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Microsoft Confirms UWP Is Not the Future of Windows Apps

thurrott.com

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Re: Microsoft Confirms UWP Is Not the Future of Windows Apps

#51

Post by crispinb »

Paraesthetic wrote: post #40
tasdev wrote: post #31

The comments on this post really make me wonder how many people have actually written a UWP app or tried using the API? I have experience across a heap of stacks... Cocoa, Cocoa Touch, Android, Win32/WinForms/WPF, Web, Xamarin Forms etc... I love UWP. It was pretty ordinary in the first few releases but it has matured well, has great documentation and the UI framework is developed in the open on GitHub. I am by no me…

I concur, It has been a very easy and fast platform for me, and it seems like not a lot of developers have caught on to the fact that UWP is great for the end consumer, its snappy and can be updated without having to load the application or an update application first. But hey, developers don't like it so I guess thats forced Microsoft's hand.

> UWP is great for the end consumer

It it? I've never developed windows GUI apps, so can't comment on a technical level. But from a consumer perspective all the UWP apps I've tried, including those shipped by Microsoft with Windows 10, are awful. I think Windows 10 Mail could be the worst GUI application ever written. I used Windows 10 for most of the last year, and it got to the point where the Windows Store became my primary filter for apps - ie. if an app was available there, I'd cross it off my list of candidates.

Re: Microsoft Confirms UWP Is Not the Future of Windows Apps

#52

Post by clinta »

maxxxxx wrote: post #33
chrisseaton wrote: post #19

What is the current recommended API if you want to build a big new desktop GUI application for Windows today? Something demanding like a CAD application, perhaps. Something you'd have built using MFC or pure Window API in the past.

I would probably do qt or WPF. For CAD probably a large part in Directx or Win32. But in general the picture for windows desktop apps is very murky. There is no option that really stands out. If I had to do a windows app I would seriously consider electron. Which is very sad...

Electron seems to me to be the ideal path for the future. It has some major issues today. But I expect it will get a lot better. Consider the following: Microsoft owns Github and electron. One of the best electron apps is VSCode, a Microsoft creation. Microsoft is replacing the edge engine with chromium.

I expect that in a few years electron will be a very good experience on Windows.

Re: Microsoft Confirms UWP Is Not the Future of Windows Apps

#53

Post by flukus »

userbinator wrote: post #43

As a long-time Win32 (and Win16) developer, I am very pleased. Win32 is basically "Microsoft's POSIX" --- it might not have all the new-fangled trendy object-oriented best-practices fluff of the newer APIs, but being a simple C API means that it's not tied to any newer and "faster-moving" (i.e. faster-deprecating) technologies and also makes it more portable. Some of you may remember Windows CE, which is basically a…

> Win32 is the past, the present, and the future.

The problem is there hasn't really been a present for anyone starting new desktop projects, at least with common corporate restrictions. Can't build on win32 because that's not the future, can't build on WPF because that's not the future, can't build on UWP because that doesn't work on windows 7, can't build on qt because we're an MS shop and don't acknowledge the existence of third parties. For several years it's just been "fuck it, we'll make a web app".

> A lot of developers these days are used to even simple apps taking over 1MB of disk, and when shown a native Win32 one will be astonished at how small and fast it is;

This is the most promising part of the librem phone for me, a couple dozen lines of C and you have a an app. On android you can't even get to hello world without downloading a bloated IDE, a huge SDK and a dozen xml files, they don't even provide instructions on how to build outside of an IDE.

Re: Microsoft Confirms UWP Is Not the Future of Windows Apps

#56

Post by naikrovek »

rayiner wrote: post #44

What the hell is wrong with Microsoft? Everyone is excited about WSL, but Microsoft is failing miserably at their core competencies. They killed off Win32 OneNote to create UWP OneNote (which offers a fraction of the features), and then kills UWP? Every new Microsoft app somehow does less than the version you were using when Win2k came out.

UWP isn't being killed; the UWP API is merging with other framework APIs into a single platform API for Windows.

UWP as an API is very good. UWP as a user interface wasn't well received.

There was a talk at the recent Build conference about it, which is now available on YouTube if you want to find it and judge for yourself.

Re: Microsoft Confirms UWP Is Not the Future of Windows Apps

#57

Post by naikrovek »

maxxxxx wrote: post #35
FigBug wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The API is very stable. Any Win32 app from the last 24 years will still run. 16 bit apps will still run on the 32 bit version of Windows. They promote the cool new thing every so often, but all the old stuff still works and eventually gets the access to the new features.

Win32 is super stable. The .NET Ui toolkits churn every 3 years or so without much improvement. Very frustrating.

I haven't seen much (if any) churn in Windows Forms or WPF toolkits in about a decade. Are you sure about that 3 year thing?

Re: Microsoft Confirms UWP Is Not the Future of Windows Apps

#58

Post by contextfree »

Tempest1981 wrote: post #55

Where is some good starter docs on all of the different ways to write a Windows UI app? I can't keep track of WPF, UWP, WinForms, WinUI?, winRT, .NET Core, .NET Foundation, .NET Standard

Microsoft's own docs site has a pretty good official guide to this, though I'd quibble with a few things (e.g., WinRT/UWP isn't really a "managed runtime" in the same sense as .net): https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/desktop/choose-your...

WinUI is the UI stack from UWP, which is being split into its own open source package and made available for use by Win32 apps as well.

Re: Microsoft Confirms UWP Is Not the Future of Windows Apps

#59

Post by GraniteStHacker »

This is not what Microsoft said at all.

What Microsoft actually said was Win32 and .Net are not dead. Where previously, they communicated end-of-life timeliness for Win32 and .NET, they are now communicating a future of feature parity with UWP for each of the three platforms.

Thurrott is twisting it into a click-bait headline. A more appropriate headline in my humble opinion would be "Microsoft confirms UWP is no longer the ONLY future of Windows apps."

Re: Microsoft Confirms UWP Is Not the Future of Windows Apps

#60

Post by MR4D »

The future of windows is JavaScript. And no, I’m not kidding.

Anyone who has used Office 365 in their browser can see that for many desktop things, you no longer need a framework. For everything else, it’s probably a custom library on top of DirectX anyway.

And I’m not saying I agree with this, but MSFT opened that door and others will follow whether they want them to or not.

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