I've just returned from the Microsoft sponsored IT conference.
... where I witnessed very interesting conversation. The topic was Windows 8 application design for developers. Lecturer described grid, fonts, margins etc into great detail, and then she went on to menus, navigation, and so on. During this, she was interrupted by somehow irritated question from the public:
"Hey, what about data entry?"
Answer: "Windows 8 apps are not meant for data entry. They are meant to be used anytime, anywhere, in any situation, for information consumption, not production. You know, browsing shopping catalogues, news, and such."
Question: "But what about business applications?"
Answer: "They belong to desktop, not to Windows 8 app store. Business apps deal with tens of thousands of items or more. There is now way Windows 8 app UI could handle this. As a matter of fact, I can't even imagine things like Photoshop running under Win 8."
Q: "B-b-b-but grumble grumble!?"
A: "Consider this. What would you prefer do develop
- a business application only a couple of companies are interested in
- an application for App Store with at least half a billion of potential customers?"
And that pretty much nailed it.
