My company was pissed off with these new Microsoft policies. One of our bigger customers, Trend Micro, uses our components in their Titanum Security Solution (million users audience). They found an issue in the Windows 8.1 (build 9477) but we don't have access to it as MSDN subscribers! only to the "official preview" (build 9431). We saw new changes in the UIRibbon.dll that triggered the bug in our software.
Your best bet is to keep developing for Windows 7 until Microsoft fixes the issues with 8.1, and it seems to be good advice. Always try to stay one version behind with Microsoft products and then only upgrade to a new Microsoft product after you know most major bugs are fixed. If not, you could be stuck with a lot of support issues and Microsoft bugs your customers complain about but you cannot fix as they are part of the operating system.
If you can make 8.1 apps, all the better for you, you should get a head start over others. But be aware that since 8.1 comes out in October a lot of your clients and customers might still be using the preview version and not have full access to your RTM version.
Difficult to do that if you have the MSDN access and they don't. It would be piracy to give them access to your MSDN Windows 8.1 RTM when they only have the 8.1 Preview the public gets. Yet still they would have to wait until October to download the 8.1 update. I remember having issues with other Microsoft products like this going way back when since before the 21st century. Microsoft never learned from this and it puts software makers in a big jam before the RTM becomes public.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 28.8 ms ] threadGermany has banned Windows 8 and I assume that applies to 8.1 as well: http://greatdox.com/wordpress1/2013/08/28/germany-bans-windo...
The future of Microsoft is sketchy now that Ballmer is retiring and Microsoft made many mistakes: http://greatdox.com/wordpress1/2013/08/28/steve-ballmer-to-l...
Your best bet is to keep developing for Windows 7 until Microsoft fixes the issues with 8.1, and it seems to be good advice. Always try to stay one version behind with Microsoft products and then only upgrade to a new Microsoft product after you know most major bugs are fixed. If not, you could be stuck with a lot of support issues and Microsoft bugs your customers complain about but you cannot fix as they are part of the operating system.
If you can make 8.1 apps, all the better for you, you should get a head start over others. But be aware that since 8.1 comes out in October a lot of your clients and customers might still be using the preview version and not have full access to your RTM version.
We are MSDN subscribers... I updated this fact in my comment.
Also, these top customers needs to be updated because they have million of customers that use our components.
The central point of my rant is that Microsoft is harming their own customers.