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Microsoft knows Windows is obsolete. a sneak peek at its replacement

zdnet.com

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Re: Microsoft knows Windows is obsolete. a sneak peek at its replacement

#41

Post by futurix »

flohofwoe wrote: post #15

The article paints UWP as a modern programming environment, superior to Win32, that only 'lazy developers' would reject, when in reality it is a confusing mess of desktop and outdated mobile paradigms from 10 years ago when mobile devices had dramatically less RAM and were much less powerful then 'real computers'. UWP is in many ways worse than Win32, it requires much more boilerplate code to get stuff done, and requ…

That's like your opinion, dude...

The main thing limiting C++ code in UWP is sandbox, not the compiler. C++/CX is a glue language between proper C++ and the rest of the OS - you can freely mix it with proper C++ (11, 14, etc) within the same binary. I successfully compiled many open source cross-platform libraries for UWP without any serious issues.

As for complexity and generally APIs, UWP is way better than old Windows APIs. It is fairly consistent, predictable, and modern. I'm guessing you are really used to the old ways, but I don't really understand how can one prefer WndProc / manual message handling or message maps to clean approach of XAML; or think it was better.

Re: Microsoft knows Windows is obsolete. a sneak peek at its replacement

#42

Post by ropman76 »

As a lazy windows dev, I have seen more things go to web applications than desktop apps. One of my current work projects would be great as a desktop app. The client/ server divide in this website has added no small amount of hours keeping track of object state between the client and server. A desktop app would have made things much simpler in that regard. I am a big fan of desktop apps and have made a career developing them in .Net, but adding more hoops to jump through is not the answer in this regard.

Re: Microsoft knows Windows is obsolete. a sneak peek at its replacement

#43

Post by digi_owl »

oceanswave wrote: post #5

There are a lot of issues with this article - Windows S is no more a 'new' OS than an environment running AppLocker is a new OS. The $49 'upgrade' from WinS to a 'full' Windows 10 is simply removing the restriction, it's the same OS through and through UWP doesn't explicitly require XAML as part of the stack directx and win2d provide more direct access to graphics hardware Edge is not a Native UWP application - whate…

> it's possible to take existing applications and package them to run as a UWP applications, even ones that use COM and Win32.

I was under the impression that this was strictly verboten.

Because if this was the case, then why did Mozilla drop its efforts to UWP-ify Firefox?

Re: Microsoft knows Windows is obsolete. a sneak peek at its replacement

#44

Post by everyone »

walshemj wrote: post #29
SA500 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Precisely. And the fact Bing is the only search engine allowed (on spurious safety grounds) and Chrome is barred tells you everything. This is destined to fail right? The main advantage of, say, a Chromebook is that it boots instantly and handles multiple users with no IT oversight

Did not MS get dinged for promoting IE , banning competitors completely is even worse

Yeah back in the final days of anti-trust actually existing. Monopolies are fine now, big corps do whatever they want.

Re: Microsoft knows Windows is obsolete. a sneak peek at its replacement

#45

Post by forgottenpass »

and Microsoft knows that it is necessary for the company's software business and for the PC industry to evolve and stay healthy.

This the boring buisness-thinking take that misses the forest for the quarterly earnings report. Operating systems are largely... done-ish. We've entered a period of refinement and iteration that can't keep pace with the expectation to have something new to sell. I dissagree with the author that pushing forward full-steam is going to keep the industry "healthy."

Windows XP SP 2 is the last OS that I wanted to upgrade to. The rest has just been a drag along as enhancements are held back to be bundled with the breaking changes that do justify a revision bump, and a fresh coat of paint is used to sell the whole thing. OS X is similar, but less egregious.

We're in a period of kicking the can down the road. The UI keeps lurching randomly in fashionable directions but makes interaction inconsistent, obtuse or lackluster. Feature sets get locked down to enable new paywalls. Gamification is everywhere turning tools into ARPU-optimizing skinner boxes.

The End of low-hanging fruit is here. How we deal with it will determine if computing retains it's magical unbounded possibility space or not.

Re: Microsoft knows Windows is obsolete. a sneak peek at its replacement

#46

Post by r3bl »

JohnDeHope wrote: post #11

Is there a list of apps that are missing from the Windows Store that cause friction for Windows S? I see it often called a chicken and egg problem. But I never see anyone suggest a list of what they think the eggs are. (I don't think the problem is missing apps. My guess is that most UWP apps in the Windows Store use a tablet-ey, metro, modern ui, and nobody seems to like it much.)

Oh boy, where do I start!

I have a two-in-one laptop/tablet (from Lenovo's Yoga series), and while I have really tried to use the Store apps so that they are comfortable in the tablet mode, I've yet to find a PDF reader that doesn't crash randomly (including Adobe Reader's Microsoft Store port) and have basically no decent epub reader (I can't find a single app in the store that will open two epub files without any weird formatting issues, let alone support things like highlighting and such). There are no clients to any Google products. Your cloud option is basically OneDrive and that's it. Heck, I've even struggled to find a text editor, so in the end, I've just used OneNote to write down some texts. Kindle reader? Nope. Decent browser? Nope.

In fact, when I think about it, the only useful Store app I was able to find was the Slack client, which seems to me like UWP-bundled Electron app that simply works! Of course, not even that one comes with no issues, because font rendering in it is absolutely horrendous on a HiDPI screen.

I could go on and on about this. At the end, I'm mostly using desktop apps in the tablet mode (things like Calibre, Chrome browser etc.) and that seems to work fine. But the Store apps (with that one sole exception where I'm actually using a Store app in the desktop mode as well) are just useless.

Re: Microsoft knows Windows is obsolete. a sneak peek at its replacement

#48

Post by mark-r »

flohofwoe wrote: post #15

The article paints UWP as a modern programming environment, superior to Win32, that only 'lazy developers' would reject, when in reality it is a confusing mess of desktop and outdated mobile paradigms from 10 years ago when mobile devices had dramatically less RAM and were much less powerful then 'real computers'. UWP is in many ways worse than Win32, it requires much more boilerplate code to get stuff done, and requ…

The legacy Windows API itself is a confusing mess with outdated paradigms from when desktop PCs had dramatically less RAM and were much less powerful. Those that don't remember history are doomed to repeat it.

Re: Microsoft knows Windows is obsolete. a sneak peek at its replacement

#50

Post by frik »

douche wrote: post #27

Ok, so Windows S is a Windows Chromebook. I imagine we'll just continue to ignore that UWP and the Windows Store exist. Wake me up when full versions of Office and Visual Studio are built as UWP apps.

Me too. Wake me up when Office and Visual Studio are built as DotNet UWP apps. Their codebase is still C with classes and C++ mixed, dating back to 1989/90.
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