Windows 8 AND Visual Studio 2012 Completion Milestones
It’s been a busy day! Both the Windows 8 team and the Visual Studio teams have reached significant milestones in their respective releases.
Per Steven Sinofsky’s blog, Windows 8 has been Released to Manufacturing (RTM), and the Windows Store is officially open for paid applications and company accounts (and with a considerable expansion in the number of markets and certification languages).
And Jason Zander just announced the final build for Visual Studio 2012, with MSDN availability on August 15th, and a online launch event on September 12th.
Here’s a quick rundown of the timeline for availability
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| August 1 (today!) | Windows Store open for business |
| August 15 | Windows 8 available to MSDN subscribers (follow Windows 8 blog for updates) |
| August 15 | Visual Studio 2012 available for download from MSDN and elsewhere (follow Jason Zander’s blog for updates) |
| September 12 | Visual Studio 2012 Launch (on-line) |
| October 26 | Windows 8 General Availability (GA) |
| October 30 – November 2 | BUILD 2012 in Redmond WA |
The early bird gets the worm (and the $)! so if you’ve been putting off developing that great Windows 8 app – don’t! Take a look at the following resources to get started, so you can be one of the first apps of your kind in the store.
Windows 8 Dev Camps (and hackathons!)
Generation App – build a Windows 8 app in 30 days
Top 10 Windows 8 Secrets of App Success (Chris Bowen’s blog)