I hear you. I can deal with the App situation, since I'm not a big app user, but what I don't like is how the world is being locked down to Android and iOS when there is often no need.
Actually your wrong there. There is a need. This is the BIG problem with Windows Phone. It comes down to basic math here.
If you want to make mobile apps, you need the dev team to build the apps, then you have to support it, then you have to update it every once and a while and you have to market it, THIS ALL COSTS MONEY and it's not cheap. So when you look at the Mobile Market One has about 65% of the market, One has about 30-35% of the market and you got this little one that only has about 3.5% and you have blackberry, that is still hanging around 1% (give or take and these numbers are not accurate at all).
So for output of cash, for the best app, that will target my market (If the store is in CA, the app is not going to be used in RI), Android and iOS would be the best bet for the app, as Windows Phone is growing, it still sits a low 3.5% and for the market I my company is in, that might be even less.
So to make their money go the longest possible, as this point, spending the time making an app for Windows Phone would be
almost pointless, as your going to spend a lot of money to make a good app and get very little return because it's got a very small market place and odds are even less in the market your trying to sell to.
In a nut shell this is what happens. Now Microsoft sees this, low market share means low sales, lower amount of apps, means lower volume of profit in the long run. They have tried many things (starting from WP7), and although some have worked to get the BIG apps as they call it(by dumping a LOT of cash towards devs), it does not solve the WHOLE problem. No matter what they do, they cant really get over that 3.5-4% mark, they cant spend billions buying off apps to have apps, so they do the next best thing, give the tool to allow devs to convert their Android/iOS app to Windows Phone with very little work.
So they did the work on their other apps (iOS and Android), so now it's easy to convert it. Then universal apps and with them giving away Windows 10, they want this to work, so millions of Windows 10 machines, means more apps, minor code changes, it's a Universal apps, and now it's a Windows Phone app.
Microsoft knows this and they are desperate to get the apps, across all platforms, Once Windows Phone hits (if it ever makes it) to that 10-15% marketshare, you will see things change BIG time but, there is a REALLY long time and a lot of work from Microsoft before it gets there...
On the other side, after 3-4 years of all this work (all these things to grow the market share) and they don't hit that large % (15-20%) and are still sitting around 3-5%, I think Windows Phone will be one of Microsoft's largest tax write offs....