151–158 of 158 posts
So if I understand it right, this is basically running apps in a Win32-emulator/sandbox where all 'unsafe' Win32 file and registry accesses are redirected into sandboxed locations. I wonder why MS didn't go this way from the beginning instead of pushing that Frankensteinian half-desktop/half-mobile monstrosity called WinRT^H^H^H UWP on us. The UWP application model has been modelled after the (now 10 years old) iOS/A…
"Win32 is a pretty bad desktop API" What's a better desktop API, and why?
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Neither do I. The question then becomes "should they exist?".
It might not be a good fit for Office. But it seems fine for some applications.
Bashing UWP for advocating a different app model, and different UI design principles is like still using bash in 2016 because you are accustomed to ash from the 70s, and GUIs cannot go to start of line with Ctrl-A, thus saying they are inferior. Change has its positive sides and drawbacks, but in both cases it is mostly for the better.
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It might not be a good fit for Office. But it seems fine for some applications.
It's totally OK for Office, just because you are accustomed to something. You can try the office mobile product line on windows 10 (available from the store), which is UWP, and pretty usable for its limited feature set, and the lack of "do you do u really really really want to quit?" modal popups. Bashing UWP for advocating a different app model, and different UI design principles is like still using bash in 2016 bec…
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An average user is a myth. Every kind of average user has its own traits and they differ widely. That's why there is such thing as system settings. And yes, most desktop users are conscious when they work with files. Windows by default suggests "My Documents" folder as a target destination which is a pretty sane safe choice for all traits of average Joes.
That not the issue though. Programs that plaster your registry full of crap or replace or change os files etc
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It might not be a good fit for Office. But it seems fine for some applications.
It's totally OK for Office, just because you are accustomed to something. You can try the office mobile product line on windows 10 (available from the store), which is UWP, and pretty usable for its limited feature set, and the lack of "do you do u really really really want to quit?" modal popups. Bashing UWP for advocating a different app model, and different UI design principles is like still using bash in 2016 bec…
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That's kind of a narrow view. There's nothing preventing you from continuing to sell your software directly, and just about any other retailer/publisher will take a similar share of your revenue. The upshot is that by putting your software in the Windows store, there is a chance that you will gain new users that would have never found your product otherwise. It also removes some of your overhead considering that Micr…
Hosting an installer is trivial, basically free, and likely less effort than dealing with the MS store. Their search is terrible (I work in search) and their reach is poor - people have been trained not to trust the store and most ignore it completely. The biggest benefit would have to be copy protection. Copy protection is hard to do because MS has made it hard intentionally for both technical and privacy reasons. A…
Personally for me as a developer, I think one of the biggest benefits to app stores is payment handling and updates.
The latter in particular is such a pain to get right traditionally on Windows in particular. You can either ping your server and nag the user to download an installer at startup or run a background process that periodically checks and installs updates silently. Neither is ideal.
As a user I also prefer the Windows store to the status quo because I can cleanly uninstall store apps. Traditional uninstallers almost always leave vomit all over my computer that doesn't completely wash away until I inevitably reinstall Windows.
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Steam is a terrible security example because Steam just gives Everyone Read/Write/Execute access to its folder(s) on Windows. The Steam solution to permissions on Windows has always been to basically just give up and not bother.
Has it ever been a problem in practice? I'm not aware of it ever being one. Worst case scenario some malicious software destroys a game install and some saves, unpleasant but not the end of the world. It comes with some great benefits though, like easy modding. Imagine if my text editor couldn't access my games folder?
Not that I want to give malware devs any ideas, but I would be surprised if the above never crosses their minds. I suspect the main reason that it hasn't happened to date is that most malware devs are likely gamers and don't want to defecate where they eat.
As for the "great benefits", as much as I like modding, I like my system security a little bit better. There are definitely ways to do modding both securely and easily (and reproducibly) using things kind of like Docker containers and patch overlays, and I'd love it if, say, Valve invested some time into that as a secure platform service. For some of the games it supports Steam Workshop gets sort of, partly there, some of the time...
(But ultimately, I think game developers mostly don't care about security and Steam especially isn't very well incentivized to move out of the dark ages anytime soon. Bringing things back around, I'm hopeful that with the UWP platform exploring things like modding as a service we'll at least see that sort of innovation from Microsoft and the UWP converge towards the best of all worlds, eventually, hopefully...)
[1] Steam has a baroque assortment of DRM and anti-cheat mechanisms, obviously, but only while it is running and even then most of them are passive when a game isn't running. Steam absolutely has no idea what would be legitimate modding to game EXEs (as many mods do that) and what would be trojan-ing. Most people leave Steam running just about all the time, which locks down some of Steam itself, but not everyone does and all it takes is finding one good crash vector for Steam...
[2] Steam also seems to be several anti-practices here because as far as I can tell Steam doesn't ever bother to check if VC Redistributables or DirectX are already up to date on the system, it just spams the installers regardless...