Microsoft Mobile developers warned that mistakes will be costly
Software developers planning to create products for Windows Mobile devices had better triple-check their work before submitting it. It’s emerged that correcting a single typo could cost $99.
The fee involves Microsoft Marketplace, the firm’s answer to the success of Apple’s iPhone App store. Microsoft had already announced that businesses would pay a $99 annual subscription which would allow them to sell up to five applications through the system. After hitting this limit, each additional application costs a further $99 (so, for example, seven applications in a year would cost a total of $297).
Blogger Long Zheng has discovered that every update to a product will count as a brand new application as far as the annual limit goes. That’s potentially expensive news for anyone creating a product that might be updated regularly, and is a pretty big disincentive for developers who want to continually improve their products.
While there’s a logic to the idea that Microsoft bears a cost each time it has to review an updated product, the approach it has chosen doesn’t distinguish between a major revamp and a simple correction of a minor bug or even a typo. There’s a risk that developers will not consider it financially viable to fix anything but a major performance or security issue, leaving applications filled with minor, niggling errors and problems. That doesn’t reflect well on either the developer or the Microsoft scheme itself.
It’s also now known that if a developer gets an application rejected, resubmitting it for approval after making changes will also count towards the limit. That’s a more debatable point: it’s certainly arguable that it’s reasonable to charge for re-reviewing an application, but it does create an incentive for Microsoft to reject applications wherever possible in the hope of making more cash. Of course, if that means only genuinely useful and high-quality products make it through, it would certainly be an improvement on the seemingly random nature of Apple’s approval process.
Zheng is the man who found a bug in the User Account Control security system in the beta of Windows 7. He noted that users weren’t notified by default when the settings for UAC itself were changes, creating a potential loophole for rogue software to turn the protection off before wreaking their havoc.
Related Posts:
March 26th, 2009
Glad I have an Ipod and not a windows device.