From concept to reality in 6 weeks - part 1

Early this week at work I was volunteered to take an existing iPad app I designed and to build a working prototype of the same app on a Windows 8 Tablet. Seems simple enough, until I realized what I was up against in working on Microsoft products after a long welcome break. I last worked on a Windows machine 3 years ago. I have used only Apple products at home for over 10 years now. I guess you just forget how simple and lovely life can be until you re-enter the dark side of computing.

I really enjoy working on new things as that is what makes me wake up ready for work early in the morning. It can be scary at times as there are so many unknowns and not only from the technical side but also from the business perspective. I had a hard deadline of January 7th where this app will be shown at a trade conference. The Windows 8 Tablet would ideally work just like the iPad app but that is impossible since it is totally different hardware and user interface. From start to finish the original iPad app took 72 man days which includes design time and all of the time to develop it. I essentially have only 30 man days to get the same design working on a brand new version of Windows on a platform I know nothing about. That would normally mean it is time to panic.

Yesterday, I reviewed these concerns with the customer to make sure it was clear that the task was daunting and yet possible with caveats. We had to agree to set expectations that a full Windows 8 app just like the iPad app was not possible but a great demo can happen if everything falls into place. Then the first bombshell happened as I found out that the brand new physical tablet would not be in my hands until the week before Christmas at the earliest. Still not time to panic yet.

In preparing for that meeting,  I first read the Windows 8 guidelines to get a feel for what was possible. Since geographic maps are a key part of the app I am prototyping, I needed to learn about them for Windows. After some digging I discovered that in Windows Mobile 8 they switched from Bing maps, which were used in Windows Mobile 7.1, to Nokia maps. That is kind of scary, but at least HERE.com has been used elsewhere for a while and then Nokia purchased them and now they are available for Windows 8.

The biggest question of the week is what do I use for a development machine? I found an article on the Windows 8 SDK requirements. I also read that using my Mac is out of the question as the emulator will not work on virtual machines, like VirtualBox. So how do I find a machine that fits the strict Hyper-V requirements? It turns out that no computer manufacturer has this information on the web. I tried Lenovo, Dell, Asus, Samsung, Acer, and Best Buy web sites. Some made it hard to even find out if Windows Pro was available and whether 64-bit machines are the default. I could write a long article on the usability of shopping for a laptop as most of these sites did not help me. I could write another long article on live chat services since I tried chatting with sales and technical staff at Lenovo, Dell, Asus and Samsung. At least the Lenovo sales person told me he did not know but would find out for me and then re-directed me to a technical person who could only find a match in a desktop machine. The number one problem with web sales chat programs is that they timeout if unused, which I fully understand. The problem is while the sales person is searching if they don't say anything and I don't say anything then the session times out and is terminated. This means I get to start all over again. One of the people I chatted with could not get on the web so my Microsoft SDK link was not even visible to them. Then I contacted Dell as I thought that may be a better user experience for me. Turns out it was much worse. I tried 5 times to chat and every time the session expired before I could get help, so I finally gave up. Most of the chat programs send a transcript of the session by email but that was 5 emails I immediately trashed. The person at Asus was the most helpful as he admitted immediately he had no idea but told me to go to BestBuy and get them to reboot the computers I thought looked good and then view the BIOS settings to see if they matched  the Microsoft specs. Finally someone who had a novel and useful idea. I wanted to complete my due diligence and chatted with Samsung and the first person I found gave me the best customer experience of all time. He told me it would be a couple of minutes and sent a message every minute to make sure the session did not time out. He pushed a link to me with an machine that met the specs. It was a bit pricey so when I asked about a cheaper model, he sent me a list of all of the models Samsung sold that matches the spec. Within 10 minutes I had more useful information that the couple of hours I spend trying to find a computer elsewhere.

Then I went to Best Buy last night with the intent to buy a Samsung computer since my chat experience was so great. Turns out that BestBuy had sold out of the model I needed that fit my budget, so I turned to find a BestBuy sales person. I had printed off the Microsoft specs and gave it to the sales person as I was disappointed in thinking I had to start a very long process to find the correct machine and I had an evening meeting I needed to attend within 45 minutes. The sales person was like a kid but he knew how to be helpful so he took me immediately to a machine that fit my needs. Not that I didn't trust him but for $1000 I wanted to make sure I got the correct machine. He looked up the Microsoft article, rebooted the machine and checked the BIOS settings. One of them was not visible, so he downloaded a standalone program to check the remaining one, followed the 10 steps and found my answer than indeed the machine had what I needed. It was just as the Asus man described and I walked out with the computer and today starts my next story...