I want to be, but I'm not convinced - Universal Apps

[tgp]

@a5cent, should I stop cursing?

I was thinking I should compliment you on having a post or two without any ******** in them! :wink:

 

[Mike Gibson]

We need a geezer forum. I got to sell some OS/2 to a local pharma company - complete with IBM MicroChannel hardware they connected to their LanManager backend - Token Ring as well. I think those units cost as much as my car then. They were running some QC automated testing and statistical analysis.

Couple of final geezer comments. MicroChannel was way too sophisticated for me. How about getting tubes of RAM chips and populating an add-in card to get your PC from 512 KB up to a whopping 640 KB of system memory (make sure none of the chips' legs get bent upon insertion)! Or paying $1000 for a 200 MB hard drive from Dirt Cheap Drives and thinking that was a good deal?!? Or going OMG! when you used a 9600 baud modem for the first time (and the box for it was as large as a modern laptop)?

Kids these days don't know nuthin' ... with their gigabytes and LTE and wifi ...

 

[dkediger]

Yeah, nothing like a motherboard full of DIPP sockets. About a half acre in size. I had one of the true 50MHz 486 CPUs - not the pseudo DX2 dual speed one. It could be a bit buggy, but it did fly for the era. Also might have one the "math bug" original Pentiums tucked away somewhere...

 

[EBUK]

The iPhone only has 21% market share of smartphones

50% larger than Windows. Much more attractive.

 

[EBUK]

HTML standard of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

Thank you for supporting my assertion that standards need to be ratified. It W3C didn't ratify HTML5, it wouldn't be a standard. It may be the norm, but not a standard.

 

[spaulagain]

Thank you for supporting my assertion that standards need to be ratified. It W3C didn't ratify HTML5, it wouldn't be a standard. It may be the norm, but not a standard.

W3C ratifies HTML5 for the web. Just like Microsoft ratifies WinRT for Windows.

BTW, W3C doesn't technically have authority to ratify HTML5 per se. The Web is an open platform and each browser can decide how it wants to interpret things and what mark up is required (hence IE6, and even modern browsers do this until W3C makes up their minds, even then...). However, in efforts to improve development efficiencies, the W3C guidelines have been recognized as the industry de facto standard. And thus W3C's declared guidelines for HTML are considered standard in the industry.

"The W3C develops open specifications (de facto standards) to enhance the interoperability of web-related products."

Definition of de facto...
"A de facto standard is a custom, convention, product, or system that has achieved a dominant position by public acceptance or market forces (such as early entrance to the market)."

In fact, one could actually argue that Microsoft's declared standards in WinRT hold more weight than W3C because Microsoft actually owns that platform and is the one that developed it. And Microsoft is even a member of the W3C. Where as W3C doesn't own the web or web languages. They've simply become a trusted de facto organization for providing publicly accepted "standards."

 

[spaulagain]

50% larger than Windows. Much more attractive.

Wow, splitting hairs much? By that perspective, Android crushes iPhone with 200%+ larger market share. Much much much much more attractive. That must mean developers completely ignore iPhone right? Oh wait...

Also, I like how you cherry picked that stat but then ignored the other market share points I made. Talking about confirmation bias...

 

[UptownWebhead]

This thread escalated quickly.

Posted via the Windows Central App for Android

 

[misterff1]

@spaulagain, maybe it's best to ignore this guy. Apparently he doesn't understand stuff he should for these discussions and it only causes discussions that are pointless.

 

[tiziano27]

Now 69% of Facebook's revenue comes from Mobile. It seems, people is not using the PC anymore for content consumption. That's a strong case against universal apps, and in favor of supporting Android apps on Windows.

 

[wpfan86]

Now 69% of Facebook's revenue comes from Mobile. It seems, people is not using the PC anymore for content consumption. That's a strong case against universal apps, and in favor of supporting Android apps on Windows.

"Mobile" also likely encompasses tablets, so if companies like Facebook want any piece of the Windows tablet pie, they'll need to develop an app.

 

[rhapdog]

"Mobile" also likely encompasses tablets, so if companies like Facebook want any piece of the Windows tablet pie, they'll need to develop an app.

Mobile encompasses every "app" that access Facebook. If you go to Facebook from your phone's browser, it won't show up as "mobile" to Facebook. The way the get that number is by App access.

That means the Windows 8/8.1 Facebook app, which I use on my touch screen laptop, is also counted as Mobile as far as Facebook is concerned. It still needs to be developed for Universal, because it's already being counted with those numbers.

Also consider that mobile devices make up a much larger percentage of ownership than PCs. Much more than the 60% usage, when means when it comes to browsing Facebook, there are a lot of people putting their phones down in favor of a PC.

This is more complicated than you realize.

No, universal apps will allow companies to target both the mobile and the desktop environment at the same time. The only reason some people don't want to use the WinRT apps instead of a desktop app is because all the WinRT apps are "full screen" only, and they lose the task bar and can't have another program on the screen at the same time. Desktop users like to multitask and see multiple windows. I'm that way as well. Now I'm using my WinRT apps in the Win10 TP right along side my desktop apps, and it no longer makes a difference to me. As a matter of fact, because of their ease of use, I've converted a lot of apps on my system to WinRT, because when I do a Windows reset, wipe out everything, and start fresh, my apps I had installed will come back when I sign into my Microsoft account. That means I no longer have to hunt down my install discs, or where I saved the setup file on the computer. No more trying to get individual programs set up the way I had them before, which would take days, because how I have them set up is backed up to the cloud with WinRT apps and my Microsoft account. It's a lot easier, and I like that appeal as a hard-core user that usually wipes the OS clean and starts over at least once a year. Windows 10 will just make it easier for me.

I've got a few programs that I use that I would love to see made touch friendly and ported to WinRT. Like a really good, high end text editor and IDE. I would love to see a touch friendly Visual Studio built for WinRT. Perhaps that would make developers more serious about writing for it when they see what can be accomplished with the very product they use to create it.

 

[spaulagain]

Now 69% of Facebook's revenue comes from Mobile. It seems, people is not using the PC anymore for content consumption. That's a strong case against universal apps, and in favor of supporting Android apps on Windows.

Huh? That doesn't make any sense. If anything, it's a strong case FOR Universal apps as they would be mobile friendly.

 

[rhapdog]

Huh? That doesn't make any sense. If anything, it's a strong case FOR Universal apps as they would be mobile friendly.

Exactly, since a large portion of that "mobile" is tablets. Write it for those tablets, and voila, it is for the phone, too! Easy for developers. They just have to account for screen scaling.

 

[anon(5383410)]

Not releasing the wp8 sdk before releasing the OS was one of their biggest mistakes. I hope they don't make that mistake again.

 

[paulxxwall]

Exactly, since a large portion of that "mobile" is tablets. Write it for those tablets, and voila, it is for the phone, too! Easy for developers. They just have to account for screen scaling.

so its not as easy as just making the app and the os will adjust to devise huh? The devs have to adjust to the devices and so its most likely it will inconvenience the devs to write for different devices.....just like it is now for WP....an inconvenience!

 

[EBUK]

A very important point. Devs, how do you feel about this?

 

[spaulagain]

so its not as easy as just making the app and the os will adjust to devise huh? The devs have to adjust to the devices and so its most likely it will inconvenience the devs to write for different devices.....just like it is now for WP....an inconvenience!

No, and no one here has said that. And you are completely wrong comparing to how it is now with WP. Until recently, Universal apps didn't even exist. Developers literally had to build separate apps. Also, even now with Universal apps, the APIs are different between Windows and Windows Phone. This will not be the case with Windows 10 as they will be the same at that point. So it doesn't compare to the current situation.

As for the effort in adapting the UI...

Even with desktop and laptops, screens sizes and resolution vary greatly. Devs already have to accommodate this via fluid layouts and adjustable menus/tools. Especially advanced tools like Adobe products and AutoCAD. All those tools are already built into various modules that the user can drag and dock anywhere they want. For example, my Illustrator setup includes the viewport on one screen, with the editing tools on another screen to the left. Then the layers and attribute tools are on another screen to the right. All of these tools/menus are collapsible into one icon for each group. In addition, Adobe has already started working on a touch friendly UI for even their x86 applications. On my touch screen laptop, they prompt me if I'd like to use touch mode.

And for more minimal applications that don't exist yet. Microsoft, Telerik, and other parties already have UI toolkits that adapt. In some cases, much of this is already taken care of.

Second of all, in the web world at least, about 95% of the work is writing the backend database system, logic, etc. And some of that laying the base for the UI layout. Making it go from desktop to phone is actually not a whole lot more effort.


I'm not saying this is some flip of the switch easy, but it's not that much more effort and will really become a requirement as screens/devices get more diverse over time just as it has with websites/web apps.

 

[luke_f]

Universal Apps makes it a lot easier to target both Windows and WP (and Xbox at some point), allowing you to easily share most of your source code. It is a great technology and a great help no doubt. Still, the dev needs to create a completely different UI for a WP version compared to Desktop version. The tiny screen will require a completely different approach to screen pages, layout and navigation. Same for a dev that wants to bring an app to PC. No one would use a WP version that is just upscaled. You need to make use of the screen real estate, you need to optimize it for keyboard navigation (tab, directional). An app on Xbox must work well with the controller, no touch input or mouse available there. Music playback works radically different on WP compared to PC due to resource constraints. Limited resources on the phone are one more aspect that needs to be taken care of and adapted for. So there is a lot of stuff that needs to be done differently in each version of an app.

There is no such thing as one Universal App that runs on all device types, despite MS marketing it as such. Universal Apps is a development technology that allows you to create different apps for different device types more easily, sharing huge amounts of code base. Plus, it allows you to "link" those apps from a user/store perspective, so any purchases you do can be used in all supported device types, and settings can roam between form factors.

 

[paulxxwall]

Universal Apps makes it a lot easier to target both Windows and WP (and Xbox at some point), allowing you to easily share most of your source code. It is a great technology and a great help no doubt. Still, the dev needs to create a completely different UI for a WP version compared to Desktop version. The tiny screen will require a completely different approach to screen pages, layout and navigation. Same for a dev that wants to bring an app to PC. No one would use a WP version that is just upscaled. You need to make use of the screen real estate, you need to optimize it for keyboard navigation (tab, directional). An app on Xbox must work well with the controller, no touch input or mouse available there. Music playback works radically different on WP compared to PC due to resource constraints. Limited resources on the phone are one more aspect that needs to be taken care of and adapted for. So there is a lot of stuff that needs to be done differently in each version of an app.

There is no such thing as one Universal App that runs on all device types, despite MS marketing it as such. Universal Apps is a development technology that allows you to create different apps for different device types more easily, sharing huge amounts of code base. Plus, it allows you to "link" those apps from a user/store perspective, so any purchases you do can be used in all supported device types, and settings can roam between form factors.

Makes more sense than just make the app and it will adjust on the fly according to devices. Sorry but just like the Kinect debacle devs wont make the universal its a hassle just like it is now or WP would have 1.5 million apps too! Devs aren't implementing Kinect into games because its a hassle no matter Microsoft's vision ! I'm sorry but im just being real with myself