Roger Weiss
Aug 27, 2017 · 1 min read

Great article. I share your experience and sentiment. I was a die hard Windows Phone 8 developer. Loved the power of XAML, easy to code platform.

However, everytime MS re-invent their platform (every year or so) consumers had to buy a new phone and developers need to learn a new API’s. Put a button on Winrt page, its centered, put a button on UWP page, its not centered anymore. Margin sizes are different, so you can’t even share XAML. This is why most developers have given up on Windows phone. I made the decision to drop windows phone from our companies app offering. Market share is dwindling, super expensive to deploy to HockeyApp (Microsoft’s own platform), compared to doing the same for iOS and Android. Best decision i made. We now work exclusively on MacBook Pro’s. Sure, Visual Studio for Mac is not as productive as Visual Studio 2017, but hey Visual Studio 2017 cant create Windows Phone 8.1 apps anymore and Visual Studio 2015 can’t deploy Windows Phone 8.1 apps. So how’s that for Microsoft giving the finger to it consumers and developers. Windows Phone 8.1 still has a much bigger market share than the shafted Windows 10 Mobile platform, so why did MS drop the platfrom so soon?

It was fun while it lasted, Windows Phone used to be one the best platforms ever created, but poor execution to market was Windows Phone/Mobile’s downfall.

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    Roger Weiss

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