So now that Apple has shown it’s hand with the iPhone 6s and Google set to unveil new Nexus devices at the end of the month, one may (or may not) start wondering about what’s next for Microsoft, which will be holding their event in October. While Microsoft may release some interesting hardware at the October event, hardware isn’t the major problem for Windows 10 Mobile, it’s the ecosystem. It sucks. The apps that you can get for iOS and Android simply aren’t there for Windows Mobile. I’d love to give Windows 10 Mobile a shot, but I really need access to the MBTA mTicket app, which hasn’t been available for anything other than iOS and Android. Microsoft is desperately trying to woo developers to its mobile platform, but they seem to be missing the mark with their recent moves.
Most Mobile Developers use Macs
If you’re going to develop an iOS App, you need a Mac. Even if you choose to develop on another OS, a Mac comes into the picture eventually, either in the form of a server of hosted service. If you’re already developing and supporting iOS apps, you’re probably using Mac OS X already as your primary environment. If you’re interested in making an Android version of your app, it’s pretty painless to snag Android Studio and SDKs and run them along side XCode. Easy. It also doesn’t hurt that iOS and Android come from familiar UNIX-y underpinnings. You likely don’t even need a Windows PC because you already have everything you need. What you do need are emulators and actual devices – not Windows.
React Native is Mac-only
React Native is one of those tools that I think underscores the situation. React Native is getting a lot of attention lately, but it’s actual real-world usage is still relatively small. I bring up React Native as it kind supports where the majority of mobile development is taking place. At present React Native for both iOS and Android, is currently only available for Mac OS X. While it is possible for React Native for Android to run on Windows and Linux, it’s currently not supported. At present, React Native has the following dependencies:
Only one of these dependencies is cross-platform. While yes, Homebrew could easily be swapped out for apt-get or OneGet in Windows 10, learning the details of how to distribute this stuff non-OS X platforms is a sizable time investment.
VisualStudio 2015 for Windows 10 Mobile Development won’t help
Microsoft is investing into tooling that caters to existing Windows developers but does nothing to appeal to existing mobile developers on non-Windows platforms. In fact, adding VisualStudio 2015 to an existing workflow presents more work to existing mobile developers. They now need to consider adding Windows infrastructure to support what is currently a niche mobile platform. Adding Windows 10 Mobile into an existing Mac or Linux-based development is a pretty big commitment. If you’re already invested in a Mac OS X development environment, you now need a Windows PC or a Virtual Machine running Windows. You also need a copy of Visual Studio. If you’re running a business, Visual Studio Community isn’t an option and you need to shell out $1,200 per user. A VM is a lousy option given the capacity demands of Visual Studio (30+GB) and that the Windows Mobile emulator doesn’t play nice when running in a VM.
The release of VisualStudio 2015 is a pretty big deal. It added a lot of nice new capabilities for mobile developers. The Windows Bridges are a great idea and might help in the long term. While it’s cool that you can get up and running quickly with existing Objective-C and Android Java code, it glosses over the fact that existing mobile devs coming from a Mac/UNIX background, probably don’t know the Windows/VisualStudio way of doing things. Coming from a non-Windows development background, learning the VisualStudio developer tool chain is awkward. In fact, it sucks because it feels so weird. That’s a learning curve that those comfortable with UNIX-based build tools aren’t going to enjoy much. It also takes time. If you’re a small shop, you are going to seriously question if it’s worth going through these shenanigans for roughly 2.7% of the mobile market.
Windows 10 Mobile is a minor player that thinks it’s in the majors
While Microsoft seems to acknowledge that Windows 10 Mobile is a minority platform, the developer tools side of the house doesn’t seem to get this yet. The browser team seems to understand that a lack of testing for IE was due to the fact that a lot of design shops were ignoring IE. Either they didn’t have access to Windows PCs running IE or they were ignoring it due to cost issues. This ultimately led to Modern.ie, which provides Windows VMs with various versions of Edge and IE. This is an incredibly helpful resource for all web developers. Mobile developers have no such resources available for Windows 10 Mobile. Given Windows Mobile’s relatively insignificant market share, it’s easier to just ignore the platform outright.
How about a Window 10 Mobile Tools that run on Mac OS X and Linux?
VisualStudio Code is a nice light-weight developer tool. It’s great for working with Node.js and the early builds of ASP.NET 5, but it could be so much more. It would be SUPER great if this were the tool that could help developers get started with the Windows Mobile on non-Windows platforms. Toss in a Windows 10 Mobile emulator that runs on non-Windows OS’s and now you’re cooking with gas. To be able to debug and test something like a Cordova-based app through a Window Mobile emulator on Mac OS X would be a huge leap forward. Hell, you might even see a version of React Native for Windows 10 Mobile! Top it off with being able to publish to the Windows Store from a bash shell, and you’re doing that much, much better. And these tools also need to be free – just like XCode and Android Studio.
App developers aren’t going to flee from Mac OS X to run Windows 10 and VisualStudio 2015 because of the new tooling in VisualStudio 2015. XCode users weren’t really pining for Obective-C support in VisualStudio as that’s not their jam. But add C# and Windows Mobile tooling as XCode plugins or through VS Code, things get a lot more interesting. That’s not so crazy now given that the .NET 5 beta runs on Mac OS X and should be final by 2016.
Microsoft desperately needs to put out tools for Windows Mobile developers on the platforms they are currently developing on – not just Windows. If Microsoft keeps pretending that the majority of mobile developers want VisualStudio, they’ll still be struggling to crack that 3% market share. These folks don’t do Windows.
Damnhandy 