What the coming day prepares for us

Or, what to expect from Windows Phone

On the first day of TechEd, I was able to talk tightly with people who are developing windows phone: Clif Simpkins and Larry Lieberman. We with other conference participants tried to ask the most provocative and exciting questions about the future of the platform. Of course, we did not receive sensational answers or exciting confessions, but personally I got a good idea of ​​what kind of atmosphere prevails in the camp of developers. I would like to share this presentation.

To begin with, I will quote the site msteched.ru , so that readers do not have to look for themselves:

Larry Lieberman
Microsoft Product Manager

Lari Lieberman is the product manager for the Windows Phone Application Platform. Lari coordinates the creation and publication of all kinds of materials on the development of applications and games for Windows Phone, including training documentation for developers, labs, videos, speeches, etc. Lari is an invaluable source of information about Microsoft's new mobile platform, and he will be happy to share this information at TechEd Russia. Larry has been working at Microsoft since 1998 and since 2003 she has specialized in developing applications for the mobile platform. Lari is involved in creating content for the upcoming world-famous BUILD 2012 conference (October 30 - November 2, 2012) and will make a number of his reports on Windows Phone also on TechEd Russia. Thanks to his participation, those who did not get to the BUILD will be able in Russia at TechEd Russia to hear key information about Windows Phone and software development on this Microsoft mobile platform.

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Cliff Simpkins (Cliff Simpkins)
Product Manager Windows Phone Developer Relations, Microsoft.

Clif Simpkins is the product manager for the Windows Phone team and is responsible for interacting with developers. He is responsible for the management and development of the Windows Phone development platform in terms of organizing receiving feedback and suggestions from developers, as well as various research. In addition to direct communication and interaction with mobile developers and partners around the world, Clif is responsible for the operation of the Windows Phone User Voice website - http://wpdev.uservoice.com/ , as well as for early familiarization programs with products and technologies related to Windows Phone. Before becoming a member of the Windows Phone team (developing Windows Phone 7), Clif worked as a product manager and was responsible for planning the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and Windows Workflow Foundation (WF). Clif is a very bright speaker and will highlight a number of important technological issues on the Windows Phone platform at TechEd Russia 2012.

To business
I must say that people are very responsive and open. Communicating with them you understand that they are professionals who love their work.

The conversation was rather messy and we jumped from topic to topic. I will try to group some questions. The conversation began with internal payments, where Cliff honestly admitted that not all of the developed functionality could be included in the latest release: for example, work was carried out in the direction of subscribing to the application as a whole. I also asked a question about the Newsstand analogue in iOS, as a distribution center for periodicals and similar applications, whether it will be available in the next SDK release. To this, Larry noted that the only question is the availability of the service on the server side, and this is not at all tied to the release of the SDK. (If you think this is the case, you only need a service for publishing publications and a hub on the phone. Everything else is implemented on the current API)

There were a lot of questions on background tasks. They asked why the background positioning task worked no more than 4 hours. Larry responded that the decision was made out of concern for the user, and an application that the user didn’t run for 4 hours would probably waste the battery. The developer still has the opportunity to remind himself that the user would launch the application, thereby resetting the timer. However, Larry noted that the decision could well be a mistake and they are waiting for feedback from the developers. (I'd note from myself that, while working with the background location on iOS, I discharged the 4th iPhone in the same 4 hours). I also described the task when it is necessary to update a live tile at a certain time or after a specific period of time. Conventionally, we called it scheduled tiles. Larry said they talk a lot about this functionality, but so far there have been more important tasks.

The same questions were about the split of the platform into 2 branches: 7.x and 8.x. Larry made an interesting thought (as I didn’t have thought of this before): in order to transfer current devices to a new core, OEMs need to force OEMs to rewrite drivers for already existing devices. They want to make the User Experience as common as possible between the platforms, but so far only the new start screen has been officially announced. (since then, they have already announced bing live wallpapers on the lock screen and some other features)

Cliff and Larry also talked a lot, about feedbackbacks on uservoice . For many reasons, they cannot respond there right away and maintain a status like “under development”, but they solemnly assured that the tasks are checked there regularly. They also try to keep in touch with the developers through the official windows phone developer blog . In general, Cliff and Larry actively urged to maintain feedback: "We would gladly have implemented all the requests of developers." Moreover, Larry sent my email to the manager, saying that such a stubborn guy wants the windows phone to be better. True, so far I have not received any response.

What API would you ask if you had the opportunity to communicate directly with the project manager?

UPD uservoice for user requests