July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Google has asked Microsoft to remove its homebrew YouTube app from the Windows Store immediately, and the search giant requested that it delete the app from Windows Phone users who have already downloaded it.

Essentially, Microsoft built a YouTube app for Windows Phone because Google refused to permit Windows Phone users to connect to YouTube. As Microsoft’s Dave Heiner posted, “Google blocked Microsoft’s new Windows Phones from operating properly with YouTube … Google has refused to allow Microsoft’s new Windows Phones to access this YouTube metadata in the same way that Android phones and iPhones do.”

In response, Microsoft created its own YouTube app.

The problems with that, according to Google, are three: the app enables users to download YouTube videos, prevents ads from being shown, and plays videos whose owners have set to only play on certain platforms. Microsoft’s app, Google says, violates the YouTube terms of service, and uses the YouTube logo in a way that contravenes the company’s branding guidelines.

Source: Microsoft

The YouTube app, by Microsoft

This is an ongoing battle that has been slowly heating up since well before January of this year.

The solution would seem to be fairly clear: Google should make a compelling YouTube app for Windows Phone, just as it already does for another smartphone competitor, Apple’s iOS mobile operating system. Why it chooses not to is not exactly clear, although it may just have something to do with the fact that, via patent licensing agreements with Samsung, LG, Acer, and others, Microsoft makes perhaps $5 per Android device sold. And it can’t help that Microsoft has hit Google where it hurts on Android and privacy, which, up until a couple of weeks ago, truly sucked.

Microsoft has since released an official statement, basically saying they’d be happy to work with Google to resolve any issues, as long as Google will reciprocate.

“YouTube is consistently one of the top apps downloaded by smartphone users on all platforms, but Google has refused to work with us to develop an app on par with other platforms. Since we updated the YouTube app to ensure our mutual customers a similar YouTube experience, ratings and feedback have been overwhelmingly positive.  We’d be more than happy to include advertising but need Google to provide us access to the necessary APIs. In light of Larry Page’s comments today calling for more interoperability and less negativity, we look forward to solving this matter together for our mutual customers.”

Surely, we can all get along here?

Google is in no danger of losing its mobile operating system hegemony … as the company announced today, it recently hit 900 million Android device activations.

After five months on the market, Microsoft’s Windows Store has surpassed 50,000 apps, according to MetroStore Scanner. The number of apps available is an indication of developer support, and it shows that the overall ecosystem is in a healthy state.

If you remember when the Apple iTunes App Store surpassed 50,000, the mark generated a lot of excitement about the platform’s viability. Now, iOS has more than 821,438 active apps available. Of course, it would be nice to know how many of the Microsoft apps have actual downloads. Apple’s downloads have surpassed 10 billion.

Still, Microsoft is on its way to offering a third viable choice to Apple and the Google Play store. The timing of the milestone is nice, as Microsoft will be among the many companies pitching 23,000 attendees at next week’s Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.

But it’s not the written rules that are the problem. It’s the unwritten ones.

At least, according to Marco Arment, developer, blogger, general gadfly, and — of course —  creator of Instapaper. Arment is calling out Twitter for, as he puts it, “being a dick again” (yeah, check the URL, not the title).

The problem is that Atta Elayyan, who built Tweetro, a sweet-looking Twitter app for Windows 8, asked for permission to go over Twitter’s API connection limitations. Tweetro got popular, quickly, averaging 3,000 to 4,000 downloads a day from the Windows Store and bursting well past the maximum of 100,000 users that Twitter allows for free.

So he asked for an exemption, because Twitter doesn’t have an official Windows 8 client, making Windows 8 theoretically an underserved market which could potentially qualify for an ask-us-for-permission exemption. But Twitter has already announced that it is building one. So Twitter denied the exemption, saying:

We know that there are developers that want to take their passion for Twitter and its ecosystem to unique underserved situations. As such, we have built some flexibility into our policy with regard to user tokens – which went into effect September 5th, 2012.

Unfortunately, it does not appear that your service addresses an area that our current or future products do not already serve. As such, it does not qualify for an exemption.

Arment takes issue with that — as he has before – saying that the wording of the rule is vague and essentially meaningless. The real rule, he says, “if Twitter was honest and direct, is simple: ‘We don’t permit anyone to exceed the limit unless we feel like it.’”

That’s perhaps a little harsh, since the company has said don’t build Twitter clients, we’re doing that, and has announced plans for a Windows 8 native Twitter client. But it is shutting the door on developers who are promoting the service.

Which effectively means, according to Arment: Don’t develop for Twitter. And he’s taking that message to Twitter:

Honesty would be communicating unambiguously to current and future developers that their API access is tenuous, fragile, and time-limited.

—
Marco Arment (@marcoarment) November 16, 2012

and

Proposed honesty: “API features or access may be revoked for any client, at any time, for any reason, even if published rules are followed.”

—
Marco Arment (@marcoarment) November 16, 2012

Image credit: John Koetsier

According to Santamaria’s personal announcement email, the move was motivated by a desire to get back into the startup life:

I am writing this email to inform you that after 14 years at Intel, I am leaving to join a Redmond based startup – WebTuner Corp.

What some of you might know is that I came to Intel as part of an acquisition in 1999. At that time I had been part of a series of startups and what I have found these past 10 months running AppUp (which is really a startup inside of Intel) is that I miss it. So, when the opportunity came to join a stealthy digital media company, an area I have been working on for Intel for the past 5 years, I jumped.

Source: LinkedIn

Steven Santamaria

When Intel originally created the AppUp division, it was focused on the emerging netbook category, and Intel viewed it as a competitive hedge against Apple’s and other companies’ app stores that could eventually expand to smartphones, smart TVs, and PCs.

Today, of course, netbooks are yesterday’s news, tablets have won, Apple has brought the app store concept to the desktop, and Microsoft has launched the Windows Store (though not every developer is happy about it).

And AppUp, despite being in the market for several years, still has a very limited number of apps, with 36 in the Sports category, 41 apps in News, and 63 in Music. Intel does have almost 1,400 apps in Games, but the comparable categories on iOS and Android have tens of thousands.

Having put two apps into Intel AppUp, I also know from personal experience that Intel was paying developers to put apps on the store … just as other app store proprietors such as Microsoft and Research in Motion have been forced to do when faced with some degree of developer apathy.

And after hitting about 400,000 unique visitors/month in late 2011, AppUp.com is down to about 100,000.

Source: Compete.com

AppUp.com traffic

I’ve asked Santamaria — who is saying all the right things — for additional comment, but haven’t heard back from him yet. Intel PR released a simple statement basically hitting the high points in Santamaria’s email:

Steve left Intel to return to his passion, a start-up company. We are grateful for his 14 years at Intel and wish him well.

However, it doesn’t reflect well on a company or a division when a leader leaves after such a short time. And, given the moves of the market in the past couple of years, I’m wondering if there’s a future for AppUp.

That question, I think, would have a very easy answer if AppUp was just a startup on its own, without the financial and market power of an Intel behind it.

photo credit: schnaars via photopin cc

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Whether you want it or not, Microsoft will release its Windows 8 operating system on October 26. The new OS upends the familiar Start menu-based interface you’ve known since Windows 95 in favor of one more streamlined for tablets.

In light of the major interface change, Windows 8 could be the next Vista, with users skipping a generation of Windows over real and imagined problems. Microsoft desperately wants to make sure this doesn’t happen, so Windows 8 will cost just $40 to upgrade, versus the $100+ price that Windows has carried in the past.

Another way Microsoft hopes to bring people over to Windows 8: killer apps. Following Apple’s iOS and Mac App Stores, Windows 8 will have its own dedicated marketplace where users can discover and download apps. Companies like Doo.net and Evernote have already built Windows 8 apps and made them available in the store, even though the OS hasn’t yet been released.

After extensively looking around the Windows 8 Store, we’re pleasantly surprised with the quality of apps already available. We’ve picked out 10 stand-out apps that look and work great on Windows 8. Most of these apps will work fine for desktop users, but as with most aspects of Windows 8, these provide a better experience using a touch screen. Also, while the store includes a few decent games such as Cut the Rope and Pirates Love Daisies, we’ve decided to stick to more traditional apps for this list.

Here are our favorite 10 apps so far:

1. The Big Picture

One of my favorite blogs on the web is Boston.com’s The Big Picture. It takes eye-popping photos from around the world and presents them in large-scale form to make them easy to consume. It’s totally engrossing. Now The Big Picture experience can be had in a beautiful full-screen Windows 8 app. You can easily scroll through this week’s best photos from The Big Picture or look through the blog’s archive. If you really connect with a photo, you can save it to your computer for later viewing. Be warned: You could get lost for hours.

2. Cocktail Flow

Cocktail Flow wants to be your personal bartending assistant. The beautiful app lets you swipe or click-through different kinds of alcoholic beverages and tells you how to make them. Drinks are sorted by alcohol type, drink color, or drink type. The app includes a panel for saving your favorite drinks for reference later. This app might be somewhat simplistic, but it looks slick and could be your best friend whenever you host a trendy party.

3. CookBook

Plenty of sites and mobile apps are dedicated to recipes, but CookBook streamlines them all into a well-designed interface for Windows 8. On the left-hand panel, CookBook sorts recipes by the following categories: appetizers, bread, breakfast, desserts, main dish, salad, side dish, and soups. Click any recipe and you’ve got a large photo, user rating, ingredients, and directions — all key to helping you decide if you want to invest your time into making that item. The app also makes it easy to save your favorites and recipes you’d like “try soon.”

4. Fresh Paint

Fresh Paint is an incredibly fun app created by Microsoft to demonstrate Windows 8′s touch capabilities. It’s more than just promotional junkware, since the app lets you paint realistically in delightful ways. You can select different brushes and colors to paint with, and each stroke of the brush adds to other colors in a way that smears other colors. All in all, it’s a blast and another app you can lose yourself in for hours. I can’t wait to try it on Microsoft’s Surface tablet.

5. Inrix

Inrix provides a look at real-time traffic conditions around the world. The service claims to use “billions of data points” to help people make smarter driving conditions. In the use case for Windows 8, this would be best for tablet use when you are out and about. Or if you’re a planner like me, you could use the app to check traffic conditions before you leave the house.

Check out apps 6 through 10.

Pages: 1 2

The new operating system will feature the Windows Store to sell third-party apps. It’s a direct competitor to Apple’s App Store for OS X and iOS devices, the Android Market and numerous other app marketplaces.

Unlike most such marketplaces, which charge developers 30 percent of their sales, Microsoft will charge a lower, 20 percent rate on sales over $25,000.

“We want to return the most money we can into the hands of developers, and we want to provide the best economics of any platform,” said Microsoft corporate vice president Antoine Leblond. Speaking at an event in San Francisco tonight he said, “It’s the most significant developer opportunity ever.”

The Microsoft event was the first time financial terms for developers have been discussed. Developers whose apps make more than $25,000 will receive 80 percent of revenue generated, as opposed to the industry standard 70 percent. If an app sells less than that amount, the developer will only get 70 percent.

While Apple has a significant headstart in the mobile apps marketplace, Microsoft is also hoping to lure developers with the enormous reach of its current desktop operating system. Windows 7 licenses are on 500 million devices worldwide, Microsoft said.

Microsoft also announced today that developers can begin submitting their apps to its Build Windows Contest, which opened today as well.

Windows 8 will be available for public beta testing starting in late February, 2012.

Check out a video preview of the Windows 8 store.

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Microsoft on Tuesday showed off more features of its new Windows 8 operating system at the Microsoft BUILD developers conference in Anaheim, Calif.

The OS was first previewed back in early June and is being designed explicitly with the purpose of working on touch devices as well as using traditional PC methods.

“I promise you, the minute you use a touch device with Windows 8, the moment you go back to your laptop or desktop, you’ll have fingerprints all over your screen,” Windows President Stan Sinofsky said while demonstrating. “It’s touch first but equally at home with a mouse and a keyboard.”

Sinofsky boasted that the new OS considerably boosts performance. He showed an older netbook with 1GB of RAM and said it would use even less memory for processes with Windows 8 than Windows 7. The screen below shows that the first Windows 7 release used 540MB of memory while the current build of Windows 8 uses 281MB of memory to run the OS.

Julie Larson-Green, VP of Windows Experience, showed off the new “Metro style UI” user experience, which is designed explicitly with touch in mind along with stirring animations and typography. It offers touch gestures, “live tiles” and super simple ways to interact with content and apps.

The new Internet Explorer 10 also features a touch-optimized “Metro-style” browser. What sets it apart is that the navigation bar only appears when you ask for it, and it doesn’t have add-ons or plug-ins that can slow performance.

The Windows team also talked a lot about apps. First, the company confirmed that there will be a new “Windows Store” where developers can deploy apps and customers can easily download them, mimicking Apple’s Mac App Store. Programming apps in Windows 8 will be easier, and one on-stage demonstration showed a simple app being programmed using a stunning 58 lines of code. Microsoft said almost all of the Windows 7 32-bit and 64-bit applications would be compatible with Windows 8.

Microsoft said Windows 8 hardware will come in all shapes and sizes. The OS will support ARM-based chipsets, x86 devices, touch and sensors. This means it will work across a wide spectrum of hardware from 10-inch tablets and laptops all the way up to all-in-one PCs with huge high-def screens.

Check out more photos of Windows 8 and its interface below: