Microsoft had a dream with Windows 8 that involved universal Windows apps that would span across phones, tablets, PCs, and even Xbox consoles. The plan was that app developers could write a single app for all of these devices, and it would magically span across them all. This dream really started to fall apart after Windows Phone failed, but it’s well and truly over now.
Microsoft has spent years pushing developers to create special apps for the company’s Universal Windows Platform (UWP), and today, it’s putting the final nail in the UWP coffin. Microsoft is finally allowing game developers to bring full native Win32 games to the Microsoft Store, meaning the many games that developers publish on popular stores like Steam don’t have to be rebuilt for UWP.
The concept of UWP was sound, but on Windows it had to compete with Win32, and on mobile, Windows Phone was an abject failure. There just wasn’t any developer uptake.
I’m curious what about the concept of UWP you think is sound? I always thought that it was a peculiar case of madness, having absolute incompatibility with anything that had gone before as a core principle. Managed-only code (originally) and with it the inability to link or call any common C library functions. The fact that in the five years since it was introduced, Microsoft themselves have ported almost none of their tent-pole applications to it should be a clue.
This. Traditionally, complex Microsoft applications served as an example on how to build applications using the new Microsoft APIs and technologies. The whole Metro/UWP thing was dead in the water when Microsoft had to put a secret Win32 stash in Windows RT in order to accommodate Microsoft Office (which proudly remained a Win32 app). Nice vote of confidence for Microsoft’s new platform there.
That and the fact that going to Metro/UWP forced developers to go through Microsoft’s tollbooth if they wanted to sell their app. Maybe for smaller apps the increased discoverability is worth it, but nobody is going to look at an app like the full version of MATLAB or AutoCAD and say “look, a multi-hundred-dollar app, wonder what it can do”. So, why should Mathworks or Autodesk go through Microsoft’s tollbooth?
UWP is more than just the application API, which makes this whole thing more complicated. It’s a lot of different pieces making up, well, a full platform.
The UWP sandboxing/packaging format is persisting as the store format, so from Microsoft’s point of view they’ve managed a small win (though personally I’m not a fan of the level of isolation and indirection involved in a UWP-wrapped Win32 app).
With each Win10 release, more of the core OS is being reimplemented as UWP too. Most classic control panel applets are now gone, the UWP version of explorer is coming along in fits and bursts, half the shell is already UWP, etc.
UWP’s not dead, really, it’s just seeing evolution and compromise.
Based on the number of “UWP” games Microsoft is able to bring to other game stores simply by announcing it, it seems that not really even the games are using the UWP platform as a whole but are posthumously packaged as UWP apps for promoting Microsoft monopoly over game publishing.
This effort largely died to most gamers when they found out their game files were encrypted an they couldn’t mod games that have always had an enormous modding community.
Yet another FUD anti-UWP post.
UWP is doing pretty well, at BUILD 2019 they announced.
WinUI 3.0 roadmap, https://github.com/microsoft/microsoft-ui-xaml/issues/717
React Native for Windows being ported into UWP, https://github.com/microsoft/react-native-windows
And then there is MSIX, XAML Islands, XAML Direct, and plenty of other UWP goodies.
The only thing that is happening is Microsoft making UWP independent of specific Windows 10 versions, but naturally the anti-UWP crowd, that doesn’t have a clue about UWP, rejoices.
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