How Windows Everywhere finally happened • Hacker News Board

Re: How Windows Everywhere finally happened

#21

Post by ebbv » Mon, May 23, 2016, 3:12 AM UTC

> Microsoft promised developers that Windows would run anywhere. This summer, it finally will.

Bullshit. Versions of Windows that are all labeled Windows 10 are running in a lot of devices, and you can write applications that in theory can run on all of them (though practically writing one application that runs well on all of them may be somewhat harder if you want your application to be useful in any way.)

But that is NOT the same as "Windwos runs everywhere." in a number of ways.

The first and most obvious way is that you can't just take your existing Windows application and put it everywhere, which is what that phrase seems to imply. Nor can you buy one of these devices and immediately have access to all the library of millions of Windows applications that exist. No, if you're a developer you have to write a new universal app and embrace the Windows 10 App Store whether you want to or not.

And if you're buying a device, you better check twice that the software you want is available for the platform you're buying lest you find out too late your device has special requirements.

Secondly, we've had a version of Windows running on lots of devices for a long time. The only thing that's different now is the branding. They're finally all branded "Windows 10" even though in many cases (like Phone and X-Box One) the user and developer experiences are totally different. Is that helpful? I don't really think so.

This article might as well have been written by Microsoft's PR department. Totally not grounded in reality at all.

Re: How Windows Everywhere finally happened

#22

Post by statictype » Mon, May 23, 2016, 3:15 AM UTC

Maarten88 wrote: post #9

Operation successful, patient dead... It's kind of tragic that much of this effort may never pay off: in the process of merging platforms and restructuring API's (that started with Vista and is still going) Microsoft lost the connection to many of its developers, who went to build Web, iOS and Android apps. WPF, Silverlight, WinRT, XAML, UWP: there were too many changes, rewrites and deprecations. Windows Phone, bril…

I think developers prefer a crappy but stable technologies with a proven market over uncertain and fast-moving technologies.

Businesses - yes.

Developers - my experience says no (myself included).

Re: How Windows Everywhere finally happened

#23

Post by Animats » Mon, May 23, 2016, 3:32 AM UTC

All platforms now have enough hardware to run a bloated OS. Even the dinky machines. Thus, we now have Windows and Linux everywhere, endlessly being patched because some feature completely irrelevant to the application has a problem.

Re: How Windows Everywhere finally happened

#24

Post by feelin_googley » Mon, May 23, 2016, 3:49 AM UTC

Maarten88 wrote: post #9

Operation successful, patient dead... It's kind of tragic that much of this effort may never pay off: in the process of merging platforms and restructuring API's (that started with Vista and is still going) Microsoft lost the connection to many of its developers, who went to build Web, iOS and Android apps. WPF, Silverlight, WinRT, XAML, UWP: there were too many changes, rewrites and deprecations. Windows Phone, bril…

http://www.computerworld.com/article/3070460/windows-pcs/mic...

Re: How Windows Everywhere finally happened

#25

Post by blackoil » Mon, May 23, 2016, 4:09 AM UTC

ebbv wrote: post #21

> Microsoft promised developers that Windows would run anywhere. This summer, it finally will. Bullshit. Versions of Windows that are all labeled Windows 10 are running in a lot of devices, and you can write applications that in theory can run on all of them (though practically writing one application that runs well on all of them may be somewhat harder if you want your application to be useful in any way.) But that…

Your comment has some merit, if we ignore the fact that now same kernel is running across devices, with same subsystems and same applications, with possibility to write one application that works on all. While it is difficult to write UI to scale across screen size and input types, it is possible to build responsive UIs and people are doing so.

Re: How Windows Everywhere finally happened

#26

Post by userbinator » Mon, May 23, 2016, 4:34 AM UTC

feelin_googley wrote: post #24

Maarten88 wrote: post #9

Operation successful, patient dead... It's kind of tragic that much of this effort may never pay off: in the process of merging platforms and restructuring API's (that started with Vista and is still going) Microsoft lost the connection to many of its developers, who went to build Web, iOS and Android apps. WPF, Silverlight, WinRT, XAML, UWP: there were too many changes, rewrites and deprecations. Windows Phone, bril…

http://www.computerworld.com/article/3070460/windows-pcs/mic...

the upgrade and its scheduled implementation is approved when the user either clicks the "OK" button or the "X" in the upper right corner of the notification

This reminds me the many stories about those shady popups that show a fake dialog box where clicking on the 'X' in an attempt to close it actually does something very, very unintended, perhaps even downloading and running some sort of malware. MS is getting pretty desperate.

Re: How Windows Everywhere finally happened

#27

Post by dingo_bat » Mon, May 23, 2016, 4:45 AM UTC

I don't like the Universal apps or whatever they're calling them this month. They are limited, slow, crashy and buggy. They regularly just disappear after a sleep and wake. I have been left questioning my sanity wondering if I closed Messenger.

Also, they are clunky and slow. For example, switch to a desktop with a universal app open and for the duration of the desktop slide animation, the app window will be completely blank. And then suddenly all the content will flash into sight after the slide ends.

The start menu itself is slow and will miss your first few keystrokes if you try to start a search too quickly. The notification bar is sometimes laggy to open, and so are the universal style notifications.

Sharing across universal apps sometimes works, other times it just opens the target app and sits there. I dunno if this is an app problem or universal platform problem.

I wonder if improving Windows Forms would have been a better strategy. Instead now Forms is seen by many as a dead platform, and UWP is so limited/slow that nobody is developing for it. When soundcloud is smoother/less buggy running on Chrome than as a standalone UWP app, what is even the point of having a software ecosystem, apart from a web browser?

Re: How Windows Everywhere finally happened

#28

Post by nhebb » Mon, May 23, 2016, 4:46 AM UTC

userbinator wrote: post #17

Maarten88 wrote: post #9

Operation successful, patient dead... It's kind of tragic that much of this effort may never pay off: in the process of merging platforms and restructuring API's (that started with Vista and is still going) Microsoft lost the connection to many of its developers, who went to build Web, iOS and Android apps. WPF, Silverlight, WinRT, XAML, UWP: there were too many changes, rewrites and deprecations. Windows Phone, bril…

As a long-time Win32 programmer (over a decade), I can safely say that the vast majority of existing applications still remain (for the time being) forward-compatible. Here's some examples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOj-bAZBhnE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRfn4M5DXTE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqFWuNmWbHk The reasons people hold off on "upgrading" Windows versions is not mainly because of compatibility…

The deprecation of SHA-1 is an issue, though. Timestamps after January 1, 2016 must be SHA-256, and SHA-1 signed files will be blocked after January 1, 2017. However, Microsoft has blogged that they may block them starting this June. Pre-Win7 systems don't recognize SHA-256, so you have to dual sign the files if you want backward compatibility. Except, MSI files can't be dual signed. I'm also finding that more Win7 users than I would expect don't have the proper updates, so their systems don't recognize SHA-256.

In short, it's a mess.

Re: How Windows Everywhere finally happened

#29

Post by bigger_cheese » Mon, May 23, 2016, 4:49 AM UTC

blackoil wrote: post #25

ebbv wrote: post #21

> Microsoft promised developers that Windows would run anywhere. This summer, it finally will. Bullshit. Versions of Windows that are all labeled Windows 10 are running in a lot of devices, and you can write applications that in theory can run on all of them (though practically writing one application that runs well on all of them may be somewhat harder if you want your application to be useful in any way.) But that…

Your comment has some merit, if we ignore the fact that now same kernel is running across devices, with same subsystems and same applications, with possibility to write one application that works on all. While it is difficult to write UI to scale across screen size and input types, it is possible to build responsive UIs and people are doing so.

>"with possibility to write one application that works on all"

I'm not sure this is such a good thing. Maybe I'm in the minority but my phone and my desktop OS have vastly different use cases and I'd expect apps running on each of them to be different.

I'm not interested in a converging UI. I want a user experience tailored to the platform I'm running the app on.

I'd rather a solid desktop experience then having to put up with trade off's the developers decided to make because they wanted a "one size fits all experience".

I've seen it in the Linux world where toolkits/desktop environments tried to chase the idea of converging UI's and we ended up with the worst of both worlds - miserable to use apps on a phone/tablet and miserable Desktop Apps.

Re: How Windows Everywhere finally happened

#30

Post by Const-me » Mon, May 23, 2016, 4:54 AM UTC

wornohaulus wrote: post #4

pjmlp wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For long time Windows developers like myself, the underlying model of WinRT is what the original .NET was supposed to be. It was called Ext-OS and based on an improved COM API, called COM+ Runtime. https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/dsyme/2012/07/05/more-c-net... So with C++/CX and .NET Native built on top of WinRT, Microsoft has gone full circle back to the original idea. Personally I enjoy developing UWP (started rig…

Any github Project or existing application developers.. who have successfully ported their libraries to UWP.. that you can point me to ? That would be damn awesome.. :)

I recently did.

https://github.com/Const-me/EsentSerialize