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.app on the Mac and .appx on windows implements self contained apps you can copy around as necessary. Appx is a bit newer on the windows side you see them call

.app on the Mac and .appx on windows implements self contained apps you can copy around as necessary. Appx is a bit newer on the windows side you see them called "universal", or "store apps" depending on the marketing era they were made in. On the mac .app is the universal way to distribute apps since Mac OS X took over (and before that on NextStep).

AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
While App Bundles of NextStep/OSX fame are pretty much precisely the kind of simplicity I'm talking about, Appx on Windows is a clusterfuck. I've never seen them used outside of the package manager, you need crap like Move-AppxPackage to change their location, and from what I can tell you can't run them at all unless they're registered with the system. Technically it is totally possible to make portable Windows applications and people do it all the time, but it isn't the way applications are typically built and that causes a bunch of problems. Linux has the same issue, really. Linux users will talk about how silly the registry is, but the file hierarchy full of hardcoded paths is pretty much the same damn thing. It is also technically possible to make portable Linux applications, it's just slightly harder than Windows due to a few factors caused by everyone always working within the distro+package manager paradigm. Where they do have some form of "portable" application, they've over-engineered the hell out of it and use containerization to make it happen. AppImage is ok, it's only slightly over-engineered, but sadly even that doesn't work everywhere because of how much of a mess Linux is.
- slededit 8y ago
  Appx does have mini registries which makes them moveable at a technical level. The main restrictions come from registration with the sandbox - which I admit completely defeats that aspect of the design. That's a common problem with Microsoft. One team makes an elegant design but another team doesn't fully understand it and thwarts the improvements made.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago

While App Bundles of NextStep/OSX fame are pretty much precisely the kind of simplicity I'm talking about, Appx on Windows is a clusterfuck. I've never seen them used outside of the package manager, you need crap like Move-AppxPackage to change their location, and from what I can tell you can't run them at all unless they're registered with the system. Technically it is totally possible to make portable Windows applications and people do it all the time, but it isn't the way applications are typically built and that causes a bunch of problems. Linux has the same issue, really. Linux users will talk about how silly the registry is, but the file hierarchy full of hardcoded paths is pretty much the same damn thing. It is also technically possible to make portable Linux applications, it's just slightly harder than Windows due to a few factors caused by everyone always working within the distro+package manager paradigm. Where they do have some form of "portable" application, they've over-engineered the hell out of it and use containerization to make it happen. AppImage is ok, it's only slightly over-engineered, but sadly even that doesn't work everywhere because of how much of a mess Linux is.

slededit 8y ago
Appx does have mini registries which makes them moveable at a technical level. The main restrictions come from registration with the sandbox - which I admit completely defeats that aspect of the design. That's a common problem with Microsoft. One team makes an elegant design but another team doesn't fully understand it and thwarts the improvements made.