Microsoft to merge Windows, Windows Phone stores in 2014 Microsoft is planning to combine the Windows Store and the Windows Phone Store into a single app store for all of its platforms as early as the spring of 2014, sources claim. The Verge reports that Microsoft's new operating systems head, Terry Myerson, revealed the plan during an all-hands meeting in Redmond on Thursday. The …
So basically they've finally worked out 3 different code bases was a mistake, and they're going to merge WP8 and RT together. Maybe build their own emulator to run ARM on x86?
I like Windows Phone. Hell, I even like RT, but what stopped me buying an RT Tablet was the consideration I'd have to start buying all my apps again. MS pushed me in to buying the Tab2, I don't really like Android, but I did find I had a use for a tablet when I borrowed one.
I assume apps would be able to specify that they only run on PCs (not phones/tablets) due to requirements of various APIs.
This is not a bad thing at all.
I have several apps on my phone that I would really like to also use on my PC and don't see why it isn't possible now. (Well, I do see why. Stupidity and shortsightedness.)
While mobile apps are generally limited compared to what a full blown desktop application CAN do, that doesn't mean you'd never want to install a mobile app on our PC. I think it would be useful in fact because a basic tool costing a quid is sometimes all you need, not an application for £30.
Even being able to play some mobile games on your Mac/PC would be nice at times.
"... we should have one set of APIs on all of our devices..."
If they know that, so why don't they have a common API already? They went through this whole rewrite on both the PC and Phone to make sure they all wore the same lipstick and broke compatibility with some hardware and software only to make operating systems that were about as compatible as they were before. Absolute fucking brilliance. Asshats.
A step in the right direction.... incompatible software just wouldn't show up in the store, much like the play store and the way that the current windows store allows different pricing for nokia apps on nokia phones...
Ive always thought that winphone8 and windows RT should be rolled into one unified OS... Im not a programmer, but in android land the same apps run on Tegra based devices and Snapdragon machines, so in my simple brain it should be possible to rejig things to make the same happen with phone and rt titles...
instead of one incredibly niche tablet and a low market share phone fighting, the devices would compliment eachother nicely like the iPad and iPhone
As it stands, the Windows Store offers apps for Windows 8 running on PCs with Intel processors and for Windows RT running on devices with ARM chips. Many of the apps in the store will work on both platforms, but not all of them do.
Not entirely true. Anything you can download directly from the store will run on either Win8 or WinRT but anything that redirects you to a website is Win8 only, because those aren't "apps". Those are programs like Office. All of the "apps" in the store work on both platforms because they're actually working against the WinRT API.
I don't think that's quite right, either.
I was under the impression that if the app includes native code it will only be available on the platforms it was compiled for (x86/x64/ARM).
If it's all in .Net then you're right, as the final compilation is done by the CLR on the target machine. Note that MJF suggests that the Windows Store backend might be getting the same AOT compilation capability as the WP8 store, where the developer uploads the standard .Net binary (in MSIL), platform specific compilation is done on Microsoft's servers and what the user downloads is a compiled & optimised native executable. This removes the JIT overhead from the end-user's device, thus speeding up the launch of applications,
Quote "If they know that, so why don't they have a common API already"
Quote "In fact, developers don't even use the same APIs to create them – so far, at least."
A quick look to the MSDN documentation and we can see that the APIs are converged, e.g.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/windows.devices.sensors.accelerometer.aspx
So the above API is supported on Windows 8 store apps, Windows 8 desktop apps, Windows phone 8 apps and can be used via three languages (C#, VB, C++) and it will build on three architectures (X86, x64 and ARM....
Many of the APIs are the same on both platforms, but not all.
If you only need to reference the APIs that are common to all your targeted platforms you can write waht is called a "Portable Class Library", which will only allow you to use the common APIs (you can also specify to target "desktop" .Net, WP7, Silverlight and/or Xbox). The community has also come up with a fairly reasonable pattern for adding provide platform specific "enlightenment" libraries which provide abstractions over the not-common APIs.
PCLs are becoming pretty common, now. It's the obvious way to share common code beteween multiple platforms. Note that Mono can also load them (so you can use them on Android & iOS, too).
The downside is that the UI frameworks are NOT common, so you need multiple versions of your UI. OTOH this isn't *so* bad, as you probably ought to provide a different UI on a tablet to what you would provide on a phone anyway (not to mention Android, iOS, etc).
Don't take this as too much if a defence of the status quo, though. The current situation with WP7, WP8 & WinRT is a PITA, and it will be a very good thing when it's sorted out.
Wait... what?! I keep myself as free from Microsoft grubby mitts as possible these days so I missed something there.
I thought Windows 8 WAS a single platform on phone, PC and tablet. If they're actually three code bases, why the hell does the desktop version of Windows 8 have a touch interface? I knew Windows 8 was a disaster but I thought MS at least had a reason to do it.
Applications for a laptop, medium touch tablet , TV set GUI and a phone are not just needing different GUIs but also need different design. On a decent screen multiple windows and floating & dockable customisable tool bars might make sense. But never on a phone, rarely on a tablet. TV is similar display needs to a 6" tablet, (because it's maybe 2m away) but due to very limited user input and navigation and usually no touch, no keys much beyond 0 .. 9 and functions and no trackball/mouse (why not a IBM thinkpad style or gamepad wobble pad/stick though?) is mostly limited to browse & select.
One App store, one name of OS and one GUI is just a confusion. At least Apple and Google differentiate a bit (iOS, OS X and Android, Chrome).
After trying to shoehorn the Win3.x then Win95 style on everything they make the opposite mistake of Zune interface on everything.
By all means have a single coherent API for all devices so programmers have less to learn and make less mistakes. But this doesn't mean you should normally do the same application identically for all platforms. Unless it's maybe a game with simple interface or a trivial program. Even then it might not want to be full screen on everything.
Even running phone apps on a PC in a "phone/small tablet sized window" is rarely going to work well. Touch vs keyboard and mouse with no touch.
Most phone apps are either too trivial, or awkward or more limited than many paid or free programs on a Laptop. Also I want to get away from MS dependency on desktop, not get locked into it.
I can use the phone on WiFi beside laptop anyway.
I mean, the whole "real Windows" "crappy fake ARM Windows" and "Windows phone" is a unholy mess, but there's no reason they can't have one app store, and it shows only compatible apps on your device.
Android does this, you can mark what size screen your app needs, Android version minimum, if it is making naughty use of NDK and is therefore only ARM, MIPS, or Intel-specific rather than portable, and so on, and your app just doesn't show up on a device if it's incompatible. Of course people (generally who don't know better) complain about "fragmentation" in the Android market because of this variety, ignoring that games that don't support lower end models are just like GTA V not running on a old low end PC, and that it's easy to make normal apps run on "everything" (my apps for instance are just marked Android 2.2+, no special requirements whatsoever.)
"I mean, the whole "real Windows" "crappy fake ARM Windows" and "Windows phone" is a unholy mess, but there's no reason they can't have one app store, and it shows only compatible apps on your device."
I suppose it all depends on how we interpret the news. The second half of the article and most of the comments appear to assume that MS are proposing a single API. The quotes in the first half of the article merely talk about having a single store website. That's quite a bit easier and possibly even sensible.
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