Tim Anderson wrote about what Embarcadero are planning for Delphi and Windows 8 after meeting with Embarcadero’s John Ray Thomas and Jason Vokes, I encourage you to go over and read his article about what they’re planning, and his reservations.
In short, since Delphi XE3 can’t pass validation as a WinRT app and be fully accepted on the Windows Store, they aim for a combination of having only a shortcut to the app vendor’s site in the Windows Store (like other vendors will do), and using a PowerShell script to sign the app. As Tim outlines, this isn’t exactly what you would call a smooth ride, and will require the Windows 8 Entreprise SKU apparently (thus ruling out consumer apps, i.e. would it even be possible to write the next Skype in Delphi?).
Of course if Windows 8 fails as spectacularly as some think it could, all this would be moot points, but even a Vista-like failure would still end up putting hundreds of millions of Win8 copies out there, and the success of the Apple Store and Google Play are clear sign that a bundled, official applications store become highly prominent.
Sure, Apple doesn’t allow alternate stores, but Google does, yet, there is no Android store that comes even close to competing with Google Play. There are so far no signs that this could be different in the Windows space, and actually, the only established store in the Windows space (Steam) seems desperately refocusing towards Linux. And Embarcadero’s own AppWave doesn’t seem to be making waves either.
And sorry for the political considerations lately, this blog will get back to technical stuff shortly 😉
Just to clarify this: “Enterprise SKU” refers to “Windows 8 Enterprise”, not an Enterprise edition of one of the Embarcadero tools.
Indeed, thanks for pointing that out, I’ve updated the post and added a link to the wikipedia article that describes the SKUs (I’m linking to Wikipedia because their URLs are stable, while Microsoft’s are not and get obsoleted)
The Appwave does provide many useful utilities.
http://www.appwavestore.com/multimedia/aura-video-converter.html
One of many examples – Aura4you – in worst case you pay 19 EUR liftime license or all products. That’s not bad.
We will see how the MS Store will perform. Honestly imo Android will become important and Samsung with their Cloud solution (provide a file system just for files too, the way people are used too). Samsung since I know them (20 years) shipped reliable quality PC parts for example to Austria, Displays … Their devices work good. Phones work reliable. Samsung is a huge technology trust, but silent.
You know … computers have been this expensive here because too many wholesalers … from Asia to Europe. This has changed with the Internet, there is no longer a need to make your own board layouts and have to purchase many parts + replacement parts in advance because they run out of stock in short… – Mayor advantage of ATOM or ARM… for technicians a dream come true.
Is it XE3 or the apps it creates that will be available through the AppStore?
@Olaf
Yes, MS. Complementary I think. They will try … fail maybe, maybe not … and in the next one or two versions will make it available in all versions.