Horrible article. As someone who has created and published a Windows Phone app before, let me say that it is a pretty smooth experience. Developing with C#/Silverlight is a breeze, and MS has a good developer portal set up. The majority of the problems described in the article sound like the fault of the developer, not Microsoft. If an app ever gets rejected during the submission process, they list out all the reasons why it was rejected, along with the parts of their guidelines which detail out the rules.
Also, "the page is confusing and the statistics poor"? I don't understand how you could get confused by anything in the developer page. And how are download numbers from any desired time range considered poor statistics?
It's frustrating that an article like this could get so much attention on HN. If you want to have a nightmare of a time developing apps, try developing for BlackBerry. Or deal with Apple's multi-week process of app submissions.
Have you even read the article? Most of the problems they had was because Microsoft refuses to acknowledge my country. And there exists Microsoft Slovenia FFS!
Also he clearly describes what's wrong with Silverlight and app submission form (can't use space, only works in Safari, etc).
He also said that they didn't get any specific reasons as to why the app was rejected.
Umm I'm not part of the Toshl team. I only know some of the guys. And the give full disclosure: my company is working with Toshl's parent company on some totally unrelated projects.
I agree that this article probably wasn't the best but it does describe major problems for developers of Windows apps, many of which weren't the fault of the developers: they couldn't obtain a developer account simply because Microsoft doesn't allow for it in their country, and Microsoft additionally doesn't have the 'technical ability' to move apps from one account to another which would solve a lot of the issues that the developer describes. Also, the developer states that they weren't told specifically which parts of the app were considered 'immoral', and they didn't exactly have plenty of time to fix the app - their app had already been unavailable to their users for a month. Up to this point, their experience with Windows is similar to Apple's, but the fact that their efforts at promoting their app were thwarted pissed them off, especially after their previous bad experiences. Because of all this, your comment gives the impression that you hadn't read the post.
Why do you find developing for BlackBerry and Apple worse?
