MICROSOFT got my attention with these take aways!

[Phone Guy 4567]

I am not going to be obnoxious and repost my own long response in another thread but it is here if interested: http://forums.windowscentral.com/wi...unity-embracing-windows-10-a.html#post3079463. Long and short of it is this is simply a bit of euphoria among the platform advocates with no lasting effect. It addresses absolutely nothing with regard to developers for other platforms since it fails to address the actual reality - low user base equals no developer interest. This is a chicken and egg scenario. You need the apps to attract the users but the developers won't bring the apps without the user base to justify. Nothing vis a vis Android and ios developers yesterday actually encourages a developer to port their apps. It only makes it easier for them to do something they already decided they are not doing, or support a platform they already dumped. The major apps that have left Windows Phone in the past few months did not do so because it was difficult to develop a native app. They left because the market share did not justify continued investment. I am sorry but anything short of a no effort solution (an emulator or direct access option) for the disinterested developer community will not solve the problem.

Yup every time something new is announced it is the thing that will save the platform according to the faithful, but then the faith dissipates quickly. WP7 was supposed to be the answer to Windows Mobile failing fortunes, 7.5 was supposed to fix WP7 & 8 was a reset that was supposed to attract devs with the ability to reuse at least some of their existing code. Windows 10 is supposed to have even tighter code integration between the different versions, but clearly MS doesn't believe this will spur developers to create more Modern apps so they now want them to recompile iOS and Android apps. These apps will probably look exactly like iOS and Android apps which will be jarring to long time WP users and alienate the already dwindling core of faithful even more.

 

[Cleavitt76]

The new phones shouldn't need any kind of cable as is shown in Joe's demo vid:

...

This makes me wonder what's on that monitor to make things work wirelessly. Especially if I end up at a hotel room somewhere with a circa 2007 HDMI flat screen. My miracast dongle at home slightly sucks with some lag and that's with a 30/mbps connection. I'd much rather my phone got put into a physical dock with a wired HDMI port like my tablet does now.

Just an FYI, Miracast does not go through your Internet/local network connection. It uses Wifi Direct (a subset of the Wifi protocol) to connect directly from the device to the Miracast adapter. Your home vs. hotel room network speeds will not affect the wireless display performance at all. Also, I'm not sure which Miracast adapter you are using, but I have a Netgear PTV3000 and the lag is almost non-existent.

Anyway, I suspect that Continuum will work with either Miracast or a wired connection via HDMI or DisplayPort over USB-C. However, I think it's very telling that Joe B. kept saying "on new phones" and "future Qualcomm hardware" in that video you posted. I'm guessing that Continuum on current gen phones may have some limitations due to the need for specific hardware.

 

[Cleavitt76]

... Long and short of it is this is simply a bit of euphoria among the platform advocates with no lasting effect. It addresses absolutely nothing with regard to developers for other platforms since it fails to address the actual reality - low user base equals no developer interest. This is a chicken and egg scenario. You need the apps to attract the users but the developers won't bring the apps without the user base to justify. Nothing vis a vis Android and ios developers yesterday actually encourages a developer to port their apps. It only makes it easier for them to do something they already decided they are not doing, or support a platform they already dumped. ...

You have a point in regards to Windows Phone only. However, these tools can produce universal apps which target all Windows 10 devices including desktops, laptops, tablets, phones, IoT, and Xbox One. When you add up all the customers running those types of Windows devices the situation is very different. Now you are talking about a single platform/ecosystem that is among the most commonly used in the world. If a developer can spend a few days using mostly automated tools to convert their existing code and target that many new customers they would be pretty foolish to ignore that.

 

[jlzimmerman]

That's just it, there aren't going to be emulators. iOS and Android apps can be recompiled to run natively as WP apps.

There are voices in the dev community that say it isn't that easy. We'll see. And of course there are those who will not port to MS regardless of how easy or how many users there are.

 

[Legoboyii]

There are voices in the dev community that say it isn't that easy. We'll see. And of course there are those who will not port to MS regardless of how easy or how many users there are.

*cough* SnapChat *cough*

 

[Cleavitt76]

There are voices in the dev community that say it isn't that easy. We'll see. And of course there are those who will not port to MS regardless of how easy or how many users there are.

The dev community (which I am part of) hasn't seen anything beyond what has been shown at build so far. Of course it's not going to be a single button click and it depends on the application, but it very well might be possible to crank out a respectable product within several hours of work. Even if it takes a couple of weeks for some complex apps, that is a small investment if it allows you to reach the entire Windows ecosystem.

 

[rhapdog]

If an App just has to connect to a Google service in order to function, expect the workarounds to be more of a PITA than a developer thinks it is worth. I would imagine Google would block that type of access pretty quickly when it starts cropping up.

My understanding was that the new tool would automatically redirect all Google services to Microsoft services. That means it wouldn't be a matter of Google being able to clock that type of access, as they won't even be part of it any longer.

Hmm.... does that mean if someone ports Google Maps, it will show maps from Bing? LOL (Yeah, I know it would have to be Google to port it, and they won't. It's a joke for crying out loud.)

 

[HeyCori]

There's a lot of singular focus on the Android issue but that's only a small part of a bigger picture. Microsoft isn't just trying to port Android apps, they're trying to become the de facto platform for developing programs across any and all devices. For example, at 1:49:00 Myerson discusses how developers can bring their Win32 and .net applications to the Windows Store. All thanks to the new development tools and Universal app platform. That's huge for any developer with a desktop program that they didn't want to reprogram their application from scratch just to have it available on the Windows Store.

Microsoft doesn't just want more apps, they want to remove the barrier to development. Example, here's a video explaining a little bit about Project Astoria. Microsoft wants developers to do as little as possible to get their apps from one platform to another. Even going so far as to analyze what the dev needs to change and how to change it. That's a huge workload and a major barrier to remove!

And then there's the second part of the strategy, expanding the Windows 10 user base. How will Microsoft do that rapidly? By giving away Windows 10 for free to all Windows 7 and 8 users. Even if only a fraction of that total user base upgrades, that's still very significant market share.

Microsoft wants devs to have this mindset, that all they need to reach millions of new customers is to spend a few hours/days coding and not weeks/months trying to build something from scratch.

 

[ShinraCorp]

Alright for those who are interested in knowing what some are talking about, head to channel9 and watch the Day 1 Keynote, at 2:23:28, Joe says that he'll show a demo of Continuum at a session on Thursday. Since he was running a simulation during the Day 1 Keynote.

EDIT: So I looked at the Continuum panel and apparently Continuum can run via Miracast with either a Wireless dock or a Wireless Dongle, however the Wired Dock situation might require special hardware which is what Joe might of meant.

 

[Spectrum90]

Alright for those who are interested in knowing what some are talking about, head to channel9 and watch the Day 1 Keynote, at 2:23:28, Joe says that he'll show a demo of Continuum at a session on Thursday. Since he was running a simulation during the Day 1 Keynote.

EDIT: So I looked at the Continuum panel and apparently Continuum can run via Miracast with either a Wireless dock or a Wireless Dongle, however the Wired Dock situation might require special hardware which is what Joe might of meant.

I think the hardware he's referring is the multi-display support in the Qualcomm SOCs.

 

[Chinocop]

So has anybody actually gone out and gauged developer interest? I would hope that Microsoft would put on the full court press to evangelize developers. Me being the cynic, I truly believe that lots of US developers think it's beneath them to develop for Windows.

 

[ShinraCorp]

Yeah because when I thought he meant required new hardware to use it, I thought he meant a new type of phone. But alas it was just a myth So that means no new phone news for this week.