non-commercial version would work well!

P