[icey]

Thanks!

To verify, I downloaded the installer and tried to run it on a Windows 7 machine. I got an error message stating Windows 8 was required to run it. I am definitely surprised that they decided to go this way; there's no way in hell I'm going to upgrade my windev machine to Windows 8 just to develop phone apps. I assume there are many other developers who feel the same way.

[reddiric]

Windows Phone 8 is based on the Windows 8 kernel and shares plenty of technology with it. The SDK emulator and debugger use client Hyper-V on Windows 8 to run the phone as a guest operating system, which isn't available on Windows 7.

[sliverstorm]

That's actually pretty cool.

[TazeTSchnitzel]

Why? Windows 8 isn't as bad as people think, speaking as a developer using it just now. If you only use the Desktop, you'll be fine. You can search the homescreen the same way you searched the start menu in Vista, and it works as you'd expect.

[icey]

Why would I change my OS to develop for a phone ecosystem that nobody I know uses? I can develop the Windows applications I need to just fine on Windows 7. Then I don't have to do anything differently. I'll just continue _not_ developing for Windows Phone 8.

[igalic]

Oh come on guys. If you're serious about developing for the system, installing the new version of the OS or buying a $99/year subscription is really not a big deal. If all you want is to fiddle around with it for a bit, then it doesn't really matter that you're not going to develop for it.

Don't get me wrong; I develop primarily for iOS and some Android, and don't even think about installing Windows, much less developing for it. But consider this:

If you want to develop for iOS, you need a Mac (which still sits at only 14% in US, less in the rest of the world; so chances are you need to buy at least a $600 machine), you need the developer subscription at $99, you need at least last year's operating system (Apple drops support for older versions rather quickly), and at least one device to test on. It also uses Objective-C, which you haven't used before unless you developed for Apple hardware.

If you want to develop for Android, everything looks free at first sight, but you'll also need a developer subscription and if you're serious about supporting your app, you'll need at least several different devices (this easily trumps the price of a Mac), because Android emulators are horrible.

There are more examples like this; recently Sony announced PSVita SDK, but for some inexplicable reason it uses Mono/C#, isn't compatible with Visual Studio, etc. It's even worse with traditional console SDKs.

The point is, although it's great to be able to choose the tools/platforms you use and have it all for free (web development anyone?), those companies want you tied into their ecosystem, and besides it's just not worth it going out of their way to please a minority of developers complaining about a number of random reasons.

You choose whether to develop for a platform or not of course, but if I were Microsoft and your main gripe was having to upgrade to Win8, I'd just not care.

[ghshephard]

Any developer that has concerns about upgrading their Bare OS should install Windows 8 into VMware Workstation 9. It's fully supported - http://www.vmware.com/products/workstation/new.html.

[reddiric]

Will client Hyper-V on Windows 8 for the phone emulator work if Windows 8 is itself a guest OS?

[ghshephard]

Hyper-V has been added as a guest OS, but it is not "supported", so YMMV:

http://www.vmware.com/support/ws90/doc/workstation-90-releas...

[akanster]

One of the first things I checked as well. I was really hoping I could work on Windows 7. :(