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Comment by ebbv | Hacker News Reader

> As a developer I like what MS is doing. Fragmented platforms is a programmers hell. Universal apps and the same operating system across all devices is surely the future.

Whether it is or not (I don't think so) that's not really what Microsoft is doing. You can't just download Windows 10 software and run it on Windows 10 Mobile.

Nor should you be able to. Phone software should be written for a phone. I don't want to run a Windows desktop app on my phone any more than I want to run a phone app on my desktop PC. They are fundamentally different platforms, with different interfaces, different screen sizes and different needs.

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> You can't just download Windows 10 software and run it on Windows 10 Mobile.

That's exactly what you can do, given that the app is written against UWP.

We already universal apps between phones and tablets and we use webapps everywhere. Different screen sizes, different usage scenarios, different input methods – those are all things you can adjust your interface for.

Bluetooth keyboard and mouse can handle input. So, why can't you run StarCraft II on your phone?

Is StarCraft II written against UWP?

If there trying to unify platforms then it should not need to be a UWP app. Until then there just adding a new standard. https://xkcd.com/927/

I mean the laptop / phone divide is not all that wide in terms of Ram or Gflops. So, why not just run windows on everything?

Windows does run on everything. It won't run plain old Intel Win32 binaries on everything, with good reason.

UWP is hardly a new standard. It's the continuation of the Windows Phone/Windows 8 APIs and WPF, which dates back to 2006.

I think the biggest issue is that on Win32 both code and developers are much, much more powerful. You can't make Steam for UWP, or an IDE, or something like AutoCad with its plugin support. Other than mobile support, there is little reason to use UWP over Win32 (perhaps with WPF).

A shame, because we really need to move on from Win32.

You would use techniques that are conceptually similar to responsive web design to deliver a UI that is appropriate for each of the supported devices. I assume this kind of thing has already been done for years for phone/tablet apps, this is just adding desktop as well.

Actually yes, in the latest versions of phone and desktop you can run the same exact app across both. These new phones are actually running Windows and can run any of the new style apps in theory.

> can run any of the new style apps

This is not the same thing as being able to run any Windows Desktop App.

Also it's not established whether this makes for good Desktop and/or Phone software as a result.

For me, it is - I love the fact that the News, Weather, Email, Calendar, Calculator, Timer/Stopwatch, Cortana, Office Mobile (word/excel/onenote/powerpoint), Skydrive apps on Windows Phone 10 are the same, with the same UI and funcionality that on my Windows 10 desktop. It works perfectly with touch and it works perfectly with mouse and keyboard. Now I only download an app if it is UWP because it is so much more convenient.

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