Impressive set of tools. Will be present a way to deploy easily the apps to share completely "off" from the marketplace or will be an all server centric experience with MS quality controls (memory leaks, policies, contents...)?
<GEEK FICTION>Now that the cards are on the table and seem that the zune (sexiest hardware ever) platform will never have a dedicated 3rd party applications marketplace why don't release in parallel with the official updates an 'hacker firmware' and all the api to access the UI Framework and the web? That would really taste like honey for new developers and would not crash any Microsoft plan...</GEEK

Totally agree (and I'm one who like to reinvent the wheel all the time: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmRSPZNEIBM ) but probably my main misunderstanding came from the use of the word 'APPS' instead of 'GAMES'. On the other side the way the generic applications and games will be developed is overlapping in a lot of fields (specifically on a mobile devices, consoles, Couriers, Surfaces...). If some choices are understandable like the decision to limit the indiscriminate internet access or the lock of any multitask activity (even if the need to reboot after every execution is a real dawner) I do not understand at all the (technical?) decision to not give at least some minimal GUI elements and gain more omogenity to the user experience (loading splashscreens, about, configs, transitions etc.). Thank you for the answer. You bet I'll keep following: the things are beginning to move faster

During my experiments on the zune I could not understand why MS cut the developer's legs not giving any interface framework: no input forms, no buttons, no keyboard, no 'canvas' + no 3d... and blocked any internet access. This and the absurdity to have the install the entire Visual Studio IDE just to tranfer the applications on the zune really demotivated any early adopter. I really don't understand where the point in pissing off developers