2 ms·

> removing backwards compatibility for existing apps and phones That’s not true; I developed a WP7 Silverlight app that worked with just minor bugfixes through

> removing backwards compatibility for existing apps and phones That’s not true; I developed a WP7 Silverlight app that worked with just minor bugfixes through Windows Mobile 10. What they did do was bungle the marketing on it, so the public conciousness mixed up “WP7 devices can’t run WP8 apps” and “WP8 devices can’t run WP7 apps”.

afavour 1y ago
Ah, you’re right… but if I recall a lot of apps (if they weren’t abandoned) were WP8 only releases. The platform felt very dead, very quickly.
toast0 1y ago
I mean, it was more than marketing. It was hard to build an app that would use WP8 features on WP8 but also run on WP7. If you kept building for WP7, the WP8 features were unavailable; you'd end up with maybe a shared core and a WP7 app plus a WP8 app, and then WP8.1 did the same kind of thing, and finally WM10 let you build "universal" apps which would only run on WM10, which never managed to get an current install count more than WP8, and might not have managed to surpass WP7 either. WP7 itself was a throwing away of compatability with Windows Mobile apps; reportedly, that loss of goodwill is why Google refused to support the platform. WM6.5 apps would have been out of place on WP7, but if Microsoft was still yelling about developers x3, maybe they would have made that transition possible --- require a new frontend for cohesive UX, but allow for core libraries from older apps to run as-is, instead of forcing the new apis.
- dahauns 1y ago
  >WP7 itself was a throwing away of compatability with Windows Mobile apps; The loss of compatibility wasn't even the biggest issue here - it was the loss of functionality. WM6.5 had a huge enterprise feature set, only rivaled by Blackberry (and probably Nokia to an extent). Then came WP7 and had...literally nothing. They didn't even support Exchange ActiveSync in the beginning.
dahauns 1y ago
The issue was that you had to publish and maintain separate versions of your app for WP8 and WP7 as soon as you wanted to use the new SDK, with no way to just specify API level or feature flags. This was enough for a not insignificant number of devs to drop out of the already small market and lower the already limited app supply even more.

afavour 1y ago

Ah, you’re right… but if I recall a lot of apps (if they weren’t abandoned) were WP8 only releases. The platform felt very dead, very quickly.

toast0 1y ago

I mean, it was more than marketing. It was hard to build an app that would use WP8 features on WP8 but also run on WP7. If you kept building for WP7, the WP8 features were unavailable; you'd end up with maybe a shared core and a WP7 app plus a WP8 app, and then WP8.1 did the same kind of thing, and finally WM10 let you build "universal" apps which would only run on WM10, which never managed to get an current install count more than WP8, and might not have managed to surpass WP7 either. WP7 itself was a throwing away of compatability with Windows Mobile apps; reportedly, that loss of goodwill is why Google refused to support the platform. WM6.5 apps would have been out of place on WP7, but if Microsoft was still yelling about developers x3, maybe they would have made that transition possible --- require a new frontend for cohesive UX, but allow for core libraries from older apps to run as-is, instead of forcing the new apis.

dahauns 1y ago
>WP7 itself was a throwing away of compatability with Windows Mobile apps; The loss of compatibility wasn't even the biggest issue here - it was the loss of functionality. WM6.5 had a huge enterprise feature set, only rivaled by Blackberry (and probably Nokia to an extent). Then came WP7 and had...literally nothing. They didn't even support Exchange ActiveSync in the beginning.

dahauns 1y ago

The issue was that you had to publish and maintain separate versions of your app for WP8 and WP7 as soon as you wanted to use the new SDK, with no way to just specify API level or feature flags. This was enough for a not insignificant number of devs to drop out of the already small market and lower the already limited app supply even more.