Comment by DigitalSea | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DigitalSea | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I never thought I would see the day when I agree with something that Steve Ballmer said. But he has a point. The problem is no developer has an incentive to write a universal application that runs on all aforementioned platforms. Developers will always write apps for platforms where it makes sense. Windows has a large share of the desktop market so it is a no brainer. But why would a developer care about their app working on a phone platform with limited market share?

I think Windows Phone is brilliant. Well-made devices and a great operating system, but the lack of apps makes it very unattractive to the general masses. Support for Android apps without needing to be redeveloped is a no-brainer in my opinion. No developer will see the value in converting an Android app over to Windows. It has to support Android apps out-of-the-box without the developer needing to do anything or no tool, no matter how great or smart it is will make developers change their tune, even if it is easy to do so.

At present there is no motivation for developers to develop for Windows Phone and no incentive for customers who adopt the platform. This is very much a chicken and egg problem, one I don't think they will ever solve for as long as they don't support Android apps.

I think you misunderstood. The universal app runs on both windows desktop and windows phone. So they would only need to be incentivized to want their app on windows desktops, and then it's automatically on win phone for free.

If that works, it makes more sense to me than emulating or porting android apps. Those ideas will never work, as MS probably found out with the canceled Astoria project. It's a great sounding strategy, but that kind of technology isn't practical for many reasons. Just look at all of the issues that wine has trying to go the opposite direction on Linux.

This is true ("universal apps runs on both windows desktop and windows phone").

But the problem is, for most mobile apps it doesn't make any sense to 'run on a desktop'. So MS huge desktop marketshare doesn't cancel out their tiny mobile marketshare.

> So they would only need to be incentivized to want their app on windows desktops, and then it's automatically on win phone for free.

On Windows desktops in Metro, though. That's a little bit different of a value proposition when WPF and other toolkits do still exist outside of it.

I can see why you might want to share some libraries between a phone and desktop app but running the same app on both platforms makes no sense at all to me.

Then you have the problem that universal apps have to be sold through the app store which has all the problems of the Mac app store except worse in every respect.

From my point of view, I find your statement bizarre.

    Universal Apps : Native :: Responsive Design : Web

Creating separate applications for mobile and desktop is analogous to the old-fashioned approach of creating a web site for desktop consumers and an entirely separate site for mobile users. Thankfully, with the advent of what we now call "responsive design" (which is admittedly poorly named; should have been "adaptive"), we no longer need to create two separate apps, but instead can tune the singular application's user interface to adapt to screen size.

Universal Apps work the same way, they adapt to screen size. And with the nearly continuous spectrum of screen sizes from phones to phablets to small tablets to large tablets to small desktop displays to large desktop displays, there's a great upside to using such an approach.

Have you seen how the new Outlook app adapts to the a full-size display using Continuum? It's pretty awesome.

Frankly, I'm not really sure why you wouldn't use that approach.

That said, I agree the app store model needs to be reconsidered by everyone.

There is little overlap between desktop and phone applications. Most phone applications are web applications in their non-phone form. Games being the exception. Microsoft needs to focus on the things they are good at and the competition isn't, productivity. Like Apple used to.

Astoria worked pretty well, though. The reason for its cancellation doesn't seem to be technical.

> So they would only need to be incentivized to want their app on windows desktops

They would need to want their apps on Windows 10 desktops. Which excludes for example nearly every corporate desktop now and probably most of them for many years to come.

Wine is going from windows to linux with only blackbox/binary access to Windows. Astoria was heavily making use of the Android source, wasn't it?

> Support for Android apps without needing to be redeveloped is a no-brainer in my opinion.

Have you looked at the Android Play Store lately? Its Facebook, Netflix, Twitter, the McDonalds app (#16 !?!?!) a few other social things, games ... and the rest is total crap.

Why take this ocean of garbage onto a new platform (and at the same time, alienate existing developers who now must compete with Android apps)?

If app popularity obeys power laws (0.005% of all apps make 60% of all app store revenue)[1], seems a better strategy is just to make sure you have the few essential apps necessary, and then provide great tools and encourage developers to write the rest.

> At present there is no motivation for developers to develop for Windows Phone

I've been developing for Android quite some time, and the economics of the platform are not appealing. There have been several articles saying the cost of Android app dev is between 20-30% (minimum) more expensive than iOS[2].

As Windows 10 adoption moves along, it will be more enticing to write a univeral app for that platform and mobile.

[1] http://arc.applause.com/2015/11/11/app-discovery-strategy-an... [2] https://adtmag.com/articles/2015/11/02/android-ios-costs.asp...

> and the rest is total crap.

Do you actually have an Android phone? Because this is totally not true at all. Like for example I just installed the imgur app and it's fantastic. I have 1password and it's great. Hearthstone? Yup, amazing. Just like every app I have I'm happy with. I just don't think you have any idea what you're talking about. I know an Android engineer who works for Square and they've got a huge Android team that is doing amazing work.

> a huge Android team that is doing amazing work.

Exactly. It takes a huge Android team to do the simplest things. Twitter app has dozens of engineers. It doesn't do much!

Compared to their WP team?

But you want any obscure or local app, and, guess what... it's Android and iOS only.

Local food delivery? Only Android or iOS. Local bus routes? Android or iOS. And so on.

And lemevi has a point, there are some cool games amidst that sea of crap which are simply not available on WP.

I've said before that WP has been doing a great work in their low-end phones (though they've gotten stale lately), but they're still losing the battle.

If Windows phone ran Android apps, that will kill any incentive for Native.

"Better Windows Than Windows" was one of the nails in OS/2's coffin, a lesson MS should be rather familiar with.

His recognition of this 'platform problem', and his failure of Microsoft to deliver a quality mobile browser to Window Phone, are irreconcilable.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com