Microsoft Solitaire Collection | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft Solitaire Collection

itunes.apple.com

120 pointstammer92 comments

My last hurdle to switch to Mac is finally gone.

EDIT: I guess this is for iOS, so the joke is ruined.

This is the most reddit-like comment thread I've ever seen on HN

I love the fact that HN usually doesn't allow these - which males an occasional indulgence much more enjoyable.

No worries, Macs will soon switch to "OS - a spiritual descendant of iOS and macOS, that we call just 'OS'. It's revolutionary."

It's really iOS without the i, and it's a worse combination of touch UI and mouse/keyboard UI than Windows 8, but it's made by Apple, so the tech press will praise it, and people who should know better will buy devices running it by the millions.

Come on MS! Nobody cares about Solitaire!

Just hurry up and release minesweeper already, and stop teasing us!

Bring back Pinball!

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20121218-00/?p=...

I'm on mobile and can't find the link at the moment, but somebody at Microsoft (Raymond Chen maybe?) did a blog post about Pinball and why it's not in Windows anymore and not likely to make a comeback. IIRC it was written by an outside company, and the code is extremely hairy and was deemed too much effort to port to 64-bit for the return they'd get.

Yeah that's my link! :)

The last line is: " Hey everybody asking that the source code be released: The source code was licensed from another company. If you want the source code, you have to go ask them."

Which seems like a cop out. Microsoft you've got clout, make the deal.

>Microsoft you've got clout, make the deal.

Or "Microsoft, you've got the developers, code a remastered version."

I forgot about this. Yeah, that was one of my favorite games on WinXP as a kid.

I even installed it on my Linux machine once, under WINE: if you miss it too, I reccomend you do the same: works like a charm.

Get the port of Simon Tatham's puzzle collection to iOS and your minesweeper needs will be sorted.

in case for someone who didn't know: http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/

I really don't want to know how much time I wasted in Tents and Squares.

...It's just not the same. :-(

Wordament is quite competetive fun.

For a while this was the only multiplayer game on Windows Phone.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wordament/id580935508

I searched "Solitaire" and "Microsoft Solitaire" and it didn't come up. I had to type "Microsoft Solitaire Collection" before I could find it in the App Store. Not to mention it's not even featured under Categories>Games>Cards..

site:itunes.apple.com {search query}

They're talking about the App Store most likely. Just give it time and it'll rise to the top. Not enough searches -> downloads to sway the servers yet.

The Apple app store is located at itunes.apple.com.

I was just trying to help? If you put that search into Google you will get better results than the app store itself.

Android version: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.microsoft....

BTW it is not actually free. It will cost $1.99/month for the ad-free version but it is ad-free until the end of the year.

I am really confused as to why they think anyone would pay $2/month for solitaire... what happens if you don't pay, is it ad supported or just stops working?

There are cards missing from the deck.

That is devilish.

Ad-supported plus some other limited features such as daily challenges. It is the same on Windows 10 with the built in Solitaire app although I think it is $2.49 there(!)

Well if the subscription is for no add and you cancel the subscription the obviously the add just come back.

Also old people

WTF? Would anybody actually pay a MONTHLY SUBSCRIPTION for solitaire?

I bought Card Shark Collection for $2.99 (like, 5 years ago?) and have gotten my money's worth: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/card-shark-collection-deluxe...

Space Cadet pinball would be a lot nicer.

In case anyone's curious, this is what happened to Pinball: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20121218-00/?p=...

Suffice to say, if they couldn't figure out how to make it work in 64-bit, they're not going to be putting any effort into making it work in UWP and on ARM!

But... it's available on Mac via a port [1] and I'm sure you could find a download for Windows somewhere online.

[1] http://portingkit.com/game/268

It works fine on Windows 7 and up, though! And even if it didn't, I think it'd be possible to load up DOSBox with Windows 95 and emulate it.

It will run on 64-bit OSes as-is, because they support 32-bit programs. But if you check out Raymond's response to a comment, he explains that at the time, 32-bit apps weren't supported in 64-bit Windows until much later. And even once it was possible, it wasn't considered proper to ship an OS component that wasn't actually 64-bit. (Note that while everyone's still been using 32-bit Internet Explorer for the most part, 64-bit IE has always been included on 64-bit Windows OSes.)

IIRC Windows XP 64-bit was supposed to be a pure 64-bit OS - no compatibility layer for 32-bit apps. Which is most of the reason it didn't get some great adoption.

Later versions of 64-bit Windows had that compatibility layer.

Windows XP 64 Bit Edition was 64-bit only and ran on Intel Itanium processors. Windows XP Professional 64 Bit Edition ran on AMD64 architecture and included 32-bit compatibility with x86 Windows, but not 16-bit compatibility with DOS. It provided a preview of the broken drivers that were part of the Vista rollout.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_XP_editions#64-bit_edi...

64-bit XP ran 32 bit apps just fine. A little more than a decade ago I built a machine with it, and wound up giving it to my very much non techie parents who had no issues with it.

I think the only thing I had trouble with on that machine was finding drivers for a particular printer.

"Free Premium for one month"

Try Decked Out :) Its completly free! https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/solitaire-decked-out-ad-free...

These guys really understand their audience placing "ad free" all over the place.

Thanks!

166 MB! :O

113 MB of PowerVR textures and fonts (a number of fonts are included twice in an embedded framework).

48 MB of code and frameworks (including 10 MB for Swift).

http://imgur.com/a/MezGl

How does one go about getting a listing like this? I am new to iOS and macOS and I'd like to learn. Can I pull the equivalent of a iOS ".apk" file and decompile it like Android?

If you download the iOS application in iTunes, or sync your applications from your device to iTunes, then you can drag the applications out of iTunes onto your desktop. That's an IPA file, which is essentially a zip file following a specific format. Just rename from .ipa to .zip and unzip it. You can now inspect the application's contents.

One method: navigate to the file in the Mac OS Finder, right-click on the icon, choose "Show Package Contents" from the contextual menu.

Yes, you get ipa file for application, which is pretty much zip file (same as apk). Unpack it and you'll get folder structure you see in screenshot.

Solitaire first came with Windows 3.0. The entire OS required 7MB free disk space.

But it didn't have all those ads.

It's a lot more than the original Solitaire. Games like FreeCell and Spider are baked in, it has daily challenges, Xbox Live integration and achievements, etc. FWIW, the Windows version is larger, 232 MB.

All the telemetry, tracking and ad frameworks - you know, all the good stuff that people so eagerly swallowed with the W10 pill.

Android version is 75.65MB installed for me.

I recently purchased the original Sonic the Hedgehog for my XBOX One, 512MB!!

iOS 8 or later!

Good :O or bad :O ?

Eh, it certainly seems excessive, but when you're doing iOS development you end up with a lot of high-resolution images, audio files, and other assets that you can't really justify eliminating.

I'm still waiting for iOS Bob.

Firefox says "part of this page are not secure (such as images)". You'd think Apple could make it all https.

SkiFree please.

I'm elated to say there's already a port!

https://appsto.re/us/UIpgJ.i

My life is complete.

In college I tried to see how many games of Freecell I could win without marking a loss. I got up to 1100 before I played a game that someone sent me (seed) that was unbeatable.

I have to confess that I never learned how to play FreeCell.

It's actually a lot better than normal Solitaire. You can stack cards by rank (lower on top) in alternating color. The goal is to get the cards in stacks of their own suit in the reverse order in the upper right. The upper left are the free cells, that can store a single card each. The cool thing is that using the free cells and other empty spots, you can move larger stacks of alternating colors.

FreeCell's fun (as fun as solitaire can be), you should pick it up.

Blackjack and Poker are fun but unfortunately there are no casino games in that collection.

somewhat related, saw this today at bed bath and beyond (wtf, truly beyond!) for $39... with wireless controllers. 101 built in games!

https://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/store/product/atari-reg-fla...

Sigh...I've been hesitant to download solitaire (Klondike) to my phone until Microsoft ported it. There, I said it.

anyone hazard a guess as to how many billion$ of corporate productivity was wasted playing solitaire?

Your joke-making license is revoked. Any attempts at joking will result in solitaire confinement.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13026413 and marked it off-topic.

166 MB?! WTF?!

Microsoft's mission statement: We strive to balance all hardware performance increases with bad software, such that the overall performance continuously decreases!

with App thining it usually would be half, because it just downloads the thin binary of the executable and frameworks and also the assets for the screen size ..., but in this case it is almost equal, crazy universal : 157.91 MB, iPhone4,1 : 136.13 MB, iPad2,5 : 136.11 MB, iPhone8,4 : 137.30 MB

> such that the overall performance continuously decreases

While I agree that 166 MB seems like a bit much for a solitaire game, how does application size have anything to do with performance? Overwatch takes up 30+ GB on my PC, doesn't mean it has poor performance...

Waiting for the Windows Phone release.

(crickets)

(Dammit, even the 'MS Studios' games get pointless ads. Class act there.)

Microsoft Solitaire Collection has been available on Windows Phone for quite a long time. Actually many of their casual games are available as universal apps on Windows 10 desktop/mobile.

Runs very well on my Lumia 950 XL

> Lumia 950 XL

The one great game I found labeled MS Studios was Shuffle Party, a very nice shuffleboard/bowling simulator that runs 3D animations without heating up the phone and draining the battery.

(Also signed 'Babaroga', probably some competent Russians saving the day ;-)

Had genuinely blocked it out, my memory being merciful to me.

Tried it a couple of years ago, and it was terrible - bad interface and heated up the phone like it was an FPS. Deleted and got Bernardo Zamora's Solitaire, which is much nicer.

Windows Phone is a burning platform at this point, Microsoft canned most of the people working on it and left a few dozen interns working on it, hence why the Windows 10 images for the Lumia as of late have been very unstable.

Sadly, its time to migrate off Windows Phone.

I'm very sad about it, too. The Metro Design line was a good mobile platform that's being gradually degraded and left to rot.

I have trouble believing that a 90%-10% duopoly in mobile platforms is an healthy steady state for this market.

Probably something else - not as good - will come in and occupy the vacuum.

I mean, if I could just get a nice Maemo Phone I'd be happy, like throw that on a Lumia 920 and I'd be content. There is definitely room for innovation in the mobile space, and both MS and Nokia have the hardware side of it down, they just need to choose a platform that people can get behind and make it easy to move to it (eg. have a preinstalled app compatibility layer).

I don't understand how Microsoft decides that building a solitaire app this is the most efficient allocation of people's time and resources.

The original one was built by one intern[1], so it's quite possible so was this one. Not a huge resource suck when you are delegating one person to the job who just wants to learn.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/3zfadv/til_t...

Solitaire for Windows 8 (which forms the base for Solitaire for Windows 10 and iOS) was contracted out to Arkadium Games and then Smoking Gun Interactive. The team that built it was rather large, far more than a single person who just wants to learn.

This shouldn't be that surprising though, as Solitaire is in many ways a "flagship" app, which means it has to work on every single device that supports Windows 10 including tablets and phones and 35+ languages including right-to-left languages.

Toolchain validation on an application that utilizes a large cross section of APIs while being relatively simple.

IIRC Solitaire was a Win32s BVT app - if you could run it, you had a complete and functional install of Win32s SDK. It's been a few years, though.

This comment is hilariously ironic.

It is. Commenter doesn't understand that Microsoft is just trying to regain lost ground & mindshare at this point, hence why you can get Office on your Android device for free, and it works better than it does on Windows.

I was going with the irony of commenter asserting that building the game is an inefficient allocation of MS resources when in fact productive time lost due to the ubiquity of these games has probably been one of the single most contributors to inefficient use of time in the last century (you know, due to people playing the games).

Oh I totally understand, and my point was that Office on Android (or iOS) is much more of a value-add than Solitaire on Android (or iOS).

As opposed to Apple which feels the need to be hyper-focused despite having huge margins and hoarding way too much cash.

Kind of like Game Center in iOS. Probably some intern did it, so no real harm.

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