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UWP is mostly a validation that Microsoft employs brilliant engineers. They took all the knowledge of their platforms over the years and condensed it into a uni

UWP is mostly a validation that Microsoft employs brilliant engineers. They took all the knowledge of their platforms over the years and condensed it into a unified story. For that, UWP works. However, the same problem that plagues the Mac App Store, UWP code is sandboxed in weird ways that make it hard to just recompile your existing IP into the new environment. Plus Microsoft developer relations pushed C# as the defacto way to write apps targeting the platform, something that doesn't scale when you also need to support Android and iOS. As far as mobile's concerned, it was continuously mismanaged, release after release. * First they paid Seattle contractors to rewrite top-tier iOS apps for the original Silverlight C# version of WP and then dumped the resulting code onto the companies hoping they would continue the effort. I took a look at that code at the startup I was at at the time, and it was a mess, full of proprietary dlls that we couldn't even inspect. * Second, they moved the kernel to Windows NT-lite from CE, meaning all the early adopters essentially got fucked over and it crushed early momentum. * Third, Microsoft would go a year before announcing relatively inconsequential updates. (Oh that's nice that the same software will run on 512mb devices, is that what you spent the entire year working on?) * Fourth, updates never seemed to hit devices, and the only way to get updates was with actual firmware. Android solved this problem by moving most of the interesting bits to the Play store. Ultimately for a platform in 3rd place, Microsoft never gave the impression they were busting their butts to catch up. Everything seemed to move at a glacial pace and felt like run by a tiny greenfield team.

kayoone 10y ago
> Microsoft developer relations pushed C# as the defacto way to write apps targeting the platform, something that doesn't scale when you also need to support Android and iOS. Actually, our company has an Android and iOS App written in C# with a 80-90% shared Codebase using Xamarin. It has been pretty awesome so far.
- LyalinDotCom 10y ago
  Yeah I wish more people realized that C# + Xamarin tools (that Microsoft now owns & is totally free with Visual Studio Community) making C# something that can take you cross-platform in the mobile space. https://www.xamarin.com/ https://www.xamarin.com/ Also .NET Core now runs on Mac and Linux for the server OS code written in C#. Then if you add Unity supporting C# on top of that for game/dev and I really can say that we're in a cross-platform world now :). But I am a bit biased since I work on these teams.
mhomde 10y ago
You make some good points, and some I didn't quite agree with. The notion that you could just recompile old win32 apps, while nice in theory is not practical IMO. Software has gone from being heavily GUI oriented (windows, dialogs, buttons) etc to converge into something between web and UI. I'd rather they make a clean cut with that past than incorporating it into the future. Also lots of new stuff like notifications, roaming notifications/settings etc are things that simply did not exist with traditional software. I do agree however that I miss some deep level win32/OS integration possibilities in the current UWP world, on the other hand there's lots of new cool stuff like App services, notification listeners etc. I agree completely that a big problem was the constant reboots between Zune/silverlight/NT/Win10. They ended up where they needed to be but it certainly made things difficult for both developers and consumers, and lost them a lot of momentum Supporting 512 mb devices was one of the biggest mistakes they ever made, the impact on that the development side was just devastating, for what, saving a couple of bucks in RAM memory? I think it's hard to generalize the speed and pace of Windows Mobile overall, they put a lot of money and effort in it, and still is, but something definitively changed with the Nokia acquisition and/or Nadella taking over from Ballmer As for updates I always got frequent updates (europe), the problem was more that their QA seemed substandard. Might be an american problem with providers like Verizon. They had an interesting strategy with their insider updates... which is nice in theory but it sometimes felt like they fired their QA team and put the burden of testing on their consumers, resulting in major bugs frequently getting through

kayoone 10y ago

> Microsoft developer relations pushed C# as the defacto way to write apps targeting the platform, something that doesn't scale when you also need to support Android and iOS. Actually, our company has an Android and iOS App written in C# with a 80-90% shared Codebase using Xamarin. It has been pretty awesome so far.

LyalinDotCom 10y ago
Yeah I wish more people realized that C# + Xamarin tools (that Microsoft now owns & is totally free with Visual Studio Community) making C# something that can take you cross-platform in the mobile space. https://www.xamarin.com/ https://www.xamarin.com/ Also .NET Core now runs on Mac and Linux for the server OS code written in C#. Then if you add Unity supporting C# on top of that for game/dev and I really can say that we're in a cross-platform world now :). But I am a bit biased since I work on these teams.

mhomde 10y ago

You make some good points, and some I didn't quite agree with. The notion that you could just recompile old win32 apps, while nice in theory is not practical IMO. Software has gone from being heavily GUI oriented (windows, dialogs, buttons) etc to converge into something between web and UI. I'd rather they make a clean cut with that past than incorporating it into the future. Also lots of new stuff like notifications, roaming notifications/settings etc are things that simply did not exist with traditional software. I do agree however that I miss some deep level win32/OS integration possibilities in the current UWP world, on the other hand there's lots of new cool stuff like App services, notification listeners etc. I agree completely that a big problem was the constant reboots between Zune/silverlight/NT/Win10. They ended up where they needed to be but it certainly made things difficult for both developers and consumers, and lost them a lot of momentum Supporting 512 mb devices was one of the biggest mistakes they ever made, the impact on that the development side was just devastating, for what, saving a couple of bucks in RAM memory? I think it's hard to generalize the speed and pace of Windows Mobile overall, they put a lot of money and effort in it, and still is, but something definitively changed with the Nokia acquisition and/or Nadella taking over from Ballmer As for updates I always got frequent updates (europe), the problem was more that their QA seemed substandard. Might be an american problem with providers like Verizon. They had an interesting strategy with their insider updates... which is nice in theory but it sometimes felt like they fired their QA team and put the burden of testing on their consumers, resulting in major bugs frequently getting through