A survey has found an overwhelming majority of developers writing applications for Windows are ignoring Vista in favour of XP or older versions of the Microsoft operating system.
The survey, released by US research firm Evans Data Corp, found only eight percent of the 390 developers who responded are currently writing applications for Vista, while over half have continued to target XP.
Vista may yet make strides against XP in the coming year, with 24 percent expressing their intentions to target the OS in 2009, and 29 percent expecting to continue with XP.
"We've seen a very big 'wait and see' approach with Vista, and with all the mistakes Microsoft has made in regards to it things aren't looking too good at the moment," said Joe Sweeney, advisor at analyst group IBRS.
Sweeney told ZDNet.com.au that other recent figures have shown only around 25 percent of businesses globally have plans to even trial Vista.
"The new operating system has had more than its share of problems and the desire to move from XP on the Windows platform is still lagging — that coupled with interest in alternative operating systems is suppressing development activity and that in turn will further erode Vista's acceptance," John Andrews, president and chief executive of Evans Data, said in a statement.
IBRS's Sweeney claimed one of the major problems developers have had to overcome when working to build applications for Vista is its new security model — otherwise known as user account control (UAC).
"UAC may go down as a massive step forward in security some day, but most developers consider it a nightmare at the moment," he said. "To get any application running seamlessly on Vista a developer has to have a solid understanding of UAC," he said.
However, Sweeney said the survey may not bode as ill for Vista as it might first appear.
"Developers don't really target an operating system per se," he said. "They'll start with a version of .Net architecture or some other platform and then work over to the operating system... so by the time you get to Vista things can be two or three steps removed from the developer's initial layout," he said.
Talkback
I'm not a Windows programmer, so I am genuinely curious: why is UAC proving to be such a nightmare? Other operating systems have security models, so what is so different about Vista's?
These days it seems all news concerning Vista is bad news, even Microsoft seem to be giving up with the uncharactaristic announcement of Windows 7, personally, having used it for over 6 months i'd say its not that different from XP but at the same time I haven't had any problems with it (maybe that's because it came with a brand new laptop).
As for developers, it'd be a mistake to ignore Vista given that most new machine run on it whether customers like or not.
From what I have read about the UAC, it is an extremely complex application, and requires many more lines of code for it to do its job effectively. It came on my laptop and I replaced it with PCLinuxOS after 2 days because it pops up asking "are you the one who initiated this action?", for things I would consider redundant, and unnecessary.
I think they could have made it much simpler by asking for a root password when administer rights are required. Now M$ is blaming users for infections when they created this mess themselves.
Sure they start with Vista but how long is that going to stay installed... Me thinks not very long!! Reaching for XP install disc...
Vista is for losers... I will wait till Windows 7 when M$ will have learnt from this monumental ****up...
Bob
I purchased a Vista laptop computer some 10 months ago. I experienced lots of problems and irritations which were not resolved by carrying out several time consuming recoveries. So I installed XP and have no desire to try and revert to Vista on that computer.
However, I have just set up a friend's newly purchased Vista laptop, slightly lower specification than mine, and found that it runs so much better than mine did. I conclude that the hardware design and drivers are now catching up with the requirements of Vista.
So I conclude that Vista did come to market before the hardware could properly support it and that this is a major factor in such universal complaint about Vista.
On the subject of the supposed green credentials of Vista, I find this a ludicrous suggestion when adoption of Vista requires so much otherwise unecessary expense and investment in new hardware, hardware which also requires more power to perform.