4 ms·

Microsoft shot themselves in the foot with UWP. It's actually pretty nice to write apps with it (in my personal opinion, anyway). But UWP only supports Windows

Microsoft shot themselves in the foot with UWP. It's actually pretty nice to write apps with it (in my personal opinion, anyway). But UWP only supports Windows 10. Very few commercial products are able to drop Windows 7 support (and like, literally zero enterprise products can drop Windows 7 support). So, no matter how nice UWP gets, most companies that would still be willing to write a native Windows app are 5+ years out from being allowed to adopt it, entirely because of how Microsoft chose to release it.

ColinWielga 8y ago
Yeah, UWP not supporting win7 pretty much killed it. Might not be an issue in 5 years, by then MS will probably has a new new framework .
opencl 8y ago
UWP doesn't even support Windows 8, it is strictly Windows 10. Not that 8 is very relevant.
- maxsilver 8y ago
  Oops, sorry, you are correct, I got it mixed up with the 8/8.1 SDK. Fixed.
maxxxxx 8y ago
"Very few commercial products are able to drop Windows 7 support (and like, literally zero enterprise products can drop Windows 7 support)." You would be suicidial if you based any product you want to sell to business on UWP. Not only doesn't it Win 7 or 8 but I don't see in what way UWP is better than WPF.
- maxsilver 8y ago
  I have found one working enterprise use case. UWP is great if you are exclusively deploying to brand new Windows 10 Embedded devices. (I think this is now called "Windows IoT Core" or something similar). That's what I've been using it for, and that's worked well. It carries a nice side benefit that our sales team all has Windows 10 Pro laptops, and UWP 'just works' there too for sales demos, presentations, and such. But I agree, selling UWP apps to businesses for traditional desktop use is ridiculously difficult. > I don't see in what way UWP is better than WPF. For a long time, UWP was the only way to get a working WebView (one based off of Edge instead of IE). But I think they fixed that and backported Edge to WPF a few months ago. (EDIT: they did kind of fix that - https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2018/05/09/modern-webview-winforms-wpf-apps/ https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2018/05/09/modern-webvie... )
  - maxxxxx 8y ago
    "UWP is great if you are exclusively deploying to brand new Windows 10 Embedded devices. (I think this is now called "Windows IoT Core" or something similar). That's what I've been using it for, and that's worked well. It carries a nice side benefit that our sales team all has Windows 10 Pro laptops, and UWP 'just works' there too for sales demos, presentations, and such." This would be a great thing for us. But we already have a huge investment into WPF. How do we get this to UWP?
    - pjmlp 8y ago
      Apparently via XAML Islands as shown at BUILD and this week's Ignite. Now in face of this announcement, not sure.
  - berti 8y ago
    You need Windows 10 machines to develop for/deploy IoT Core last I checked, so that killed it for us (corp world still holding onto Windows 7).
- pjmlp 8y ago
  One way that it is better are the visual layer and accelerated composition engine. Naturally this matters little to those enterprises doing plain CRUD applications with default L&F. One big improvement in UWP is that Visual C++ finally merits the name Visual, although it still fails short of C++ Builder's RAD tooling. And overall the sandbox model, however from the last Build it appears that Redstone will get an improved sandbox for Win32 apps as well, alongside MSIX support.
mrpippy 8y ago
Exactly. One of the biggest reasons why Carbon (and Mac OS X) succeeded is that Carbon apps also ran on OS 8/9. Big apps like Acrobat, Final Cut Pro, Mozilla, and many others were able to use Carbon and run on OS 9 and X.

ColinWielga 8y ago

Yeah, UWP not supporting win7 pretty much killed it. Might not be an issue in 5 years, by then MS will probably has a new new framework .

opencl 8y ago

UWP doesn't even support Windows 8, it is strictly Windows 10. Not that 8 is very relevant.

maxsilver 8y ago
Oops, sorry, you are correct, I got it mixed up with the 8/8.1 SDK. Fixed.

maxxxxx 8y ago

"Very few commercial products are able to drop Windows 7 support (and like, literally zero enterprise products can drop Windows 7 support)." You would be suicidial if you based any product you want to sell to business on UWP. Not only doesn't it Win 7 or 8 but I don't see in what way UWP is better than WPF.

maxsilver 8y ago
I have found one working enterprise use case. UWP is great if you are exclusively deploying to brand new Windows 10 Embedded devices. (I think this is now called "Windows IoT Core" or something similar). That's what I've been using it for, and that's worked well. It carries a nice side benefit that our sales team all has Windows 10 Pro laptops, and UWP 'just works' there too for sales demos, presentations, and such. But I agree, selling UWP apps to businesses for traditional desktop use is ridiculously difficult. > I don't see in what way UWP is better than WPF. For a long time, UWP was the only way to get a working WebView (one based off of Edge instead of IE). But I think they fixed that and backported Edge to WPF a few months ago. (EDIT: they did kind of fix that - https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2018/05/09/modern-webview-winforms-wpf-apps/ https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2018/05/09/modern-webvie... )
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  "UWP is great if you are exclusively deploying to brand new Windows 10 Embedded devices. (I think this is now called "Windows IoT Core" or something similar). That's what I've been using it for, and that's worked well. It carries a nice side benefit that our sales team all has Windows 10 Pro laptops, and UWP 'just works' there too for sales demos, presentations, and such." This would be a great thing for us. But we already have a huge investment into WPF. How do we get this to UWP?
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    Apparently via XAML Islands as shown at BUILD and this week's Ignite. Now in face of this announcement, not sure.
- berti 8y ago
  You need Windows 10 machines to develop for/deploy IoT Core last I checked, so that killed it for us (corp world still holding onto Windows 7).
pjmlp 8y ago
One way that it is better are the visual layer and accelerated composition engine. Naturally this matters little to those enterprises doing plain CRUD applications with default L&F. One big improvement in UWP is that Visual C++ finally merits the name Visual, although it still fails short of C++ Builder's RAD tooling. And overall the sandbox model, however from the last Build it appears that Redstone will get an improved sandbox for Win32 apps as well, alongside MSIX support.

mrpippy 8y ago

Exactly. One of the biggest reasons why Carbon (and Mac OS X) succeeded is that Carbon apps also ran on OS 8/9. Big apps like Acrobat, Final Cut Pro, Mozilla, and many others were able to use Carbon and run on OS 9 and X.