I actually wrote an application using WPF, and what's worse is it was relatively recently. The project was an audio/visual control application, and our CEO (not CTO) made the decision to use WPF because "the Mac fad was in its final days." (Never mind the obvious, platform-neutral rebuttals.)
Truth be told, though, the development process was pretty straight-forward and I don't have anything negative to say about that aspect of the project (though our application was pretty straight forward). The only downside was we deployed the application at a university, where about 90% of students and staff were running OS X and unwilling to install Silverlight on their machines, which made sense; the iPhone 4 was already out, and responsive, cross-platform access was already considered MVP by most product managers at the time.
I am writing a WPF app now, I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. The issue I see with your example is that WPF as a platform went against just about everything your user needed.
* Alienate users with a platform that's not compatible with their OS by default (OSX, Linux)
* Alienate users with a platform that's not compatible with the multiple platforms you may be targeting (Tablet, Phone, Laptop, Desktop)
* Require an extra step (e.g. Silverlight plugin) for users to run the app at all
That's why the LoB example is such a powerful testament to how WPF may stick around. You've got 'trapped' users (for better or worse) who will likely be forced on the Windows platform.
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I actually wrote an application using WPF, and what's worse is it was relatively recently. The project was an audio/visual control application, and our CEO (not CTO) made the decision to use WPF because "the Mac fad was in its final days." (Never mind the obvious, platform-neutral rebuttals.)
Truth be told, though, the development process was pretty straight-forward and I don't have anything negative to say about that aspect of the project (though our application was pretty straight forward). The only downside was we deployed the application at a university, where about 90% of students and staff were running OS X and unwilling to install Silverlight on their machines, which made sense; the iPhone 4 was already out, and responsive, cross-platform access was already considered MVP by most product managers at the time.
I am writing a WPF app now, I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. The issue I see with your example is that WPF as a platform went against just about everything your user needed.
That's why the LoB example is such a powerful testament to how WPF may stick around. You've got 'trapped' users (for better or worse) who will likely be forced on the Windows platform.