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Why Publishing on the Windows Phone is Like Walking Barefoot On Broken Glass

toshl.com

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Re: Why Publishing on the Windows Phone is Like Walking Barefoot On Broken Glass

#61

Post by yen223 »

guard-of-terra wrote: post #51
yen223 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Malaysian here. We do have a large, extremely devout conservative demographic here, so I can see why Microsoft would choose to be on the safe side. Plenty of foreign artistes were banned from holding concerts here due to perceived lack of morals. On the other hand, our newspapers regularly publish raunchier content without much fanfare. It's a fascinating place really.

It's all about age. Older people impose restrictions on younger people - because they can and enjoy it too. Who goes to concerts? Younger people. Who reads newspapers? Older people.

In Malaysia's case, it's more because of the way race and by association religion is split almost 50-50 among the local population.

The result is that Malaysia has a large enough non-Muslim population to avoid becoming a full-blown theocracy like Saudi Arabia, but still have a large enough religious base to be considered a 'conservative' country.

Re: Why Publishing on the Windows Phone is Like Walking Barefoot On Broken Glass

#62

Post by jsnell »

mkramlich wrote: post #58

Link title should add "in Slovenia". It's more accurate, and it will save HNers time by giving a clue as to probable major contributor to the issues experienced.

Sorry, but that's just totally wrong. They had 1 or 2 issues caused by being a Slovenian company (not being allowed to publish apps, and the inability to switch the owner of an app). All the other complaints would apply to any new developer.

- Even after registering a US company they couldn't make an account for it, even with a US credit card.

- The certification process was horribly broken. The app had already been approved once, but now it suddenly got into a vortex of rejections. One reason at the time, rather than an up front list with everything wrong with it.

- They report the publishing tools as being crap.

- Microsoft just fucked over their WP7 developers and users by making sure that WP7 apps can't get any visibility in the app store.

That last point should be particularly chilling. Some people have argued that the horribly mishandled WP7->WP8 migration isn't that big a deal for existing WP7 users. They'd say that developers will continue targeting WP7 for everything except games that need native code, or apps that need hardware features like NFC. Well, clearly it's not so. If you want an app to have any visibility, you'll need to target Windows 8.

(This also looks like yet another giant middle finger directed at Nokia. They're going to be forced to sell WP7 on low end phones for years, since the minimum hardware specs of WP8 are just too high at the moment. And now it becomes clear that MS is actively trying to drive developers off these devices onto the non-existing ones.)

Re: Why Publishing on the Windows Phone is Like Walking Barefoot On Broken Glass

#63

Post by errnoh »

To be honest the app itself looks rather awesome.

Not sure what's the best way to generate users on WP but I do hope you get enough users and continue to support the platform.

Probably one of the most aesthetic apps on WP7, I for one will be using this from now on.

Re: Why Publishing on the Windows Phone is Like Walking Barefoot On Broken Glass

#64

Post by nl »

Mythbusters wrote: post #24
deerpig wrote: post #8

So much for Balmer's "developers developers developers developers developers developers developers developers developers developers developers developers developers developers...."

Windows Phone 8: Gaining Apps, Software Developer Support: http://www.thevarguy.com/2012/07/12/windows-phone-8-apps-mob...

If you read the article you'll discover that developers are interested but few are actually writing apps or activley planning to write apps for it.

I think that is a fair summary.

Re: Why Publishing on the Windows Phone is Like Walking Barefoot On Broken Glass

#65

Post by sp332 »

franzus wrote: post #43
sp332 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was close to being offended before I realized that it was supposed to be an offhand joke. And then I was still a little offended, and I can see how some people really would not like that said about them. edit: i'm trying to explain what about it offends me. I guess that it's making assumptions about my sexuality which is pretty personal, or making light of my sexuality which is pretty important.

Wow, sorry to say but you're too prude for the internet. A church seems like a better place for you.

1. It's a finance app, not the internet. 2. I go to church on a regular basis, does that mean I can't visit the internet as well? 3. You seem very insensitive to people who are different from you. 4. I don't generally go around the internet whining about every little thing. But amishforkfight specifically asked who would be offended, and I said, me.

Re: Why Publishing on the Windows Phone is Like Walking Barefoot On Broken Glass

#66

Post by batista »

guard-of-terra wrote: post #51
yen223 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Malaysian here. We do have a large, extremely devout conservative demographic here, so I can see why Microsoft would choose to be on the safe side. Plenty of foreign artistes were banned from holding concerts here due to perceived lack of morals. On the other hand, our newspapers regularly publish raunchier content without much fanfare. It's a fascinating place really.

It's all about age. Older people impose restrictions on younger people - because they can and enjoy it too. Who goes to concerts? Younger people. Who reads newspapers? Older people.

>It's all about age. Older people impose restrictions on younger people - because they can and enjoy it too.

Yes, god forbid they do it because they know any better, because of experience and such...

Check your theory again in 20 years.

Re: Why Publishing on the Windows Phone is Like Walking Barefoot On Broken Glass

#67

Post by DejanPelzel »

the0x wrote: post #56
CWIZO wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you even read the article? Most of the problems they had was because Microsoft refuses to acknowledge my country. And there exists Microsoft Slovenia FFS! Also he clearly describes what's wrong with Silverlight and app submission form (can't use space, only works in Safari, etc). He also said that they didn't get any specific reasons as to why the app was rejected.

Maybe it was rejected because your 'quip' sounds like your scanning a users data for juice?

https://toshl.com/privacy/

Re: Why Publishing on the Windows Phone is Like Walking Barefoot On Broken Glass

#68

Post by drhowarddrfine »

BadassFractal wrote: post #2

Does anybody have a positive experience with publishing to the Windows app store that they'd like to share?

Not that I've been able to find. We were asked to look into making one of our client apps to work on Windows phone. Seems we're noticing some of the same issues this article has brought up and, already, two of the developers are warning we may not want to do this.

Re: Why Publishing on the Windows Phone is Like Walking Barefoot On Broken Glass

#69

Post by facorreia »

nnq wrote: post #20

"Offensive" context example: Imagine you're a woman in some mostly-islamic-and-not-so-women-rights-friendly country, you use this app on your phone and bang, your husband sees the loading screen joke about "other toys" (and of course he has an iphone and doesn't know about this app and the joke) ...only he can't remember seeing those toys himself so... who did you buy them for then? ...nex: let your ultra-violent ima…

I can see how this would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of the old ultra-violence.

Re: Why Publishing on the Windows Phone is Like Walking Barefoot On Broken Glass

#70

Post by facorreia »

roxtar wrote: post #31

To me it looks like when they published their app from the US, they got all valid reasons for a rejection. The fact that Toshl's app was present for an year with all these faults is not a good argument for being automatically accepted.

Remember it was first published under local Microsoft's own account. It probably wasn't even subject to the same review process.
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