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Microsoft introduces Universal Windows apps

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Re: Microsoft introduces Universal Windows apps

#41

Post by rbanffy »

gagaga wrote: post #33
0x006A wrote: post #30

They must live in quite a bubble if "universal" only includes Microsoft platforms.

I guess Google and Apple also live in a bubble? Not really sure what your point is. Is your expectation that Microsoft Universal apps also run on Android and Google? On Web browsers? Would you like them to use a different term?

It's just that a mobile app that runs neither on Android nor iOS (90%+ of all phones) is not exactly universal.

If all it does is run on all Microsoft platforms, from Windows Phone to XBoxOne, it's just a "Microsoft" app. If Microsoft decides to call what the Xbox runs "Windows" they'll become... Windows apps...

Re: Microsoft introduces Universal Windows apps

#43

Post by pekk »

gagaga wrote: post #33
0x006A wrote: post #30

They must live in quite a bubble if "universal" only includes Microsoft platforms.

I guess Google and Apple also live in a bubble? Not really sure what your point is. Is your expectation that Microsoft Universal apps also run on Android and Google? On Web browsers? Would you like them to use a different term?

Throwing around words like "universal" suggests a real cross-platform API, not "convergence of Windows with Windows Phone". Lots of people would like to see real cross-platform, not more vendor lockin.

Re: Microsoft introduces Universal Windows apps

#46

Post by tdicola »

svas wrote: post #27
emeraldd wrote: post #21

I'm still trying to figure out how/why this makes sense as a goal. Building an application that runs across multiple platforms in congruent spaces makes sense: iOS and Android and Windows Phone. When you move to running the same application across Laptop vs. Phone style platforms, even on modern hardware, you're looking at capabilities and resources that are radically different. I can see wanting to share certain com…

The real key here is sharing business logic. Microsoft apps are written using the MVVM (Model View, View-Model) framework. The idea here is that you would share almost all of your model code, and really only rewrite the view layer (XAML) per platform. You're also allowed to share the exact same views across platforms, but it's unlikely that will be a good experience for users, given the differences: screen sizes, inp…

How is this really different from what exists today? You can write in C# for pretty much every MS platform already. If you're smart you're already writing your business logic with as little dependencies as possible on view specific logic so it's more testable, portable, etc.

Re: Microsoft introduces Universal Windows apps

#47

Post by Zigurd »

emeraldd wrote: post #21

I'm still trying to figure out how/why this makes sense as a goal. Building an application that runs across multiple platforms in congruent spaces makes sense: iOS and Android and Windows Phone. When you move to running the same application across Laptop vs. Phone style platforms, even on modern hardware, you're looking at capabilities and resources that are radically different. I can see wanting to share certain com…

You could say the same for a 4.3 inch phone vs. a 10 inch 2.5k, and, soon, 12 inch 4k Android tablet. And if you want radically different capabilities, phones have SIMs that are assumed to be single-owner while most Android tablets are multi-user. Processors range from 800Mhz single-processor with mediocre bus performance, to quad-core 2.3 Ghz. There really isn't any interactive software you wouldn't run on a mobile device, and if you grok Fragment on Android, you can write for any device geometry from a single code-base.

The true boundary between mobile and desktop computing is numeric computation. You don't want to mine bitcoin or your stock market rocket science on a mobile device, mainly due to burning through the battery in a trice.

It never made sense for things called Windows not to have a unified pool of apps. This is a significant improvement.

Re: Microsoft introduces Universal Windows apps

#48

Post by gum_ina_package »

Aardwolf wrote: post #45
gum_ina_package wrote: post #15

The amazing thing is that you can potentially write all your code in C# and have backend/frontend logic for the web (ASP.NET), Windows, Windows Phone, and even iOS/Android (via Xamarin). Wow.

But what about Linux?

Mono! Lots of ASP.Net projects (like Nancyfx or SignalR) are actually built on Mono. I think there's some hope that web dev on Windows isn't dead.

Re: Microsoft introduces Universal Windows apps

#49

Post by NoPiece »

rkuykendall-com wrote: post #32
frozenport wrote: post #24

I'm shocked this didn't happen sooner. If you ever wanted to point to a problem with MS vision you can ask yourself why this didn't happen in 2005.

I think your underestimating the INSANE amount of vision and foresight that would be required to do this in 2005. 1. The xbox 360 was released in 2005. This was essentially the first Microsoft console to run 'apps,' and those had to be architected specifically for the console. 2. The iPhone was years away in 2005. Phones ran shitty little apps that had to be architected specifically for the phone. 3. The iPad was yea…

Good points, but it is also worth considering that in 2005, Microsoft had a much stronger position in the Smartphone/handheld market with Pocket PC/Windows Mobile. Even looking at how they named their mobile os makes you think they should have been thinking about cross platform apps. Those phones felt a lot like tiny PCs, which was also their weakness.

Re: Microsoft introduces Universal Windows apps

#50

Post by streptomycin »

rkuykendall-com wrote: post #32
frozenport wrote: post #24

I'm shocked this didn't happen sooner. If you ever wanted to point to a problem with MS vision you can ask yourself why this didn't happen in 2005.

I think your underestimating the INSANE amount of vision and foresight that would be required to do this in 2005. 1. The xbox 360 was released in 2005. This was essentially the first Microsoft console to run 'apps,' and those had to be architected specifically for the console. 2. The iPhone was years away in 2005. Phones ran shitty little apps that had to be architected specifically for the phone. 3. The iPad was yea…

The idea of a centralized "app store" was not new. People had been complaining about Windows not having Linux-like package management since the 90s.

Similarly, the idea of web apps taking over everything was not new. Microsoft was acutely aware of that, since that was Netscape's big idea (also Java was in theory the same threat - write once, run anywhere, make Windows unimportant). Again, all in the 90s. This is the most fundamental answer as to why MS didn't do this stuff before. Not because of a lack of foresight, but because their foresight was good enough to allow them to identify it as a threat to their monopoly.

Touch screen phones/tablets I agree were less obvious predictions, but even if MS did figure that out early on, it wouldn't have changed their motivation to fight back against Netscape and Java and similar technologies.

But now the tables have turned...

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