Microsoft details its Windows 8 team, confirms App Store plans

By Tom Warren, on 17th Aug 11 9:26 pm with 31 Comments

Steven Sinofsky at CES 2011

Microsoft detailed its Windows 8 team in a new post to the building Windows 8 blog on Wednesday.

Steven Sinofsky, President of the Windows Division at Microsoft, penned a new blog entitled “Introducing the team” to detail the team structure. “Windows is a fairly broad project made up of a set of coordinated smaller projects,” said Sinofsky. “When we started building Windows 8 we had a clear sense of the direction we were heading and so we built a team structure to support that direction.” Sinofsky goes on to detail how Windows team members work as a team and independently to complete the various bits of the Windows operating system. Microsoft has several engineering roles that implement the work to be done on Windows as developers create code for the operating system. The Windows work is organised into “feature teams” who own a number of features across Windows. “We have about 35 feature teams in the Windows 8 organization,” says Sinofsky. “Each feature team has anywhere from 25-40 developers, plus test and program management, all working together.”

Sinofsky goes on to detail the various groups who contribute to Windows 8:

App Compatibility and Device Compatibility
App Store
Applications and Media Experience
App Experience
Core Experience Evolved
Device Connectivity
Devices & Networking Experience
Ecosystem Fundamentals
Engineer Desktop
Engineering System
Enterprise Networking
Global Experience
Graphics Platform
Hardware Developer Experience
Human Interaction Platform
Hyper-V
In Control of Your PC
Kernel Platform
Licensing and Deployment
Media Platform
Networking Core
Performance
Presentation and Composition
Reliability, Security, and Privacy
Runtime Experience
Search, View, and Command
Security & Identity
Storage & Files Systems
Sustained Engineering
Telemetry
User-Centered Experience
Windows Online
Windows Update
Wireless and Networking services
XAML

The glaring admission is “App Store” in the list of teams. Microsoft has not previously confirmed the existence of a Windows App Store for Windows 8, despite revealing a “marketplace” in its official Windows 8 demos. Sinofsky’s revelation confirms a vital feature for Microsoft’s next operating system and one that developers will be keen to learn more about. Microsoft is understood to be creating the ability to sync Windows settings into the cloud. The software giant will allow desktop wallpapers, language profiles, applications settings and more to sync to the cloud. Microsoft’s App Store will also fit into the company’s “Online ID” to roam across multiple machines. Microsoft is currently building cloud settings sync integration into the next generation of Windows. Details of a control panel item for “Roaming Options” were discovered under User Accounts in a leak of a pre-release copy of Windows 8. Further evidence of Microsoft’s Online ID integration surfaced in the form of an out-of-box-experience (OOBE) dialog screen too. The screen details the Windows account options setup screen that allows Windows 8 users to link their Online ID to the computer or simply create a local account.

Sinofsky rounds off his post on the Windows 8 team thanking visitors for comments and hinting at more to come. “They are helping us get ideas for posts and shape the dialog,” he adds.

Thanks to WinRumors reader Joel Leigh for the news tip

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_KTAHVKS2RNDWTQPHQEJALLRNEQ Adam Paris

If my calculations are right MS has between 875 and 1400 persons working on Windows 8. Thats a lot!

Guest

Not counting management. That’s probably another 875-1400 knowing MS
Tom

And that’s exactly the problem with Microsoft.

1000 people is actually rather small for a project the size of Windows. Consider that Microsoft has almost 90,000 employees. Even when you add on the support staff, Windows is not that big in terms of manpower.
http://www.winrumors.com Tom W

Yup, around 1,000 people worked on Windows 7
http://www.searingarrow.com AlienSix

Hey, Windows 7 was my idea
Guest

I’m going Window Shopping in the Windows Store.

Test1ngi23

Will the Win8 app store support non-AppX apps?

Anonymous

yes of course the .exe
Matthewmsft

yeah…the whole AppX thing is kinda confusing to me…i think i should be fine deving in C#, because they can recompile the .NET framework for ARM

Guest

If the Marketplace will finally become the main software distribution channel including for Office, lets hope that this time Microsoft would seriously expand the marketplace to include their “less important” countries.

Or at least keep the old distribution channel like used in Windows since the beginning.

Anonymous

I’m guessing we’ll see the Windows Marketplace open in the same places as Windows Phone Marketplace has access when they start since they already have all they need to get moving there.

Anonymous

RIP Windows Media Center — The Best DVR eVeR

http://www.facebook.com/ParkerReno Parker Ciambrone

I am pretty sure Media Center’s features will be baked into Media Player, they wouldn’t just kill it off like that.
Guest

Media Platform
Anonymous

I really hope they get rid of Windows Media Center, Windows Media Player, and Zune. They need to replace them all with a single “XBox Media Hub” thing with a nice Metro UI.
Anonymous

I don’t care what it is called, as long as the features are there: 1. DVR, 2. Remote control.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Pedro-Roque/100000194503830 Pedro Roque

As a WPF / Silverlight and WP7 developer, I find it very interesting that the XAML team is in the Windows team. Makes me hopefull we will see a native implementation of XAML. Going native should give it a perfomance boost.

Anonymous

I agree. All of the XAML concepts like styles, templates, etc, etc are lightyears ahead of any other platform. The only negative, from my experience, has been less-than-optimal performance. I am very excited to see XAML integrated into Windows. Hopefully, you can still use C#/.Net with it though.
John

How many times do we need to say:
.Net staying, Ahead of time compilation, new APIs (first class citizen, pInvoke not needed anymore)
C++ staying, new APIs.

Windows Phone will get C++ w/ Apollo I think, it will whenever the kernel is replaced by NT. The userland is fine, might have a little C#.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Pedro-Roque/100000194503830 Pedro Roque

The problem with C++, or any other compiler that produces native binaries, arrises when you try to target multi platforms. Are we gonna compile our programs multiple times to target x86, x64, ARM and whatever the future may bring?
http://www.facebook.com/people/Pedro-Roque/100000194503830 Pedro Roque

The problem with C++, or any other compiler that produces native binaries, arrises when you try to target multi platforms. Are we gonna compile our programs multiple times to target x86, x64, ARM and whatever the future may bring?
http://twitter.com/furdworetzky Fur Dworetzky

I personally find it unlikely we are ever going to have anything other than managed code on Windows Phone, especially considering Microsoft’s recent multi-architecture push.

Tourettes9

I have to poop
http://www.appatic.com Avatar X

Hyper-V team working the Windows 8 team confirms a even more advaced Legacy Mode for W8. But not really anything some have not known for months…
http://www.appatic.com Avatar X

Hyper-V team working the Windows 8 team confirms a even more advaced Legacy Mode for W8. But not really anything some have not known for months…
Guest

Note that Sinofsky also seemed to make mention to the “Browser Runtime”. Feeling more confident that HTML5 + CSS3 is just one of the ways of programming for Windows 8. Also note that somebody analysed some .appx packages I think and they contained code written in C++.
Anonymous

Here’s the problem I have with the “App Store”: THE MARKETPLACE. I like the Marketplace with WP7. It works, it’s developing nicely, and it SHOULD be the single place to get everything for all Windows platforms. I think it’s a HUGE mistake for a separate app store for the desktop. HUGE mistake. Microsoft needs to push HARD for the unified meme.

Anonymous

It’s not a mistake at all, the Xbox, the desktop/tablet and the phone are three different user experiences, different screen size/ratio and different controll mode, so it has to have different stores, but they shoul all be called marketplace.

Windows Marketplace
Xbox Marketplace
Windows Phone Marketplace.

faiz

I do not want a marketplace for a full computer. To me, app stores only make sense for mobile systems, where the experience needs to meet a certain standard and have consistency. If there is a marketplace, it should be for Microsoft programs only; office, windows live suite, internet explorer, visual studio, etc. Having an app store for a full on computer could never come close to encompassing the software that is available. It would only be a marketing tool.
Anonymous

MS’s main priority as far as there app store should be making it very similar to the way installing, installing and updating apps are handled on WP Mango.
wontbefooledagain

China ~ The Largest Emerging Economy WW? Lenovo primary OS is? Apple Surpasses Sales of its on PC Maker. At risk of MS bashing [which I'm not], lets look at the reality the giant is facing. Once you’ve reached the top, there is only down to go. http://www.electronista.com/articles/11/08/18/apple.makes.symbolic.push.past.lenovo.in.home.turf/
Demand more from Microsoft. Customers make noise. “Get organized.” There is too much at stake. Gee Sinofsky, that is some mindblowing detail. Never woulda guessed. Thanks for the teaser. Wooohoo!