7 ms·

Fortunately, most of us aren't interested in UWP bloat and just want to build good old desktop applications.

by brann0 9y ago

pjmlp 9y ago
Win32 is going the way of Carbon even if it takes a couple of years more, like it or not. Desktop bridge is just a migration tool to migrate Win32 into the store, and help developers slowly migrate parts of the apps into UWP ones. The majority of new APIs are UWP only, with userspace drivers, DirectX 12, ReFS being the notable exceptions. Of course you can always switch to GNU/Linux for Vulkan games.
- PoL0 9y ago
  > The majority of new APIs are UWP only Microsoft APIs? Or APIs in general (which I doubt). Microsoft will try everything to push UWP into our PCs but I've been using Win10 for a couple years now and the only UWP application I (barely) use is Sticky Notes. The rest of my application ecosystem hasn't changed much.
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    Windows 10 APIs of course. Well, Win32 is still there, but not on Windows 10 S and on ARM Windows 10 Always Connected PCs it gets JITed while UWP runs natively.
    - vetinari 9y ago
      Microsoft tried that with Windows RT. It's riskier to that specific Windows edition than to the Win32.
      - bitwize 9y ago
        And they're going to keep trying until it finally sticks. It's like Palladium or the Scientology Fair Game policy: just because people don't like it doesn't make it not critical to the organization. They just have to backpedal publicly to re-establish good PR, then sneak it in quietly while people's guard is down.
        IntelMiner 9y ago
        Microsoft isn't Apple. Their entire business relies on retaining as much backwards compatibility as possible Every time they make any sort of major, sweeping change. They get raked over coals until they're charred to a god damn crisp When Windows went from the old DOS-ish 95/98/ME to the much more stable NT based 2000 and XP, lots of things broke. XP only survived the Microsoft EOL chopping block because of the rise of Netbooks. And even then, companies pay millions to keep that afloat due to how entrenched it is (Something likely to be repeated with Windows 7) Vista brought a ton of (arguably much needed) changes. But its hardware requirements were pretty high for the time. Along with buggy drivers from Nvidia, that sank the entire operating system. Both in public perception and market share Windows 7 (on release) was arguably a UI-tweaked Vista. Hardware had caught up by then, and a lot of people agreed that this was the "good" upgrade from XP Windows 8 came out and tried to shoehorn that whole "Metro" interface and converge everything around it. And it flopped almost as hard as Vista did Windows 10 Microsoft played a much stronger hand and dragged everyone they could (willing or otherwise, if you believed some accounts) over with a "free" upgrade for most. But it also pruned back Metro pretty hard. Instead trying to chase after the "App Store" model
        bitwize 9y ago
        > Microsoft isn't Apple. And that's just the problem, innit. The App Store is making Windows irrelevant. Apple also has a FAR better security story, and part of it is because they whitelist everything that runs on their flagship devices. Microsoft tried to do the same thing with Windows RT and Windows Phone. Didn't work. They were forced to backpedal, but they're not about to give up on making Windows Store the centerpiece of the Windows experience, and sideline, marginalize, and limit the capabilities of Win32 on the Microsoft platform -- "for security purposes" of course. Eventually, Win32 stuff will still run, but heavily sandboxed and unable to take advantage of cutting edge features of the Windows OS (HoloLens? Cortana? The database file system they've put off implementing for so long?). It could be that Windows 11 uses HyperV to run a Windows 7 instance for legacy apps while new stuff -- including support for newer graphics cards/GPUs -- must be compiled against UWP in order to run on the main kernel instance.
    - Const-me 9y ago
      AFAIK it’ll work the same way for desktop win32, and store UWP apps. Both will be JIT-ed if there’s no ARM binaries available, both can be compiled to native ARM64 binaries: https://mspoweruser.com/windows-arm64-gets-first-compiled-apps/ https://mspoweruser.com/windows-arm64-gets-first-compiled-ap...
      - pjmlp 9y ago
        Currently the JIT only works for x86-32, not x86-64.
        Const-me 9y ago
        That’s true, but quite a lot of modern desktop software still comes with 32-bit binaries. Even Microsoft’s own software: visual studio and skype are still 32 bit, office has both versions…
        fyfy18 9y ago
        There is still a 32bit version of Windows 10: http://news.softpedia.com/news/Microsoft-Explains-Why-Windows-10-32-Bit-Is-Still-Needed-469563.shtml http://news.softpedia.com/news/Microsoft-Explains-Why-Window... I wonder why they didn’t push fat binaries like Apple did?
        vetinari 9y ago
        Because 64-bit Windows doesn't run 16-bit binaries, 32-bit one does. Fat binaries aren't going to change that.
- asveikau 9y ago
  > Win32 is going the way of Carbon even if it takes a couple of years more, like it or not. That's the thing, nobody likes it. They've been pushing "modern apps"[1] since 2012 and nobody notable is writing them. As Surface RT showed in the market, when forced to make the choice people will just abandon the product rather than put up with that mediocrity. [1] Orwellian calling it "modern" just in the name, as if that saves a bunch of work to come up with actual modern stuff that works.
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    Lots of Windows devs like having a safer, modern OO ABI instead of a clunky C API stuck in the 90's. If Microsoft behaved like Apple and Google, people would have no option other than just use it. After all, in spite of all hate for Windows XP, Vista or 7, there was hardly any year of GNU/Linux desktop. By the way, the new Office will be store only on Windows 10.
    - asveikau 9y ago
      The new stuff is all COM and you are telling me it's not stuck in the 90s? Many people prefer software that works. My experience with the newer APIs is that they are on average less reliable, more quirky, less thought through and battle tested. I think the larger problem is that the current staff cannot produce works with the same quality of the Microsoft of 10 or 20 years ago. So of course they cannot compete with their own legacy. (Disclaimer: I was at MSFT from 2008-2011.) > By the way, the new Office will be store only on Windows 10. Good for Office. I'm sure it will work fantastically.
      - pjmlp 9y ago
        > The new stuff is all COM and you are telling me it's not stuck in the 90s? No, because UWP is .NET done right, what was supposed to be COM Runtime, before Java made them create the CLR instead. AOT compilation to native code, using a high performance object model with productive programming languages, object oriented, instead of plain old rusty C.
- marcoperaza 9y ago
  With a few exceptions, you can call UWP APIs from Win32 code.
- flohofwoe 9y ago
  The question is whether Windows will die sooner than UWP will be fixed to become an acceptable replacement for Win32. The main reason why Windows is still relevant (even despite Microsoft's desperate attempts to kill it) is Steam games and some legacy software that hasn't been ported to Electron yet. Forcing new apps to use UWP in its current broken state can only accelerate the death of desktop Windows.
  - littlestymaar 9y ago
    > some legacy software that hasn't been ported to Electron yet. «Let's port Photoshop to electron» not
    - jhasse 9y ago
      I also doubt that it'll be ported to UWP any time soon.
      - pjmlp 9y ago
        Adobe is already adopting UWP, with Adobe XD being the first product for the store. http://www.adobe.com/products/xd.html http://www.adobe.com/products/xd.html
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
    The only way Windows dies is if the Desktop dies. As awful as Windows 10's user experience is, it is still miles better than any of the (far too many) Linux Desktops. Linux Desktop evangelists who only ever develop web software and basically use the browser as their OS will continue to scratch their heads and wonder why their argument of "your use case isn't what we designed for!" isn't convincing anyone to switch.
- MaxBarraclough 9y ago
  Steam doesn't play ball with the Microsoft app-store that UWP insists on. That's pretty much a game-over for UWP in the gaming world.
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    Not everyone is on Steam. Everyone I know still buys from retail, as they care to have something physical. Also UWP has the XBOX titles, and if Microsoft really wanted they could just pull all their titles out of Steam, assuming whatever contracts they have in place make it possible.
    - flohofwoe 9y ago
      Typical Xbox games aren't implemented on UWP though, it's just a way for hobbyists to get small apps running on the Xbox without a costly developer account and devkits (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/xbox-apps/ https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/xbox-apps/). The restriction of Microsoft games to the MS App Store is an entirely political decision. I'm certain the actual developers down in the trenches would be more than happy to code against plain Win32+D3D12 (or D3D11) and distribute their games through Steam.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
      > Everyone I know still buys from retail It would seem that "Everyone" you know is not a very representative sample then.
      - pjmlp 9y ago
        I can state the same from your Steam sample.
    - MaxBarraclough 9y ago
      > Not everyone is on Steam. They don't need to be. Steam is a serious player in games distribution, and if avoiding certain APIs is necessary to publish on Steam, that's what developers will do. (Or rather, it's what they will continue to do.) Same for uPlay, Origin, and whatever it was that Rockstar made. No-one uses Microsoft's app-store for distributing retail games, and that isn't about to change, even if Microsoft hold their own technologies hostage.
- tinus_hn 9y ago
  Except Microsoft is not Apple and even Apple did not nearly succeed in getting developers to use their App Store on the desktop. They did get developers to use Cocoa but that is clearly much better than Carbon and Apple worked hard to make it do everything Carbon does. The selling point for developing on Windows is that you can mostly do anything and the Store is a sandbox. Developers aren’t going to want to get into the sandbox. And that’s ignoring the situation Microsoft has created where nobody wants to invest in new platforms because Microsoft keeps abandoning them.
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    Apple and Google together have abandoned more tech than Microsoft.
    - bitmapbrother 9y ago
      Citation please. I believe Microsoft is the king of abandoned tech. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Discontinued_Microsoft_software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Discontinued_Microsof... there's also: Groove Streaming Music Microsoft Office Groove Access Services for SharePoint Online Microsoft Continuum Skype for Business Kinect Adapter Microsoft Band Xbox One TV DVR Kinect Xbox One Kinect Windows Wunderlist Sunset Games for Windows Silverlight Zune Kin XNA PlaysForSure Flight Sim Expression Suite SteadyState Windows RT Windows Phone 10 Windows Phone 8.1 Windows Phone 7 Forefront Front Page Money Please add any that Wikipedia and I have missed.
      - vardump 9y ago
        Looks the lists are missing at least Microsoft Forefront: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Forefront_Threat_Management_Gateway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Forefront_Threat_Man... Good riddance.
        bitmapbrother 9y ago
        Thanks for that. That Wikipedia entry uncovered these additional discontinued products Microsoft Forefront Threat Management Gateway Microsoft Forefront Unified Access Gateway Microsoft Forefront Identity Manager Microsoft Proxy Server Windows Essential Business Server Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio Microsoft BackOffice Server Content Management Server Microsoft SNA Server Microsoft Site Server Microsoft Merchant Server Microsoft Groove Server System Center Capacity Planner Microsoft Commerce Server Microsoft SharePoint Workspace Microsoft InfoPath Microsoft Office Document Imaging Microsoft Office Document Scanning Microsoft PhotoDraw 2000 Microsoft Photo Editor Microsoft Schedule Plus Microsoft Virtual PC Microsoft Vizact 2000 Microsoft Data Analyzer 2002 Microsoft Ofice Assistant Microsoft SharePoint Designer Microsoft Office InterConnect Microsoft Office Picture Manager Microsoft Entourage Microsoft Office Forms Server: Microsoft Office Project Portfolio Server Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server Office Live Small Business Office Live Workspace Office Live Meeting

Fortunately, most of us aren't interested in UWP bloat and just want to build good old desktop applications.

by brann0 9y ago

Fortunately, most of us aren't interested in UWP bloat and just want to build good old desktop applications.

Win32 is going the way of Carbon even if it takes a couple of years more, like it or not. Desktop bridge is just a migration tool to migrate Win32 into the store, and help developers slowly migrate parts of the apps into UWP ones. The majority of new APIs are UWP only, with userspace drivers, DirectX 12, ReFS being the notable exceptions. Of course you can always switch to GNU/Linux for Vulkan games.

PoL0 9y ago
> The majority of new APIs are UWP only Microsoft APIs? Or APIs in general (which I doubt). Microsoft will try everything to push UWP into our PCs but I've been using Win10 for a couple years now and the only UWP application I (barely) use is Sticky Notes. The rest of my application ecosystem hasn't changed much.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  Windows 10 APIs of course. Well, Win32 is still there, but not on Windows 10 S and on ARM Windows 10 Always Connected PCs it gets JITed while UWP runs natively.
  - vetinari 9y ago
    Microsoft tried that with Windows RT. It's riskier to that specific Windows edition than to the Win32.
    - bitwize 9y ago
      And they're going to keep trying until it finally sticks. It's like Palladium or the Scientology Fair Game policy: just because people don't like it doesn't make it not critical to the organization. They just have to backpedal publicly to re-establish good PR, then sneak it in quietly while people's guard is down.
      - IntelMiner 9y ago
        Microsoft isn't Apple. Their entire business relies on retaining as much backwards compatibility as possible Every time they make any sort of major, sweeping change. They get raked over coals until they're charred to a god damn crisp When Windows went from the old DOS-ish 95/98/ME to the much more stable NT based 2000 and XP, lots of things broke. XP only survived the Microsoft EOL chopping block because of the rise of Netbooks. And even then, companies pay millions to keep that afloat due to how entrenched it is (Something likely to be repeated with Windows 7) Vista brought a ton of (arguably much needed) changes. But its hardware requirements were pretty high for the time. Along with buggy drivers from Nvidia, that sank the entire operating system. Both in public perception and market share Windows 7 (on release) was arguably a UI-tweaked Vista. Hardware had caught up by then, and a lot of people agreed that this was the "good" upgrade from XP Windows 8 came out and tried to shoehorn that whole "Metro" interface and converge everything around it. And it flopped almost as hard as Vista did Windows 10 Microsoft played a much stronger hand and dragged everyone they could (willing or otherwise, if you believed some accounts) over with a "free" upgrade for most. But it also pruned back Metro pretty hard. Instead trying to chase after the "App Store" model
        bitwize 9y ago
        > Microsoft isn't Apple. And that's just the problem, innit. The App Store is making Windows irrelevant. Apple also has a FAR better security story, and part of it is because they whitelist everything that runs on their flagship devices. Microsoft tried to do the same thing with Windows RT and Windows Phone. Didn't work. They were forced to backpedal, but they're not about to give up on making Windows Store the centerpiece of the Windows experience, and sideline, marginalize, and limit the capabilities of Win32 on the Microsoft platform -- "for security purposes" of course. Eventually, Win32 stuff will still run, but heavily sandboxed and unable to take advantage of cutting edge features of the Windows OS (HoloLens? Cortana? The database file system they've put off implementing for so long?). It could be that Windows 11 uses HyperV to run a Windows 7 instance for legacy apps while new stuff -- including support for newer graphics cards/GPUs -- must be compiled against UWP in order to run on the main kernel instance.
  - Const-me 9y ago
    AFAIK it’ll work the same way for desktop win32, and store UWP apps. Both will be JIT-ed if there’s no ARM binaries available, both can be compiled to native ARM64 binaries: https://mspoweruser.com/windows-arm64-gets-first-compiled-apps/ https://mspoweruser.com/windows-arm64-gets-first-compiled-ap...
    - pjmlp 9y ago
      Currently the JIT only works for x86-32, not x86-64.
      - Const-me 9y ago
        That’s true, but quite a lot of modern desktop software still comes with 32-bit binaries. Even Microsoft’s own software: visual studio and skype are still 32 bit, office has both versions…
        fyfy18 9y ago
        There is still a 32bit version of Windows 10: http://news.softpedia.com/news/Microsoft-Explains-Why-Windows-10-32-Bit-Is-Still-Needed-469563.shtml http://news.softpedia.com/news/Microsoft-Explains-Why-Window... I wonder why they didn’t push fat binaries like Apple did?
        vetinari 9y ago
        Because 64-bit Windows doesn't run 16-bit binaries, 32-bit one does. Fat binaries aren't going to change that.
asveikau 9y ago
> Win32 is going the way of Carbon even if it takes a couple of years more, like it or not. That's the thing, nobody likes it. They've been pushing "modern apps"[1] since 2012 and nobody notable is writing them. As Surface RT showed in the market, when forced to make the choice people will just abandon the product rather than put up with that mediocrity. [1] Orwellian calling it "modern" just in the name, as if that saves a bunch of work to come up with actual modern stuff that works.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  Lots of Windows devs like having a safer, modern OO ABI instead of a clunky C API stuck in the 90's. If Microsoft behaved like Apple and Google, people would have no option other than just use it. After all, in spite of all hate for Windows XP, Vista or 7, there was hardly any year of GNU/Linux desktop. By the way, the new Office will be store only on Windows 10.
  - asveikau 9y ago
    The new stuff is all COM and you are telling me it's not stuck in the 90s? Many people prefer software that works. My experience with the newer APIs is that they are on average less reliable, more quirky, less thought through and battle tested. I think the larger problem is that the current staff cannot produce works with the same quality of the Microsoft of 10 or 20 years ago. So of course they cannot compete with their own legacy. (Disclaimer: I was at MSFT from 2008-2011.) > By the way, the new Office will be store only on Windows 10. Good for Office. I'm sure it will work fantastically.
    - pjmlp 9y ago
      > The new stuff is all COM and you are telling me it's not stuck in the 90s? No, because UWP is .NET done right, what was supposed to be COM Runtime, before Java made them create the CLR instead. AOT compilation to native code, using a high performance object model with productive programming languages, object oriented, instead of plain old rusty C.
marcoperaza 9y ago
With a few exceptions, you can call UWP APIs from Win32 code.
flohofwoe 9y ago
The question is whether Windows will die sooner than UWP will be fixed to become an acceptable replacement for Win32. The main reason why Windows is still relevant (even despite Microsoft's desperate attempts to kill it) is Steam games and some legacy software that hasn't been ported to Electron yet. Forcing new apps to use UWP in its current broken state can only accelerate the death of desktop Windows.
- littlestymaar 9y ago
  > some legacy software that hasn't been ported to Electron yet. «Let's port Photoshop to electron» not
  - jhasse 9y ago
    I also doubt that it'll be ported to UWP any time soon.
    - pjmlp 9y ago
      Adobe is already adopting UWP, with Adobe XD being the first product for the store. http://www.adobe.com/products/xd.html http://www.adobe.com/products/xd.html
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
  The only way Windows dies is if the Desktop dies. As awful as Windows 10's user experience is, it is still miles better than any of the (far too many) Linux Desktops. Linux Desktop evangelists who only ever develop web software and basically use the browser as their OS will continue to scratch their heads and wonder why their argument of "your use case isn't what we designed for!" isn't convincing anyone to switch.
MaxBarraclough 9y ago
Steam doesn't play ball with the Microsoft app-store that UWP insists on. That's pretty much a game-over for UWP in the gaming world.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  Not everyone is on Steam. Everyone I know still buys from retail, as they care to have something physical. Also UWP has the XBOX titles, and if Microsoft really wanted they could just pull all their titles out of Steam, assuming whatever contracts they have in place make it possible.
  - flohofwoe 9y ago
    Typical Xbox games aren't implemented on UWP though, it's just a way for hobbyists to get small apps running on the Xbox without a costly developer account and devkits (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/xbox-apps/ https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/xbox-apps/). The restriction of Microsoft games to the MS App Store is an entirely political decision. I'm certain the actual developers down in the trenches would be more than happy to code against plain Win32+D3D12 (or D3D11) and distribute their games through Steam.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
    > Everyone I know still buys from retail It would seem that "Everyone" you know is not a very representative sample then.
    - pjmlp 9y ago
      I can state the same from your Steam sample.
  - MaxBarraclough 9y ago
    > Not everyone is on Steam. They don't need to be. Steam is a serious player in games distribution, and if avoiding certain APIs is necessary to publish on Steam, that's what developers will do. (Or rather, it's what they will continue to do.) Same for uPlay, Origin, and whatever it was that Rockstar made. No-one uses Microsoft's app-store for distributing retail games, and that isn't about to change, even if Microsoft hold their own technologies hostage.
tinus_hn 9y ago
Except Microsoft is not Apple and even Apple did not nearly succeed in getting developers to use their App Store on the desktop. They did get developers to use Cocoa but that is clearly much better than Carbon and Apple worked hard to make it do everything Carbon does. The selling point for developing on Windows is that you can mostly do anything and the Store is a sandbox. Developers aren’t going to want to get into the sandbox. And that’s ignoring the situation Microsoft has created where nobody wants to invest in new platforms because Microsoft keeps abandoning them.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  Apple and Google together have abandoned more tech than Microsoft.
  - bitmapbrother 9y ago
    Citation please. I believe Microsoft is the king of abandoned tech. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Discontinued_Microsoft_software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Discontinued_Microsof... there's also: Groove Streaming Music Microsoft Office Groove Access Services for SharePoint Online Microsoft Continuum Skype for Business Kinect Adapter Microsoft Band Xbox One TV DVR Kinect Xbox One Kinect Windows Wunderlist Sunset Games for Windows Silverlight Zune Kin XNA PlaysForSure Flight Sim Expression Suite SteadyState Windows RT Windows Phone 10 Windows Phone 8.1 Windows Phone 7 Forefront Front Page Money Please add any that Wikipedia and I have missed.
    - vardump 9y ago
      Looks the lists are missing at least Microsoft Forefront: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Forefront_Threat_Management_Gateway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Forefront_Threat_Man... Good riddance.
      - bitmapbrother 9y ago
        Thanks for that. That Wikipedia entry uncovered these additional discontinued products Microsoft Forefront Threat Management Gateway Microsoft Forefront Unified Access Gateway Microsoft Forefront Identity Manager Microsoft Proxy Server Windows Essential Business Server Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio Microsoft BackOffice Server Content Management Server Microsoft SNA Server Microsoft Site Server Microsoft Merchant Server Microsoft Groove Server System Center Capacity Planner Microsoft Commerce Server Microsoft SharePoint Workspace Microsoft InfoPath Microsoft Office Document Imaging Microsoft Office Document Scanning Microsoft PhotoDraw 2000 Microsoft Photo Editor Microsoft Schedule Plus Microsoft Virtual PC Microsoft Vizact 2000 Microsoft Data Analyzer 2002 Microsoft Ofice Assistant Microsoft SharePoint Designer Microsoft Office InterConnect Microsoft Office Picture Manager Microsoft Entourage Microsoft Office Forms Server: Microsoft Office Project Portfolio Server Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server Office Live Small Business Office Live Workspace Office Live Meeting