- #HOW TO INSTALL MICROSOFT SILVERLIGHT ON MAC ANDROID#
- #HOW TO INSTALL MICROSOFT SILVERLIGHT ON MAC WINDOWS 8#
The result, as I noted in Microsoft and the Follower’s Dilemma is that these platforms may literally have come to market too late to make a difference, much as it was with the Zune’s release in 2006 (five long years after the iPod and three years after iTunes for Windows). The iPad triggered a new market for tablet computing in early 2010, and Microsoft followed up with Windows 8/RT in late 2012. The iPhone launched the modern smart phone market in 2007, and Microsoft released Windows Phone in late 2010. Perceived as a laggard, Microsoft is (re)entering the markets for mobile devices-smart phones and tablets, primarily-years after the fact. (And while I know I’ll inevitably hear from some developers who wish to defend these tools, I’m going to have to chalk up those opinions to a tech version of the Stockholm syndrome.) The results speak for themselves, and what we see is a virtuous cycle: More users equates to more developers. Not that it matters: As these platforms have raced ahead, developers have adopted the tools en masse out of necessity and have immersed themselves in their weirdness and idiosyncrasies.
#HOW TO INSTALL MICROSOFT SILVERLIGHT ON MAC ANDROID#
But the core advantages of the developer platform remain, and on Windows 8/RT in particular, where WinRT supports a variety of programming models, the amount of choice is laudable.īy comparison, the Android and iOS developer platforms are a mess. Rather than base the Windows 8/RT developer APIs on the Silverlight/XNA platform it created for Windows Phone, Microsoft went in a completely different direction, and then it moved Windows Phone 8 over to a variant of this new system, called the Windows Runtime. Since then, of course, there have been a few major changes. One of the most exasperating aspects to this is that the developer environment, SDK and APIs, and designer tools are all amazing, and they have been since the initial release of Windows Phone in 2010. If Microsoft can’t organically grow its new platforms, the future is already decided. Today, that’s no longer a given, and while some believe this to be a recent phenomenon, the truth is, this issue dates back to the Longhorn debacle of a decade ago.
In the good old days, Microsoft would deliver a platform and developers would race to support it. And this artificial platform growth may be the most telling sign yet that the OS is in trouble.
#HOW TO INSTALL MICROSOFT SILVERLIGHT ON MAC WINDOWS 8#
Windows 8 is following down yet another path first blazed by Windows Phone: With developers ignoring the platform in favor of well-entrenched competitors, Microsoft is forced to pay for apps.