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Developers Can Now Turn to Apple’s iPad to Test Apps Made for Windows 8 Tablets

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With Windows 8 just around the corner with a speculated October launch, developers can now fill the gap with a lack of developer devices and begin to test their apps for Windows 8 tablets by using rival Apple’s iPad slate. This middle approach may be a great solution for Microsoft as it will make it easy to rally existing Android and iOS developers to get excited about creating apps for Windows 8, and many developers already have an existing iPad to use so they won’t have to incur the expense of purchasing a Windows 7 tablet right now, which can start at around $500 and go as high as $1,500 for some machines.

Third-party iOS developer Splashtop, which is known to consumers for its Splashtop remote desktop software, has created a solution for developers to test out their Windows 8 apps on their existing ware in the form of the Win8 Metro Testbed. This solution will allow developers to test their apps now, rather than wait for new hardware to launch.

According to Splashtop,

If they want to test their app with touch gestures there’s only one way to do that and that is to buy a Windows tablet, and that can cost $500 to $1,000 or more. … And 99 percent of Win8 tablet developers — they have iPads.

The Win8 Metro Testbed will cost developers $50 but is discounted for a limited time for $25, or half off, according to GigaOM.

Windows 8 so far has launched as a public beta, but there is no hardware yet that’s built specifically for Windows 8 out of the box. Users who want to test out Windows 8 could load Microsoft’s next-generation desktop OS onto an existing Windows 7 device.

Windows 8 will be the first version of Windows that runs on both ARM and x86 processing architectures. With ARM support, Windows 8 will also support full-screen HTML 5 apps.

4 Comments

4 Comments

  1. distofanatic

    04/12/2012 at 7:00 am

    I have this product and it is “fun” but it is really (mainly) just a special “tweaked” version of snother app. You can “test” various tap, swipe, pinch, etc. finctions of your W8 app that is actually running on an existing Win8 compter. And, ummm… MS handed out Slates to developers at the last BUILD conference. I believe I read the number was several thousand. No serious Win8 developer does not have access to the proper hardware. The BUILD slate is almost identical to the existing Samsung Series Seven Slate – the main differences being the latter does not have the built-in (and complimentary) AT&T 3G, some special sensors and of course, price (the BUILD device being free.). This app is being marketed as a Win8 developer tool, which is a gimmick IMHO, and the quotes are misleading – mainly to the consumer/public. A real developer knows the difference…

    • Mark Lee

      04/12/2012 at 9:18 am

      distofanatic,  Thanks for trying out Splashtop.   Indeed, MS offers thousands of BUILD slate to qualified developers… typically one Slate per company.    Here at Splashtop, we are working on Metro apps, and we have 150+ developers, and our developers have found it invaluable to use the Metro Testbed on iPad to do development / QA / usability testing of Metro apps since we have limited Slates.   We decided to make this tool available to other developers so people don’t have to incur the cost of buying additional Slates that usually cost $800-1500, especially most tablet developers already have iPads.

      -mark, CEO Splashtop

      • distofanatic

        04/12/2012 at 5:27 pm

        Mark, Congrats on releasing a product – no small feat itself. I bought it to play with and I would imagine others will find use for your app. It is fun and interesting, but the limitations of the capacitive (only) hardware in iPads limits some segments of serious developer work (certainly not your fault!). FWIW, I hope you do an Android version (and I’ll get that too, LOL), and that the product(s) are a success for your team!

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