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Comment by mrspandex | Hacker News Reader

It's important to note that apps will work on both platforms according to this article. This sounds like a pretty minor issue to me if I need a new device for some of the newer features, many of which require new hardware anyway (SD card, NFC).

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There's an update to this article about a few minutes ago: Update: Microsoft has clarified, and appliations built for WP8 will not run on WP7.5/7.8 (native C/C++ appliations), we're asking for more details.

That would bother me if those new apps can't be run on WP7.

Only the new apps that use features (e.g. native support) not available on older phones will not work on older phones. Is that not how iOS and android upgrade too?

No, that's not how iOS or Android upgrades work because those companies specced out their platforms before launching them to market.

You can't just "add native support" after the fact. That's a major addition which should have been there from day one.

So basically anyone who is writing an app for WP8 will have to start with a market share of 0% and 0 units in the market.

Nope. They start with market share of all installed windows phone.

Plus they have all the windows desktop/tablet users who could use their app as well.

Well, you're wrong because WP7 is now pretty much dead.

So there's literally no reason to target it, and anything written in C/C++ is only going to run on WP8.

So they've pretty much killed off their already lagging platform in preference for a new lagging platform with 0 installed base.

Microsoft are smoking some serious crack. I'm glad our company didn't spend a second developing for WP. What a clusterf*ck.

That update is confusing in itself. I think it means that native C++ apps will not run, but others will. Still unclear, though.

Apps made for windows 8 will not run on wp7, even when not using the new hardware features

I've heard a lot of conflicting info about this. How can you be sure? Could you link to your reference? Will apps for WP8 that use only WP7 API work on both? Or is the WP8 APi too different? What would a exactly dev need to do if he wants cross compatibility?

Why? There is a Manifest file where you specify the features your application is using. I would imagine that if you leave out the new, hardware dependent stuff it should run just fine? You can do something similar already by opting out from supporting phones with constrained RAM. Those applications are then made unavailable to certain devices in the marketplace. I admit that there has been no mention of this how it's supposed to look like with regards to WP 7.8/8 so it needs some clarification.

I don't think this is entirely correct. If you write in Native (C/C++) then true, it won't run on WP7. But if you write in C#/Xaml you could have targeted your app to WP7 and I believe it will run on both WP7 and WP8 -- of course this will preclude you from using whatever now hardware capabilities in WP8 only.

I think the Native C/C++ is the right move though. The "easy to port to IOS/Android" point is important, and I think going forward that would/should be the model for web development, unless Webapp is sufficient for your purpose, or that you're willing to develop your app in 3 languages (ObjC, Java, C/C#).

That said, I'm sad that my (otherwise very nice) Lumia 800 is getting the WP6.5 treatment.

Even if you stick with C# and XAML and use no new hardware features, WP 8 will produce a different binary than WP 7 simply due to the differences in the .NET frameworks. WP 7 runs Windows CE with .NET Compact Framework. WP 8 runs Windows NT with the full .NET framework. The Compact Framework is a subset of regular .NET, so 8 will be able to load 7 apps, but not the other way around. (Try making a .NET project that shares code between WPF, Silverlight and WP7 and you'll see what I mean)

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