Jennifer Marsman

Comparison of Windows Store vs. Google Play

jennmar — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 19:00:57 GMT

In this article, my goal is a facts-based comparison of the Windows Store (for Windows 8 apps) and Google Play (for Android apps). I’ve included links to my references throughout this article that were available and published as of April 25, 2013.

Ability to make money

First, here is a quick table to summarize the key differences in making money with the Windows Store and Google Play.

	Windows Store	Google Play
Revenue Share	70% for the first $25,000 USD; then 80%	70%
Minimum price of app	$1.49 (USD)	$0.99 (USD)
Maximum price of app	$999.99 (USD)	$200 (USD)
Developer registration	$49 or $99 annually	$25 one-time
Cost of dev tools	Free	Free

Let’s dive into the details.

Revenue share

You have the potential to make a higher revenue share in the Windows Store. Google Play takes a 30% cut of the revenue and you keep 70%. For a new app in the Windows Store, this is also true. But, in the Windows Store, once your application makes $25,000 USD, your share increases to 80%. So you are rewarded for creating a compelling app! For example, if your app makes $1 million in sales, you would take home $97,500 more* selling in the Windows Store than Google Play.

* To show my work: on $1 million in sales, you would get 70% from Google Play, which is $700,000. In the Windows Store, you would make 70% on the first $25,000 (which is $17,500) and 80% on the rest (which is $780,000). $780K + 17.5K – 700K = $97.5K difference.

Pricing

The minimum and maximum prices of an app in Google Play are listed here. In USD (United States dollars), you can charge $0.99 - $200 for your apps.

The pricing model of an app in the Windows Store is described on MSDN and on the Windows Store blog. In USD, you can charge $1.49 - $999.99 for your apps.

The Windows Store constrains its range of prices to tiers. For example, I couldn't charge $3.78 for my app, but I could charge $3.49 or $3.99. There are predefined price tiers within the range above that gives you the flexibility to choose a price that works with the laws of supply and demand. Google Play does not have tiers; any price in the range is valid.

In the Windows Store, you set the price once, and it is converted to all currencies. In Google Play, you can override the pricing and charge different amounts in different markets.

Developer registration cost

There is a charge to register as a developer who can submit apps to the stores. For Google Play, it is a one-time fee of $25 USD. For the Windows Store, it is an annual fee of $49 USD for an individual or $99 USD for a company (the differences between an individual vs. a company account are listed here). The full list of registration costs for the Windows Store in local currencies is here.

Cost of dev tools

Both provide free development tools. You can download Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows 8 from here to build Windows Store apps. You can download Eclipse from here to build Android apps.

You must do Windows 8 development for the Windows Store on the Windows 8 operating system. You can do Android development on Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux.

Availability

I’ve compiled a table to summarize availability, with links to the resources and full lists of markets.

	Windows Store	Google Play
Markets where users can buy apps	231 countries/regions	134 countries (for paid apps) and 136 countries (for free apps)
Markets where users can buy apps in local currency	75 countries/regions	30 countries/21 currencies
Markets from which developers can submit apps	121 countries/regions	32 countries (for paid apps) and 148 countries (for free apps)

In addition, your website can promote the discovery of your Windows Store app. With just 2 lines of markup in your site, you can promote your app via the app button within the browser, visible to anyone running Internet Explorer 10 on Windows 8. When this markup is present, Internet Explorer uses it to identify if the app is already installed on the user's computer. If so, the user’s click will launch the app. If not, the user’s click will launch the app’s description page in the Windows Store so it can be downloaded.

Certification process

You can submit an app to the Windows Store here and submit an app to Google Play here.

The Windows Store has a certification process, where a human tester does evaluate the application before publication in the Store. The Google Play store does not have a certification process before publication, but end users can report inappropriate content.

Methods to sell

There are a variety of ways to make money selling applications in an app store, from regular purchases sales to advertising to utilizing trials to entice your users. I will discuss each of these options for revenue:

Trials
In-app purchases
Subscriptions
Consumables
Advertising

Both stores support free apps and paid apps, in-app purchasing, and advertising.

At a high level, the Windows Store has a variety of options for your business model: collect full price before download, time-limited trials, feature-limited trials, in-app purchases, advertising, and third-party transactions. Here is a good article which walks through some of the options. The Windows Store API gives you access to classes which provide access to licensing and listing information about apps and in-app purchases. There is strong support for trials, and both persistent and expiring in-app purchases. The Windows Store also allows you to use an existing commerce engine if you’ve already built one, or a third-party one like PayPal.

At a high level, Google Play has a simple method for developers to join and submit apps. There is support for in-app purchases which includes subscriptions and consumables.

Trials

The Windows Store has support for time-based and feature-based trials. A time-based trial doesn’t require any extra coding; you just set the length of the free trial in a dropdown menu when you submit the app to the Windows Store. A feature-based trial may be coded using the LicenseInformation class; you can code “full” features in conditional blocks and only provide them if the user has a full active non-trial license. When the trial period ends, the user must explicitly initiate the purchase of the application; you can’t automatically charge their credit card.

Google Play only has built-in support for trials in in-app purchases. There is support for free subscription trials (but no support for trials of an in-app product that is a one-time purchase and no support for trials of an app). When the trial period ends, Google Play automatically initiates billing against the credit card that the user provided during the initial purchase, at the amount set for the full subscription, and continuing at the subscription interval.

In Google Play, these free subscription trials must be 7 days or longer. In the Windows Store, the free trial for an application can be 1, 7, 15, or 30 days (or forever).

Windows Store: How to create a trial version of your app

Windows Store trial app and in-app purchase code sample

Google Play: Configuring a subscription (for free trials)

In-app purchases

In-app purchases or in-app billing refers to the ability to buy extra features from within the application. For example, you may have bought and downloaded a coloring app which allows users to color on existing black-and-white drawings (like a coloring book). Inside of this app, there is a button to buy a set of additional holiday-specific pages to color; this is an in-app purchase.

Both the Windows Store and Google Play have support for in-app purchases.

However, the Windows Store allows you to make in-app purchases through the Windows Store (subject to the normal transaction fee of the Windows Store) or through your own servers (and you completely handle the payment process, and Microsoft does not take a cut). Google Play requires that you must use Google Play's payment system as the method of payment, except:

where payment is primarily for physical goods or services (e.g. buying movie tickets; e.g. buying a publication where the price also includes a hard copy subscription); or
where payment is for digital content or goods that may be consumed outside of the application itself (e.g. buying songs that can be played on other music players)

The standard transaction fee of 30% applies to in-app transactions on Google Play. In the Windows Store, the transaction fee is only applied if the in-app purchase goes through the Windows Store purchasing infrastructure (you get 100% of the sales if you are handling payment on your own server).

In Google Play, you cannot set an in-app price of “0” (free). The Windows Store does allow you to have free in-app purchases.

In the Windows Store, every in-app purchase requires the user to enter their Microsoft Account password to guarantee that they are intentionally making the purchase. Google Play has a subscription model that will automatically charge the user’s credit card every billing cycle.

Windows Store: How to support in-app purchases

Windows Store: The in-app purchase experience for a customer

Windows Store trial app and in-app purchase code sample

Google Play In-App Billing Overview

Google Play "Selling In-app Products" training class

Google Play In-app Billing reference documentation

Google Play in-app billing sample application

Subscriptions

Google Play supports subscriptions or recurring charges within its in-app billing API (so subscriptions are purchased from within your app, not directly from Google Play). It provides a way to charge users on a monthly or annual basis, and will automatically charge the user’s credit card every billing cycle. Subscriptions can offer a free trial period, after which the user’s credit card will start to be billed automatically. There is more information at http://developer.android.com/google/play/billing/billing_subscriptions.html.

In the Windows Store, subscriptions can be implemented using the in-app purchase APIs. The current in-app purchase API allows in-app purchases to last as long as the customer has a valid license for the app, or the in-app purchase license can expire after a set amount of time. The available time periods are 1, 3, 5, 7, 14, 30, 60, 90, 180, or 365 days (and “forever” for the non-expiring option). When the license expires, the product can be purchased again for another period. Developers are not allowed to automatically charge customers to renew a license like in Google Play; the customer must launch the app and explicitly purchase it again.

Consumables

Consumables are items that can be purchased multiple times within an app; they can be “used up” and then purchased again. For example, you might want to purchase gold coins or weapons for your character in a game. The gold coins/weapons could be considered consumables.

In Google Play, an in-app purchase can be bought and then “consumed” by sending a consumePurchase call, and then the in-app product is available to buy again. The in-app purchase cannot be bought again while it is owned but not consumed yet.

The Windows Store has no extra built-in support for consumables outside of its existing in-app purchase infrastructure. For an in-app purchase, you can specify how long the purchased product’s lifetime should be (forever, 1 day, 14 days, etc.), so this can be used for consumables.

Advertising

Both the Windows and the Android platform don’t impose any restrictions on your choice of advertising provider.

Advertising on either platform consists of the same high-level steps:

Download an advertising SDK.
Sign up for a publisher account.
Put ads into your application, in a way that doesn’t annoy your users.
Submit the app to the Store.
Use your publisher account to monitor your ad revenue.

In the Windows Store, applications can’t just display ads; they must provide functionality besides advertising. Also, it is not permitted to display ads in an app’s tiles, notifications, app bar, or the swipe-from-edge interaction.

Windows Store: Advertising guidelines

Ads in Apps for Windows 8 (using the Microsoft Advertising SDK)

Android: Advertising without Compromising User Experience

Google AdMob Ads SDK

Development experience

Both Windows Store development and Android development provide free development tools. Visual Studio and Eclipse are rich IDEs that allow you to develop and debug.

The Windows Store development experience includes a local simulator for the Windows Store to simulate purchases. You can define the initial licensing state of the app in a WindowsStoreProxy.xml file, and use the CurrentAppSimulator class instead of the CurrentApp class to test licensing and purchasing calls against the local Store simulator. In Google Play, you must test billing from a device (not the emulator). You can test by sending reserved product IDs to Google Play, which returns a specific static response. To test using your own product IDs, you must upload your application as a draft, publish your in-app purchase product, and create a test account (your developer account won’t work because Google Checkout won’t let you buy something from yourself). You will also need to make your test account the primary account on the device to test this. (The only way to change the primary account on a device is to do a factory reset, making sure you log on with your primary account first.) Finally, when you purchase items with the test account, the test account is actually billed through Google Checkout and your Google Checkout Merchant account receives a payout for the purchase. Therefore, you may want to refund purchases that are made with test accounts; otherwise the purchases will show up as actual payouts to your merchant account.

Next, you can use the Windows Store APIs to work with application licenses and check their status; this information is automatically cached locally on the end user’s machine in case of an offline scenario. Google Play limits calls to the Google Play Android Developer API and necessitates the developer to have a backend server for storing and caching subscription expiration information.

Finally, the Windows Store provides a tool known as the Windows Application Certification Kit (WACK), which is installed with Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows 8. The WACK is a client-side tool that runs a series of automated tests on your application before submission to the certification process. The same series of tests is run on your application during certification, so running this and fixing any errors before submission will save you time and give your app a better chance of passing certification. Google Play does not have a certification process and therefore doesn’t need such a tool.

Getting Paid

The Windows Store initiates payment to the developer when you reach $200 in app sales. Google Play pays out monthly only if you have received a payout for that month; your earned balance must be at least $1 USD.

User Refunds

In Google Play, buyers will have 15 minutes to cancel their purchase after downloading a program. After this cancellation period expires, Google automatically charges the card and initiates payments to your account. In the Windows Store, there is no built-in refund mechanism.

Reporting

Both the Windows Store and Google Play provide rich reporting to the application developer. Both include:

Ratings and reviews
App's installation numbers (graphs over time and broken down by various filters)
Comparison of your app's metrics to other apps in the same category
Financial reports on payouts (Google Play and Windows Store), including the ability to export transactions into a spreadsheet
Ability for users to send crash/hang data on the app to the developer

To clarify the last bullet point: The Windows Store supplies quality reports which supply the numbers of failures in your app - specifically, the number of crashes, hangs/freezes, or unhandled JavaScript exceptions (in the case of JavaScript apps). These reports also contain .cab files (containing process dumps and stack traces) to help you debug the issues and improve the quality of your apps. Google Play also has Android Application Error Reports to improve the quality of its Android apps, in which developers can receive crash and freeze reports from their users. These include information such as stack traces, device/hardware info, and version.

Windows Store Reporting

Google Play Reporting

Resources

Google Play Developer Program Policies: http://play.google.com/about/developer-content-policy.html#showlanguages

Google Play Developer Distribution Agreement: https://play.google.com/about/developer-distribution-agreement.html

Windows Store Application Developer Agreement: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh694058.aspx

Android to Windows 8: Top 10 tips for passing Windows Store certification

jennmar — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 12:40:49 GMT

As an Android developer publishing an application in Google Play, you simply publish the app and it appears live. However, in the Windows Store (and Apple’s App Store), there is a certification process where your application undergoes testing and a review by a human being before being published.

So, you might wonder if there are any tips and tricks for passing certification in the Windows Store. Here are the top 10 tips that will help you pass certification.

1. Run the WACK. The Windows Application Certification Kit (WACK) is an awesome tool. Perhaps you have developed for an app store before and encountered the really fun cycle of: submit your app, wait, receive a failure notice, fix your bug, re-submit your app, wait, receive a failure notice, fix your bug, re-submit your app, wait…and repeat. The WACK reduces this cycle by giving you a way to screen your app locally for issues before you even submit it to the Windows Store. Essentially, the WACK is a series of automated tests (which are also run during certification). Running them locally, you can find and fix bugs before you submit your app to the Windows Store. The WACK is installed when you install Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows 8 (available as a free download here, halfway down the page in blue). When you install Visual Studio, you should also get a tile in your Start Menu for the WACK (see the picture below). Finally, here is some how-to documentation on using the WACK.

2. Test on ARM. Particularly for the performance requirements, it helps to test on devices running ARM processors and/or low-end machines. In general, it’s a good idea to test on several different machines.

Also note that your app must provide the same user experience on all processor types that it supports (this is certification requirement 3.2). If your app has a different user interface or functionality when it runs on different processor types, you must submit a separate app for each processor type and describe the differences in the “Description” section of each app.

Finally, you may be wondering “How do I test on ARM?” since Visual Studio doesn’t run on ARM devices. You can accomplish this through remote debugging. Tim Heuer wrote a fabulous post on how to enable remote debugging on an ARM device.

3. Read the documentation. I know that this part isn’t fun, but taking some time to read through ALL of the certification requirements will help you avoid mistakes. Here is the full list of Windows 8 certification requirements. There is also guidance on avoiding common certification failures and resolving certification errors. Finally, here is the App Developer Agreement for developers and Windows Store Terms of Use for the users who download your app.

I’ve also listed some additional documentation in the Resources section below.

4. Create an accurate and compelling app listing page. When you submit your app to the Windows Store, you will be required to fill out various metadata about your app: a description, age rating, etc. Take your time and do a good job filling out your application information. (If you’ve taken the time to write a great app, don’t rush through this part!) There is a lot of great guidance on this at Preparing your app for the Store (marketing has never been a strength of mine, so I find this really useful). Here are some specific tips around creating a great app listing page:

Make your application description as detailed and descriptive as possible. There is guidance on creating a great app listing that is truly helpful.
Don’t use your listing page to promote your company or products. Certification requirement 2.3 forbids advertising in an application description, so beware the appearance of trying to sneak advertising into your description.
Most apps should have a rating of 12+. If you're having trouble deciding between two age ratings for your app, choose the higher one. Remember that apps never fail certification for having too high a rating. (See certification requirement 6.2 for more info.)
Don't declare your app as accessible unless you specifically engineer and test it for accessibility scenarios.
Make sure that you tell the tester everything that he/she needs to know. There is a “Notes to Tester” section when you submit an application, and you should utilize that as your mechanism to “talk” to the person who will be reviewing your app for certification. Besides the obvious items that you should provide (like the username/password of a demo account if your app requires login), you can explain your development choices and how they align to the certification requirements if you feel that anything may be misinterpreted.

5. Use the Windows Store simulator for testing calls to the Windows Store. Your app can use the Windows Store commerce APIs from the Windows.ApplicationModel.Store namespace for features like trial functionality or in-app purchases. If you use these: first of all, test your app to verify that it handles typical exceptions; you can do this using the Windows Store simulator available through the CurrentAppSimulator class. Then, make sure that you change your app to talk to the real Store and not the simulator before submitting (your app should use the CurrentApp class instead of the CurrentAppSimulator class, which is for testing purposes only). Finally, ensure that your app doesn't crash if there's no network connectivity.

6. Use the Visual Studio simulator for testing touch as well as different screen sizes, resolutions, and orientations. A certification tester (and of course, your end users) may be using a machine very different from your development box. The Visual Studio simulator lets you test your application’s behavior in a variety of conditions.

In the Run dropdown menu with the green play button, select "Simulator" (it is probably currently set to "Local Machine"). Then click the button to start the simulator.

When the simulator launches, you will see a menu of buttons on the right-hand side.

Below the minimize button, the buttons are (in order from top to bottom):

Pin button – keeps the simulator always on top
Arrow button – change to mouse mode
Hand button – change to touch mode
Zoom button – change to pinch/zoom touch mode (so you can simulate this gesture)
Rotate button – change to rotation touch mode (so you can simulate this gesture)
Rotate clockwise button – rotates the display clockwise 90 degrees (to simulate portrait/landscape orientation changes)
Rotate counterclockwise button – rotates the display counterclockwise 90 degrees
Monitor button – changes resolution
Globe button – sets location
Camera button – copies a screenshot
Options button – changes the screenshot settings
Question button – links to simulator help

Using the Visual Studio simulator allows you to test how your application will behave across numerous machines. You can simulate touch if you don’t have a touch machine, orientation changes for slates/tablets, different screen sizes/resolutions, and different locations if you utilize location-based services.

7. Ensure that your app is fully functional, and won’t be perceived as unfinished. This maps back to certification requirement 1.2, which says that apps must be fully functional. A number of things in this category can trigger certification failures:

The description given for your app listing page in the Windows Store is inaccurate or overly vague.
Any incomplete sections, unimplemented buttons or menu choices, links to webpages that are under construction, empty pages that should contain data, use of language like “coming soon” and “beta”, etc. will give the impression that an app is incomplete.
Broken or missing functionality will trigger this failure.
Make sure that you provide enough information for the testers to test. For example, if your app has “login” functionality, create a test user account and provide the username/password in the “Notes to Testers” field when you submit your application.

For more information, see this “1.2 App must be fully functional” blog post.

8. Test for performance. Apps must launch in 5 seconds or less and suspend in 2 seconds or less, on a low-power computer. The Windows App Certification Kit does run performance tests, so you can use that data to measure how your application is performing. If you find that you do need to improve performance on launch and suspend, here are a few tips:

Package content locally (or cache it) when possible, so you don’t have to pull resources from a network during launch.
Load and do only what you need on launch. You can load other data and do other work asynchronously in the background or when you actually need it.
Use a “dirty bit” when saving data on suspend, so you only save data that has changed. (Rather than re-serializing your app’s state if that data hasn’t changed, create a Boolean flag variable (or “dirty bit”) which signals that your data has been modified, and only re-serialize when the data has changed.)
Use bytecode caching if you are developing in JavaScript, so each JS file has bytecode created once and not every time the app launches. To enable this, make sure all JavaScript files are UTF8 encoded with a byte-order mark (BOM) and are statically referenced in the root of your HTML start page.

For more detailed information, see this “3.8 App must meet the basic performance criteria” blog post.

9. Provide a privacy policy if your app connects to the internet at all (or if you have the Internet capability checked). This is an extremely common reason for Windows Store submission failure. The “Internet (Client)” capability is enabled by default in the Visual Studio templates, so by default if you haven’t changed your manifest, you do have to provide a privacy policy. The capabilities are found in your Package.appxmanifest file, under the Capabilities tab:

If you are not using the internet, uncheck this capability, and you don’t have to provide a privacy policy. If you are using the internet, you need to create a privacy policy that explains what data is sent over the internet/what you are doing with it, post the privacy policy online, link to it in your application’s settings (accessed through the Settings charm), and provide the link when submitting to the Windows Store. If you do collect personal information, the user has to opt-in and give consent to share this information.

For more detailed information, see this “4.1 App must comply with privacy requirements” blog post.

10. Properly localize your app for all languages that it supports. Here are some common “gotchas” that can cause the localization certification requirement to fail:

The app’s metadata provided during the submission process on the Description page (such as its description, features, keywords, or screen shots) is either missing or doesn’t match the languages defined in your application. For example, you may accidentally provide a description in English for the Chinese version of the app.
Don’t forget to provide localized screen shots! This one has tripped up a lot of folks.
The app must support one of the certification languages. That is the subset of languages for which we have testers to confirm that your app meets the certification requirements.
Make sure that the app is functional and complete for all of the languages that you claim. If any claimed language support is incomplete, this requirement will fail.

For more information (including the difference between supporting languages and markets, and how to implement support for different languages properly), see this “6.5 App must be localized” blog post.

Hope these tips were useful! If you want further information on developing a Windows 8 application, register for the AppBuilder program to get 30 days of guidance. You can also get $100/app for publishing apps in the Windows Store before June 30, 2013; see Keep the Cash for details.

Certification Resources

Windows 8 app certification requirements – This is the full list of certification requirements. If your app fails certification, it will specifically cite one of these requirements as the reason for failure.

Avoiding common certification failures – This article lists some of the top causes of certification failure.

Resolving certification errors – This article goes through each requirement and lists additional resources and/or common gotchas for that particular requirement.

Developer support for Windows Store apps – There are a number of support options available, including phone, email, and live chat. You can also use the forums for free.

BUILD 2012 session on “Windows Store: how does it work?” – This is a great video from BUILD 2012 on submitting to the Windows Store. The slides are available for download too.

Blog posts in my “Common Windows Store Certification Failures” series:

General tips & tricks and resources

1.2 App must be fully functional

3.8 App must meet the basic performance criteria

4.1 App must comply with privacy requirements

6.5 App must be localized

Windows Store blog: 5 tips to getting your apps certified quickly

Windows Phone 7 –> 8 Upgrade Labs

jennmar — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 11:42:24 GMT

Select a date below to register online.

	Location		Date

	Houston, TX		4/11

	Irving, TX		4/15

	Southfield, MI		4/16

	Columbus, OH		5/3

	Chicago, IL		5/7

	Edina, MN		5/7

	Indianapolis, IN		5/9

FREE Events

Seating is limited,
so register today.
Events run from
8:30am - 5:00pm.

Windows Phone 7.x Upgrade Lab

Windows Phone 8 offers up some exciting new features and opportunities for developers. The customer base is getting larger with new form factors and low-memory devices. Is your app ready? Are you ready to add the new Windows Phone 8 features to your existing 7.x app? Do you understand the key scenarios to make your app shine on Windows Phone 8 and bring nothing but 5-star reviews? The Windows Phone Evangelism team at Microsoft is hosting a Windows Phone 7.x Upgrade Lab to help you make your app shine on Windows Phone 8.

What is a Windows Phone Upgrade Lab?

The Windows Phone Upgrade Lab is a free, fun, no-fluff workshop for Windows Phone Developers by Windows Phone Developers. Our Technical Evangelist team will introduce you to the new features in Windows Phone 8 and what you, as a Windows Phone Developer, need to do to take advantage as these features. We will also guide you along the path of making your app work great across the new form factors and low memory devices coming from the many Windows Phone manufactures.

What can I expect?

The Windows Phone Upgrade Lab is a working lab. This means, bring your development machine and your source code and be ready to submit your Windows Phone 8 updates by the end of the day. We will start off the day by discussing the new developer features of the Windows Phone 8 SDK. Following this, our technical experts will be on-hand to assist you in bringing some of these features to life in your app. We will help identify what features would be best utilized in your app, help you implement those features, and assist you in submitting your app into the store by days end. We will cap off the day by introducing you to strategies for bringing your app to Windows 8 and opening up your app to a whole new world of new customers!

Some of the features we’ll be discussing, include…
       -          New Windows Phone 8 Features
       -          What is the Windows Phone Runtime?
       -          What’s new in Tiles and Notifications
       -          Handling Multiple Resolutions
       -          Understanding the required artwork
       -          New Proximity Scenarios with Bluetooth and NFC
       -          New Mapping technology from Nokia
       -          Lock Screen integration
       -          How to start thinking of bringing your app to Windows

We look forward to seeing you there! Don’t forget to register to guarantee your spot.

Reveal a Picture

jennmar — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 12:31:25 GMT

I published my first application into the Windows Store in November 2012, but I never blogged about it. It is a simple game called Reveal a Picture, which I made for my kids. You can download it here.

In this children’s game targeted at ages 2-6, you touch the screen or move the mouse on a colored screen to reveal a hidden picture underneath. This application will select a picture from your Pictures Library to hide, so the child will be delighted to discover a picture of herself or her family. In addition, if the child plays this game with a mouse, it teaches basic mouse manipulation skills (the hand/eye coordination necessary to move the mouse and correlate that action to the mouse pointer moving on the screen).

(NOTE: This application has the age rating of 7+ only because it accesses the Pictures directory of your machine. I don't control the content in there, so I can't prove that it is child-safe. Please be aware of this before letting your child use the application!)

Features

Share the picture that you uncovered via the Share charm
File picker in the App Bar to select a certain picture to hide
Setting to change the color hiding the picture
Audio congratulatory feedback when you uncover a picture

Download the app: http://apps.microsoft.com/webpdp/app/reveal-a-picture/2d58ee4d-b250-4a32-b94f-a42457c79aea

Some readers may recall that I began a blog post series on building this app:

Part 1: Why Would You Want to Develop a Metro Application for Windows 8?

Part 2: Getting Started

Part 3: Metro Design

Part 4: My "Reveal a Picture" Algorithm and Basic Code

Windows Store opportunity for Android developers

jennmar — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 12:37:40 GMT

I’m super excited about building apps for the Windows Store. In this article, I’ll discuss why Android developers should consider developing for the Windows Store as well.

First of all, let me be clear about what we are developing for. Developing Windows Store apps allows your app to run on Windows 8: both PCs with x86/x64 processors and tablets/slates with ARM processors. You can also develop applications for the Windows Phone, but there are slightly different APIs for this. You will probably want to have different front ends for a tablet/slate and a phone anyway, to optimize for their very different form factors and screen sizes, and there are some best practices to get high code reuse between Windows Store and Windows Phone applications.

Also, I’ve already blogged about the many reasons to develop Windows Store apps, but this is specifically focused on Android developers who are currently developing for Google Play.

Opportunity to make money

First, I’ll reference a blog post by Kevin Ashley, who has earned more than $100,000 total with his apps in the Windows Store. Kevin is a Microsoft employee who, in his off-work spare time, built some games for the Windows Store. In the roughly 6 months since Windows 8 has shipped, he has earned over $100K in app sales. The unbelievable part is that his biggest app is a collection of card games. Can you imagine making that kind of money on a card game app in Apple’s App Store or Google Play? There is currently a lot of opportunity for developers and they are making money in the Windows Store.

Secondly, the Windows Store rewards profitable apps with even more money than Google Play. When you first release your app in the Windows Store, you take 70% of the revenue and the Windows Store takes 30%, which is the same as Google Play’s 30% cut. But, in the Windows Store, once your application makes $25,000 USD, your share increases to 80%. So you are rewarded for creating a compelling app! For example, if your app makes $1 million in sales, you would take home $97,500 more* selling in the Windows Store than Google Play.

Thirdly, this is a pretty small thing, but you can charge more for your application in the Windows Store. The maximum price of an app in Google Play is $200 USD and the maximum price of an app in the Windows Store is $999.99 USD.

Finally, I’ll close by mentioning the size of the Windows ecosystem. You have the opportunity to reach more people on more devices – 60 million Windows 8 and Windows RT licenses were sold in just the first three months! With the reach of the Windows install base and the new Windows Store distribution channel, there's never been a better time to build for Windows.

Rich Reporting

There are compelling analytics available from the Windows Store:

· Adoption reports: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsstore/archive/2012/05/10/making-customer-focused-decisions-with-adoption-reports.aspx

· Quality reports: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsstore/archive/2012/06/27/improving-apps-with-quality-reports.aspx

· Finance reports: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsstore/archive/2012/08/03/getting-paid-from-the-windows-store.aspx

Read these blog posts (complete with screenshots) for the details. But in summary, you get a lot of rich data. Besides the expected total downloads, average star rating, and total sales revenue, you have access to download trends over time, conversion data (page views vs. downloads vs. purchases), referral sources for your app (how people are finding it), download data by various filters (age group, gender, country, etc.), usage data (the amount of time your app is being used per day), rating data, and store trends. You can improve the quality of your app; data on crashes, hangs, and exceptions is logged for you to investigate. Finally, you can track your earnings in the Windows Store and get visibility into what app proceeds are paid, reserved, pending, or available. You can also monitor your finances by app and over time.

As an Android developer, you may have submitted apps to Google Play, which (like the Windows Store) has reporting on ratings/reviews, installation numbers, and financial reports on payouts. The Windows Store also supplies quality reports which illustrate the numbers of failures in your app - specifically, the number of crashes, hangs/freezes, or unhandled JavaScript exceptions (in the case of JavaScript apps). These reports also contain .cab files (containing process dumps and stack traces) to help you debug the issues and improve the quality of your apps.

Leverage powerful features of Windows 8

There are many articles written about all of the cool new features in Windows 8 and Windows Store apps, so let me just focus on two of them: live tiles and roaming data.

Live tiles give you the ability to update your tile on the Start Menu with fresh, relevant information to draw the user back in. A game could display your high score, a weather app could show the temperature in your city, and a news app could cycle through the top news headlines. Tiles are essentially the front door to your application, so enticing, interesting content will encourage the user to come back to your application often. For example, if you create a game with leaderboard functionality, you could push a notification to the game’s tile when a friend tops the user’s high score…extra incentive to want to play the game again immediately and reclaim bragging rights! I wrote an article which goes into more depth on the how-to of live tiles at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jennifer/archive/2012/11/20/real-world-live-tiles-working-with-live-tiles-in-windows-8-apps.aspx.

Roaming data is another amazing feature: the ability to roam state between Windows 8 devices using your application (for free)! For example, my husband and I are both geeks, and we always bring a laptop on vacation (but not both of our laptops, because it is vacation, after all). Let’s say we brought my husband’s laptop (running Windows 8) on vacation. I use it (logging in using my Microsoft account) to read a book using an eReader app (such as a Nook or Kindle app). Perhaps I get to page 74 on “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” before my kids need me or we have to leave for dinner or something. I might never get back to my book, but after returning home and logging into my own laptop (again, using my same Microsoft account), I can launch the eReader app, and it opens to “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” on page 74! Amazing experience for me as a user, to have it remember where I was and bring me back, even when using different machines! And as a developer, this is crazy-easy to code. You essentially just write out two name-value pairs (something like (“Book”, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince”) and (“Page”, 74)) to RoamingSettings with a simple API call, and the system under the covers will cache it locally and then push it to cloud storage, where it can be accessed from your app on other machines. Then on launch of your app, check RoamingSettings and use that data/state if it exists.

Want to get started?

The similarity of Java and C# will be an advantage to Android developers writing apps for the Windows Store. Here are some resources to get you up and running.

Android –> Windows 8 resources: this is a landing page for some extremely useful resources, including an API mapping from common Android APIs to their Windows Store equivalents.

App Builder program: you can sign up for one of several learning paths, and you will receive email tips & tricks to walk you through building an app in 30 days. Each day, you learn the next step to create your application, so by the end, you have a pretty cool app! With this program, you also get connected with your local technical evangelist and get FREE expert guidance on your app. There are occasionally prizes/incentives for publishing apps too – no downside to registering!

Keep the Cash Offer – Make $100/published app!

jennmar — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 17:34:30 GMT

App Builder – Keep the Cash Offer

Offer runs March 8 – June 30, 2013

http://www.buildforwindows.com/keepthecash

Keep the Cash • Publish an app • Get up to $2000*

Publish your app(s) in the Windows Store and/or Windows Phone Store and fill out the form at http://aka.ms/CashForApps to participate. You can submit up to 10 apps per Store and get $100 for each qualified app up to $2000.

*Offer good only to the first 10,000 qualified applications published in the Windows Store and/or Windows Phone Store, or until the end of the promotional period, whichever comes first. Limit 10 entries per publisher ID and up to $2,000 per person.

How does it work?

· Publish your app to the Windows Store and/or Windows Phone Store between March 8, 2013 through June 30, 2013

· Submit up to 10 published apps per Store and get a $100 Virtual Visa® for each one that qualifies

Who is eligible?

Developers are eligible to enter this contest if they meet the following requirements at time of entry:

· Legal resident of the 50 United States and District of Columbia 18 years of age or older;

· 10 apps per Store for the Windows Store and Windows Phone Store may be submitted. Each app you submit to a single platform must be substantially unique and different.

Read the full Terms & Conditions for all the details.

iOS developers who want to learn Windows 8 development

jennmar — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 16:05:22 GMT

Here is a compiled list of resources for iOS developers who want to learn Windows 8 development. Porting your app to Windows 8 will allow you to sell it in the Windows Store as well, and take advantage of the huge global reach of the Windows operating system.

MSDN Resources

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/windows/apps/jj680134.aspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/jj945493.aspx

This page contains a ton of useful information, including:

* Installing Windows 8 and the dev tools on your Mac

* iOS –> Windows 8 API mapping index

Generation App

http://aka.ms/Jen30TLWin8

The “Generation App” program helps you build your first Windows Store app (or Windows Phone app). You sign up for one of 5 learning paths:

Build Windows Store apps – choose this option to build an application on Windows 8
Build Windows Store games – choose this option if you specifically want to build a game on Windows 8
Build Windows Phone 8 apps – choose this option if you want to build an application for the Windows Phone (yes, the programming model for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 is slightly different)
Build with Web Technologies – choose this option if you have a HTML5/CSS3/JavaScript background and want to leverage those skills to build a Windows Store app
Build using App Frameworks – choose this option to use various tools/frameworks to quickly create a game or app. Options include appMobi, GameSalad Creator, Scirra Construct 2, Xamarin, YoYo Games GameMaker Studio, Tiggzi, or TouchDevelop. Some of these options require minimal coding.

Then, you will receive email tips & tricks to help you build an app in 30 days. Each day, you get the next step to build, so by the end, you have a pretty cool app! But that’s not even the best part. The best part is that with this program, you also get access to FREE tech support and FREE design consultations. There are occasionally prizes/incentives for publishing apps too!

2-Day Recorded Event Videos

http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Windows-Camp/Windows-Store-App-Development-for-iOS-Developers

The “Windows Store App Development for iOS Developers” two-day event presented by Microsoft and Big Nerd Ranch was recorded, and all 14 sessions are published on this site. These videos are very useful for getting started with Windows 8 development, from an iOS perspective.

In addition, here is a video on using Visual Studio on OSX with Parallels.

Getting your Mac set up for Windows development

Developing for Windows 8 does require that you are running the Windows 8 operating system. Here are some blog posts by my IT Pro colleagues, on how to set up a Windows 8 environment in a virtual machine on your Mac:

Oracle VirtualBox: http://aka.ms/virtualboxmac
VMware Fusion 5.02: http://aka.ms/fusionmac
Parallels 8: http://aka.ms/parallelsmac

What did I miss?

Leave a comment if you know of other valuable Windows resources for iOS developers.

Contoso Food & Dining Sample App

jennmar — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 20:50:06 GMT

I’m excited to announce that the Food & Dining sample app is available for download from the Windows Store!

For a couple of months in 2012, I worked with a great team of evangelists across US DPE (DPE is Developer and Platform Evangelism, my business group at Microsoft): Ian Bennett, Jennifer Marsman, Jerry Nixon, Jim Blizzard, Jit Ghosh, and Harry Mower. We built out a sample app to use as a reference implementation, something more complex and real-world than a code sample illustrating one small feature or a Hello World.

The Food & Dining app pulls real restaurant data from Yelp and displays trending restaurants for a location. You can choose a location, or use the location services to have it find your current location. You may read recent restaurant reviews for your location, add restaurants to your Favorites list, pin a restaurant as a secondary tile, view a restaurant on a map via the Bing Maps integration, see the latest restaurant review via a live tile, browse a picture gallery for a restaurant, get restaurant address/phone number, and more. There is also sample data from New York City included so you can see something in an offline scenario without connectivity to Yelp (we in DPE often need to demo that way). To turn off the sample data, go to the Settings charm –> Settings, and set “Sample data” to “Off”.

It really is a gorgeous app (thanks to the amazing designers at UI Centric who did the design work, not me). As you scroll through the main hub, there is a beautiful parallax effect with the background images.

I personally owned the tiles for the project. I’ve written two articles based on my code and experience with this project:

So how do you get it? Here are the important links:

Download app from the Windows Store: http://apps.microsoft.com/windows/en-US/app/windows-8-food-dining-sample-app/c06ffb8b-42ae-42a4-8f29-aae099beaa6c

Download source code from SourceForge: http://sourceforge.net/projects/win8fooddinings/

Associated Win8Center content: http://windows8center.sourceforge.net/sample-application-food-and-dining/

Here is the app’s official description:

The Windows 8 Food & Dining app allows the user to set their location either using a destination name (ex. New York, NY) or by finding their current location. With location set, the user will be presented with Trending Restaurants (restaurants with a number of recent positive reviews), Recently Reviewed (restaurants with recent reviews), Top Near Me (highest rated restaurants close to the user’s set location) and Favorites.

Each of these sections can be viewed in grid form where the user can filter each collection by cuisine, price range and more. The user can also choose to show the results on a map view.

The restaurant details page shows the full restaurant details including a snap shot of reviews from Yelp, the menu from OpenMenu and images associated with the restaurant collected from Bing.

The app was built as a reference application that examples how to build a complete application for Windows 8 using best practices for data acquisition, user control and more.

Hope it’s useful!

More Windows 8 Office Hours

jennmar — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 16:38:32 GMT

My team and I are continuing to offer office hours for developers who are building applications on Windows 8, Windows Phone, or Windows Azure. There is a mixture of in-person and online office hours.

My team’s office hours: http://usdpe.ohours.org

My personal office hours: http://ohours.org/jennifermarsman

Please feel free to sign up if you would like some guidance.

Here are the sessions that I have scheduled in the next few weeks:

Date	Location	Registration
Tues 2/12	Microsoft Southfield office	http://ohours.org/officehours/27257
Mon 2/18	Online – phone or Skype	http://ohours.org/officehours/27469
Thurs 2/28	Zingerman’s in Ann Arbor	http://ohours.org/officehours/27456

Windows 8 office hours in Canton, MI on Fri 2/8

jennmar — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 18:39:25 GMT

I will be holding office hours to help with Windows 8 development questions on Friday Feb 8 from 11am-2pm at the Panera Bread in Canton, Michigan (halfway between Detroit and Ann Arbor).

Panera Bread

41950 Ford Rd

Canton, MI

Walk-ins are welcome, but preference will be given to those who reserve a slot. You can do so here:

http://ohours.org/officehours/26840