Had an interesting Twitter convo today about WP7 development. Question was raised on how to use a WP7 device as the deployment target from within VS.NET. Thinking that this would be an *obvious* question, I replied that you need to set the right value in one of the drop lists in the IDE…

I did this, hooked up my device, then tried to run my app, just as a final test that it was as easy as I thought it would be.

It wasn’t.

So first, your phone can’t be locked, so make sure you unlock it. Also, don’t kill the Zune software when you notice it automagically started – its needed for VS.NET to deploy to your device.

Finally, you need to register your device for development. Aiden Caine has a great article on what you need to do for this, but in a nutshell you need to launch the Windows Phone Developer Registration program found in the Windows Phone Developer Tools folder.

Now, here’s the catch to all of this:

You must have a Windows Phone AppHub account. As in paid account.

That’s right – to do development on your actual device, you need to have a $99 ($120 in Canada) AppHub developer membership. Now, I get this – if Microsoft didn’t put this restriction, then they’d be back in Mobile 6.x land where anyone could install whatever app to whoever, whenever, and without any standards being upheld. This is the same thing that Apple does with their marketplace, its not something unprecedented.

But, it is something that will be new to the majority of Microsoft developers that have lived without application restrictions for years.

Now, if you’re in the US then you have the opportunity to get a rebate on that $99 fee from Microsoft if you publish two apps successfully. You can get more details on this offer here.