Microsoft introduces Universal Windows apps

http://wmpoweruser.com/microsoft-introduces-universal-windows-apps/

by chris-at • 12 years ago

284 183 12 years ago

yulaow• 12 years ago

This is imho the best news ever from microsoft. Now I can target serverside, frontend, windows8 devices and windowsphone all with one language (javascript for me). Not bad at all

update: I have to add other news just announced. With winJS now we can target also xboxone, ios and android device And also the full framework is opensource under apache license

update2: winJS on github https://github.com/winjs/winjs

venomsnake• 12 years ago

Unless it is shoehorned into their appstore ... have they said anything about that?

jbigelow763• 12 years ago

I was worried that MS would drop support for WinJS and double down on XAML. Allowing fully native builds for Windows Phone from Javascript instead of just native wrappers is great, now if only iOS and Android would follow suit.

candl2• 12 years ago

They've just announced they are making WinJS cross-platform and open source (under Apache license). Now I haven't used WinJS, I haven't ever developed a WinRT app (just a few for the Phone), but doesn't WinJS have a ton of quality components, even more so than WinRT XAML? This seems pretty awesome.

frozenport2• 12 years ago

Couldn't you do this with javscript before and also get MacOS, Linux, and Android? Anything with a web-browser?

kevingadd• 12 years ago

win8's js framework isn't just a browser with your code in it. They expose pretty much all of their API surface to JS with JS-friendly APIs and things like promises for async calls, so you're not stuck using dumbed-down apis or calling out to native code shims for things HTML5 can't do yet.

Touche2• 12 years ago

No, web browsers don't have APIs for accessing everything the native platforms are capable of doing.

keithwarren2• 12 years ago

I think the most significant part of this announcement is how they are dogfooding, Office for 'metro' and for the windows phone are using this Universal targeting.

sz4kerto3• 12 years ago

They've been dogfooding for decades, that's a very core part of the developer culture at MS. (You can say many bad things about them, but they really do dogfooding all the time.)

danabramov• 12 years ago

Kind of... Still, they didn't use .NET, Windows Forms, WPF and countless data access layers in their core products (Office and Windows), which probably contributed to the fact most of these frameworks got obsoleted every few years.

lnlyplnt• 12 years ago

This seems similar to Google's tablet/phone strategy taken to it's natural extreme. This makes me wonder if google will soon do something similar with the (currently separate) Chrome/Android ecosystem.

sz4kerto3• 12 years ago

I don't think it will -- it's really hard for MS to provide the tooling for making universal apps more or less feasible, even if they all share most of the WinRT APIs. Integrating Chrome/Android will be much harder.

amaks2• 12 years ago

Haven't looked at the APIs, but are the APIs going to scale between phone, tablet and 30" 4K monitors? It's relatively easy to make the same app to be adaptable between phone and tablet, or even laptop, but to make it look good on 30" 4K monitor is a completely different UX, if full screen. Or in high resolutions the apps run in windowed mode?

sz4kerto3• 12 years ago

You can adapt any part of the app. I.e. you can simply migrate the app to be universal across devices, but if a specific part does not look good, then you can change the XAML/code behind for that part.

amaks2• 12 years ago

But do these "universal" apps still run full screen on 30" monitor? If so, then it's not a good UX. The benefit of a large high resolution monitor is to display lots of information at the same time, this frequently implies more than one app/window visible at the same time.

silversmith• 12 years ago

This just in: yes, you can run them windowed.

keithwarren2• 12 years ago

This just in...Universal apps run on Xbox one.

majc22• 12 years ago

This is interesting - Xbox one is their most interesting platform right now.

gum_ina_package2• 12 years ago

The amazing thing is that you can potentially write all your code in C# and have backend/frontend logic for the web (ASP.NET), Windows, Windows Phone, and even iOS/Android (via Xamarin). Wow.

Aardwolf• 12 years ago

But what about Linux?

gum_ina_package2• 12 years ago

Mono! Lots of ASP.Net projects (like Nancyfx or SignalR) are actually built on Mono. I think there's some hope that web dev on Windows isn't dead.

fleitz8• 12 years ago

The amazing thing is that you can potentially write all your code in C and have backend/frontend logic for the web, Windows, Windows Phone, OSX, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Tru64, VAX, Arduino, Linux Kernel, Windows Kernel, Mach, Hurd, and practically every processor or operating system ever built, and even iOS/Android (via Xamarin). Wow.

You can even link to and reuse that code from languages such as: C++, C#, Java, Ruby, Perl, Python, assembler, lua, scheme, lisp.

The future is gonna be so 1970.

tdicola5• 12 years ago

There's even a text editor that runs on all those platforms!

gecko• 12 years ago

C# is a much higher-level language than C, with a much richer set of libraries that can be relied upon to be everywhere. That's why it matters.

basicallydan• 12 years ago

What a well-structured and bullet-proof response. Congratulations, you're now revered amongst your peers and are considerably more employable thanks to your insightful observation. High five!

Seriously though: not only is C# a much easier language to learn which includes features and libraries that most developers expect from a modern language, that probably wasn't even what gum_ina_package was "Wow"ing at.

To me, the point is that the barrier to entry for writing apps across all platforms has now been lowered for C# developers - a group of developers, by the way, which is numerous.

Locke16892• 12 years ago

Have you ever actually used C in a real project? I can't seem to get away without using any compiler specific constructions, much less operating system specific call routines.

There isn't even a Boost for C.

Honestly, I'd be surprised if you actually knew C with a statement like that.

pjmlp• 12 years ago

he amazing thing is that you can potentially write all your code in C and have backend/frontend logic for the web, Windows, Windows Phone, OSX, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Tru64, VAX, Arduino, Linux Kernel, Windows Kernel, Mach, Hurd, and practically every processor or operating system ever built, and even iOS/Android (via Xamarin). Wow.

Have you ever done C development like this, ever in your life?

I did. Between 1994 and 2003, we had applications run across Windows, HP-UX, Aix, DG/UX, GNU/Linux, BSD, Solaris.

An awful mess of #ifdefs, compiler specific behaviours, lack of POSIX compliance, OS specific extensions.

This on the server side, and lets not forget there are ZERO portable standards for writing portable GUI code in C.

Finally, C shouldn't never had become mainstream given its lack of safety, that we are still suffering in 2014. There were better systems programming languages in the late 70's, they just weren't at Bell Labs.

jarjoura• 12 years ago

I see this as equivalent to writing one application that targets both iPhone and iPad and even Android with one app targeting tablets and phones. The only really new thing is support for a single application but the design and UI work still needs to be addressed for each screen size.

mamcx• 12 years ago

OK, and where is the code?

emeraldd2• 12 years ago

I'm still trying to figure out how/why this makes sense as a goal. Building an application that runs across multiple platforms in congruent spaces makes sense: iOS and Android and Windows Phone. When you move to running the same application across Laptop vs. Phone style platforms, even on modern hardware, you're looking at capabilities and resources that are radically different. I can see wanting to share certain common code, but a library system ala npm, bundler, cpan, etc., would handle that better than sharing a common code base/project. What am I missing?

UK-AL• 12 years ago

Microsoft has NuGet, which can do that. Common base is stuff for REST Interfaces, Entities etc

svas3• 12 years ago

The real key here is sharing business logic.

Microsoft apps are written using the MVVM (Model View, View-Model) framework. The idea here is that you would share almost all of your model code, and really only rewrite the view layer (XAML) per platform. You're also allowed to share the exact same views across platforms, but it's unlikely that will be a good experience for users, given the differences: screen sizes, input modalities, etc.

tdicola5• 12 years ago

How is this really different from what exists today? You can write in C# for pretty much every MS platform already. If you're smart you're already writing your business logic with as little dependencies as possible on view specific logic so it's more testable, portable, etc.

acjohnson55• 12 years ago

The other key is that for people who have invested in other platforms, they know that they can get more bang for their buck on MS by buying one app everywhere. That would be a big deal for me if I ever come home to Windows.

radicalbyte• 12 years ago

Think of the set of applications that can also be implemented as responsive web applications.

Now you'll be able to implement them with a native experience, without significantly increasing your costs.

What about games? I've got a load of games on the iPad, why can't I play them on my (hypothetical) touch-enabled MacBook Pro?

Why do I have to pay twice for everything?

This is just what Sony have done with Cross-Play - customers love being able to buy a game once and then be able to play it on their PS3, PS4 and Vita.

cbhl2• 12 years ago

Microsoft has been trying to run Windows on tablets since 2001, if not earlier. To me, this really is to bridge the phone/tablet barrier (previously you had two or even three separate apps, since tablets ran either Windows RT (ARM) or Windows 8 (x86)).

Zigurd2• 12 years ago

You could say the same for a 4.3 inch phone vs. a 10 inch 2.5k, and, soon, 12 inch 4k Android tablet. And if you want radically different capabilities, phones have SIMs that are assumed to be single-owner while most Android tablets are multi-user. Processors range from 800Mhz single-processor with mediocre bus performance, to quad-core 2.3 Ghz. There really isn't any interactive software you wouldn't run on a mobile device, and if you grok Fragment on Android, you can write for any device geometry from a single code-base.

The true boundary between mobile and desktop computing is numeric computation. You don't want to mine bitcoin or your stock market rocket science on a mobile device, mainly due to burning through the battery in a trice.

It never made sense for things called Windows not to have a unified pool of apps. This is a significant improvement.

emeraldd2• 12 years ago

What about things like Keyboard and Mouse vs. Touch? Network Quality (Persistent highspeed connection vs. intermittent limited quality)? Available storage space (You can consider most desktop machines (1/4 terrabyte or better) unlimited in comparison to mobile devices? Multiple Large displays (not on all I know) vs. single small display? There's alot more there than numeric computation abilities alone to take into consideration.

pistle• 12 years ago

You aren't quite seeing the full picture and including some interesting additional bits. The 'experience' of an app across devices - like WhatsApp portable (and then some) - is feasible with what they put in the keynote and what the lesser Scotts did later. It's never been a better time to be a .net/C# dev.

They put on display some pretty great tooling for sharing common code across platforms and tuning the experience per UI. With decent cloud integration, there's a smoother on ramp for C# devs to get to wide audience apps with less dev resource than most any other dev env I can think of.

frozenport2• 12 years ago

I'm shocked this didn't happen sooner. If you ever wanted to point to a problem with MS vision you can ask yourself why this didn't happen in 2005.

rkuykendall-com• 12 years ago

I think your underestimating the INSANE amount of vision and foresight that would be required to do this in 2005.

1. The xbox 360 was released in 2005. This was essentially the first Microsoft console to run 'apps,' and those had to be architected specifically for the console.

2. The iPhone was years away in 2005. Phones ran shitty little apps that had to be architected specifically for the phone.

3. The iPad was years away. Microsoft tablets just ran XP. The idea of the iPad as a "bigger iPhone" was mocked to no end when it was announced. People thought they wanted OS X on a touchscreen. Microsoft would have thought the same thing.

4. gMail has just been released. The idea of a true "web app" required remarkable vision and foresight by itself. Additionally, web apps had to be architected specifically for the browser (seeing a pattern?).

Even if Microsoft had seen 5 years into the future and predicted all these changes, the platform they would have created in 2005 wouldn't have had anything to run on.

NoPiece• 12 years ago

Good points, but it is also worth considering that in 2005, Microsoft had a much stronger position in the Smartphone/handheld market with Pocket PC/Windows Mobile. Even looking at how they named their mobile os makes you think they should have been thinking about cross platform apps. Those phones felt a lot like tiny PCs, which was also their weakness.

streptomycin• 12 years ago

The idea of a centralized "app store" was not new. People had been complaining about Windows not having Linux-like package management since the 90s.

Similarly, the idea of web apps taking over everything was not new. Microsoft was acutely aware of that, since that was Netscape's big idea (also Java was in theory the same threat - write once, run anywhere, make Windows unimportant). Again, all in the 90s. This is the most fundamental answer as to why MS didn't do this stuff before. Not because of a lack of foresight, but because their foresight was good enough to allow them to identify it as a threat to their monopoly.

Touch screen phones/tablets I agree were less obvious predictions, but even if MS did figure that out early on, it wouldn't have changed their motivation to fight back against Netscape and Java and similar technologies.

But now the tables have turned...

cbhl2• 12 years ago

Microsoft had tablet PCs running Windows in 2001. The price point never worked out. I'd say they had the vision, but the focus on backwards compatibility prevented them from bringing in a new paradigm.

0x006A2• 12 years ago

They must live in quite a bubble if "universal" only includes Microsoft platforms.

gagaga3• 12 years ago

I guess Google and Apple also live in a bubble? Not really sure what your point is. Is your expectation that Microsoft Universal apps also run on Android and Google? On Web browsers? Would you like them to use a different term?

0x006A2• 12 years ago

Its fine if they only target Microsoft Products as a Platform, calling it Universal was confusing to me. Of cause Google and Apple also have there bubbles too, they seam to be more aware of the universe they live in to not brand themselves as the universe.

rbanffy• 12 years ago

It's just that a mobile app that runs neither on Android nor iOS (90%+ of all phones) is not exactly universal.

If all it does is run on all Microsoft platforms, from Windows Phone to XBoxOne, it's just a "Microsoft" app. If Microsoft decides to call what the Xbox runs "Windows" they'll become... Windows apps...

pekk• 12 years ago

Throwing around words like "universal" suggests a real cross-platform API, not "convergence of Windows with Windows Phone". Lots of people would like to see real cross-platform, not more vendor lockin.

mtinkerhess• 12 years ago

Just like a universal binary on OSX?

druidsbane• 12 years ago

Exactly, except Microsoft has taken it to the logical conclusion we all want supporting all platforms, and sadly Apple hasn't. I have code that runs on both iPhone/iPad and shares most of it with the Mac version yet I have to build the Mac as a separate app and submit to a different store. That sucks.

nbevans8• 12 years ago

What's to say, once they complete the purchase of Xamarin, that universal also includes OSX, iOS, Android and even Linux?

72deluxe6• 12 years ago

Weirdly, PE executables on Windows are Portable Executables that the system model would permit to run under not just Intel but other architectures.

Sadly the other platforms died so the portable executable is really just the stuck executable.

svas3• 12 years ago

Interesting move in the right direction. I wonder if they'll take it further and let you write iOS and Android apps using Xamarin / Mono?

This would actually provide an easy path for developers to get into the Windows ecosystem while ignoring the whole market share issue. Combine first class integration with an awesome IDE (Visual Studio), and frankly way better tooling than Eclipse this would be a pretty compelling reason for me to use Xamarin, and by extension have a Windows run target for my app.

r00fus• 12 years ago

Beware Apple, Google: Microsoft is starting to get it.

_random_2• 12 years ago

Google has universal apps? When will they get 'it'?

shashwatak• 12 years ago

Chrome, and thereby all Google webapps, run on every major OS.

dragontamer7• 12 years ago

http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/img_2014...

Yes they are. Windowed Metro-apps, and legitimate Start Menu with decent Metro live tile integration (and a shutdown button)

I was hoping that they'd have jumplists back on the startmenu, but lets see what they come up with...

taiki6• 12 years ago

What about the internals? Is it still kind of a mess under the hood?

I heard they rebuilt the TCP/IP stack so it's not user land 32 bit driver anymore.

Any ideas if/when they'll modernize NTFS? Right now it's a race to the bottom to who has the worse FS, HFS+ or NTFS. WinFS or ZFS on OS X would be a godsend.

What about the registry? Any idea if they'll make that easier to manage for regular people? Am I still fucked if it corrupts?

What about sunsetting Win32? Or improving the driver model?

They're starting to get it on the UI side, but the reason why I use Mavericks as my personal machine and work on a LAMP stack has less to do with how useful or pretty the start menu is, and more to do with the godawful internals of Windows. Or have we just resigned ourselves to a crappy OS internally that we've all just gotten used to?

chokolad• 12 years ago

Any ideas if/when they'll modernize NTFS? Right now it's a race to the bottom to who has the worse FS, HFS+ or NTFS. WinFS or ZFS on OS X would be a godsend.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/01/16/building-the-n...

bananas2• 12 years ago

No it's rock solid underneath.

The TCP stack hasn't been a 32-bit driver since XP.

NTFS has been modernised already: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReFS

The registry is fine - it's people pissing around in it that break it.

Win32 - haven't touched it for years. Driver model: not my problem.

Mavericks is a crime compared to windows 8.1. I use both, regularly. It's virtually impossible to use efficiently with a keyboard unless you have twisted mutilated hands to hit meta keys galore and half the apps don't actually survive more than 2 minutes without crashing.

bhauer• 12 years ago

Exciting! This is getting progressively closer to an ideal I call PAO (Personal Application Omnipresence [1]), wherein I use a single set of applications on all my devices. I am very happy to see progress in this direction, but there is still much more to be done in the future.

[1] http://tiamat.tsotech.com/pao

gress• 12 years ago

Sounds like iWork.

kenferry• 12 years ago

So is this Silverlight but for WinRT apps instead of WPF apps?

be5invis• 12 years ago

I am wondering whether they can make Windows Runtime's GUI avaliable for existing desktop appliacations. There are many professional applications needs a brand new API for user interface.

masterj• 12 years ago

I believe they also had a segment about this for sideloaded apps.

SixSigma• 12 years ago

They need a funky catchphrase, how about :

"write once, run anywhere"

_ea1k• 12 years ago

Think pure thoughts. :)

(for those who don't get the reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGX7N-CoaPo)

mitchty• 12 years ago

I'm resisting saying Write once, debug everywhere. This sounds cool, but the road to this hell has been littered with many failures.

Dammit, there goes my resistance. Which apparently is futile. I'll show myself out.

If this does work its a cool things. Just microsoft needs to make c# and the .net framework open source and actually cross platform. Mono is a non starter for a lot of places.

jjgreen• 12 years ago

"write once, run away"?

72deluxe6• 12 years ago

"write once, test everywhere"

Then fix and start again.

tdicola5• 12 years ago

One thing I don't see mentioned, do universal apps support C++11? I can understand why it's not as easy to support native code across platforms (i.e. need to do some kind of fat binary thing), but think it's a little sad to see all the work done to support modern C++ app development kind of abandoned. Really annoying if you have to choose between an app being universal or written in modern C++.

dragontamer7• 12 years ago

Microsoft is one of the biggest supporters of C++11, and C++14 for that matter.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh567368.aspx

mnem2• 12 years ago

Well, they're certainly catching up, but they have a bit to go to before they match clang or gcc: http://cpprocks.com/c1114-compiler-and-library-shootout/

xamlhacker2• 12 years ago

AFAIK they do. WinRT apps can be written in many languages including C++. And this is pure native C++ and not "managed" C++.

tdicola5• 12 years ago

Yes I'm aware of that, but can universal apps be written in native code? I don't see any mention of it in their announcement.

KMag• 12 years ago

(i.e. need to do some kind of fat binary thing)

Fat binaries aren't needed to support pointer arithmetic or any other C++11 features in a cross-platform binary. LLVM bitcode supports pointer arithmetic. I also believe .NET bytecode supports pointer arithmetic. I'm not sure what other features you thought would require some kind of fat binary.

tdicola5• 12 years ago

WinRT lets you write native Win 8 apps in C++, however it doesn't use LLVM or .NET bytecode. If universal binaries are supposed to be supported across different architectures (like x86, ARM, etc.) I don't know of any other way to support it than fat binaries.

snarfy2• 12 years ago

They really need to go both ways with their cross platform offerings.

I can use their technology to develop apps for other platforms, but I cannot use their technology to run those apps. That requires having the other platform.

It would be nice if I could not only develop cross platform apps for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone, but I could also run them on their Windows Phone platform. I would buy a windows phone if it could do that.

ManFromUranus2• 12 years ago

Why would they want to help you provide content for Android?

snarfy2• 12 years ago

Because I would do it using their tools, so it would also be content for Windows Phone.

Given the current state, why would I bother making content for windows phone? Why use C# if it's a second class citizen on the majority platforms? Why even learn it if the only thing it's good for anymore is Web API?

Windows could be the universal platform but instead they are still functioning like it's something they could monopolize. Those days are over.

tluyben22• 12 years ago

Some people here have mentioned this already but I am quite surprised with all the happiness and it's nice but... I have been writing apps on my Mac targetting asp.net, ios, android, wp8 and win8 with a lot of reuse and perfect frontends for two years. I love f#/c# and it works like a charm. Business wise it is nice that you have to pay only once but outside that what in god's name is so nice or special about this? I was hoping this would include a build system on Azure and a unified system using Xamarin all from VS. This is nothing at all. Wow I can target those 3 wp8 users from my win8 codebase app. Pfff. So it's just fanboys or almost nothing changes or I am missing some significant thing even though I am quite deep in this ecosystems for years now?

nbevans8• 12 years ago

Agreed, it's been possible for years, especially with PCL libraries gaining significant traction last year. But these announcements and improvements have made things even easier than before. And to a certain extent have made what was once somewhat a "black art" to the layman C# devs now a official development track.

Not sure why you've been downvoted for stating facts. So I +1'd.

tluyben22• 12 years ago

Probably because my tone and term 'fanboy'; I said it very carefully even as I am not anti MS or whatever; I use F#/C#/.NET every single day and like it. But apparently that was enough to trigger :) Thanks anyway; I was just surprised why suddenly whole HN seemed to hail in the new messiah... Easier is nice, but...

majc22• 12 years ago

Looking at twitter it seems like XAML is getting a ton of love from MS. Go back 2 years and many were predicting that HTML was going to win the war on Windows; what gives/what's changed?

Disclosure: written more XAML than I'd care too.

gagaga3• 12 years ago

From my understanding and use of XAML and HTML/JS, the UI performance you get on XAML apps is still better than whats achievable on HTML/JS apps.

tanzam75• 12 years ago

What happened was that most third-party developers refused to use WinJS, and stuck with XAML:

http://www.zdnet.com/windows-8-developers-are-shunning-winjs...

rurban• 12 years ago

Better description: http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/02/microsoft-updates-visual-st...

Microsoft introduces Universal Windows apps

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