WP7 Development: Oh the humanity!

After lots of research, bought a new HTC Radar Windows Phone 7 (WP7) phone.

I wanted to port some of my iPhone apps to this new platform, mostly because I am sick of Apple's dev tools. I've always liked .NET, and thought this was my big chance.

But, oh, the WP7 tool chain is a giant pain in the butt -- basically can't get the toolchain to work for me.

1. On my main dev machine, the Visual Studio 2010 refuses to create WP7 projects. See: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8903229/error-creating-silverlight-4-0-project-for-windows-phone

2. So, I installed everything (again) on a VM (which isn't as fun to develop on). After installing ZUNE and a bunch of other crap. Can finally compile. But emulator doesn't work on VM (I get a warning about the video card, ugh).

3. No bother, I will just deploy right to my new phone: No emulator needed. Well, to do that, it turns out you need to "developer unlock" your phone. Two ways to do that.

    a. Join "App Hub" for $99/yr. No problem, but the dang site won't take my credit card. Lots of people have this problem, but Microsoft has no fix. Truly lame: http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/78616/480263.aspx

    b. Use this tool called ChevronWp7 to unlock the phone for development. This is supposed to cost $9, but Microsoft seems to have stopped them from selling any more. https://labs.chevronwp7.com

Maybe I will stick with Apple.