im sorry, but the length of my post may have made it confusing. my mistake. what i meant was that in its current state, with windows 10 pro, windows 10 can do alot more than chrome os by a wide margin. my concern was that with windows 10s, by limiting things to what's found on the windows store, windows 10s may lose that competitive advantage against chrome os. for example, i do alot of video and sound editing. right now, windows (ie., my surface pro 4)is great because alot of the programs and apps i use are professional grade or near-professional grade standalone tools that developers create for windows made available from the respective developer sites, but not through the windows store. on chrome os, maybe those tools approaching professional grade aren't there, but there are at least alot of editing apps i can use for very rudimentary work available, especially now that the Playstore is merging with the Chrome webstore. Albeit definitely not as high quality as the tools i use currently on windows, they at least allow someone to get feel for what it might be like. if i look purely at the windows store, however, (and not at what's available directly from developers) there is a significantly smaller selection of editing tools even for rudimentary work. this is just one example.
my point is that for windows 10s - specifically - to be competitive, ms needs to ensure it stays on its game to ensure some of those great current standalone products are made available through the windows store, even if they are "light" versions.
i get that windows 10s is geared towards students, but with so much of education these days relying on "getting the hands dirty" - i think it's important that ms works towards getting a large and diverse selection of apps on the windows store so that there are more possibilities for at least getting a feel for what students might need to do after graduation. by allowing the full selection of android apps to run on chrome os, i feel google put itself in a good position, now more than ever, of being adopted by educators. cost of chromebooks being cheap is a major factor, but i don't think we should dismiss selection as being a factor as well. if windows 10s works towards strengthening the selection of what's available on the windows store - what with ms promising cheaper windows 10s machines in the future - there is a very real chance windows 10s succeeds in competing with chrome os. if not, people will be inclined to just unlock the pro version, leaving the potential of windows 10s as a platform unfulfilled.
just my opinion anyways ^^
Yeah the UWP is so young (2 1/2 years), and the centennial bridge (think its only a year old), that we are only seeing the start of power software and play anywhere games in the windows store. Think MS is doing pretty much everything it can to get developers over (xamarin 2, windows s, windows on arm later for the ios apps, islandwood, centennial), as well as writing some apps itself.
There ain't much in the way of professional creative software yet, coding software, or engineering software (although there is some), for the university end. There is of course, laypeople versions of most stuff like art programs, music programs, which of reasonably high standard (but still sparse on professional grade stuff). But there isn't a lot of stuff like this yet:
Magix Movie Edit Pro Plus
And just as importantly the stand out feature for kids - games, there is only about a dozen of AAA games like this:
Rise of the Tomb Raider
(Although fortunately big title game dev companies have a fair number of mobile grade games too as full UWP)
It's all just so early for UWP. I happen to agree, not so much for chromeOS specifically (which isn't that popular, globally - for some reason both google and MS obsess about America, and often deliver features or advertising just to them), but in general that it is this type of software, this "power" stuff that sets Windows apart, and could even be the key to its success on its smartphone platform eventually.
If UWP can florish, both from the islandwood end, and the centennial end, all moving to true UWAs, the whole hardware ecosystem becomes robust from one end to the other.
Desktop apps get real coin from its users. People don't expect everything to be free, or 3 bucks, if its good, people will pay. And because of this, and more powerful hardware, and bigger screens, software developed in Windows is leagues ahead quality wise.
Everyday people might not use this that much these days, but there is always a use for power, whether its machine learning computation, or VR - and users if given the option, even if they don't use it, would often prefer to have it.
People get very little use out of 4k, but its all the rage. They have no need for above 13MP but they love it. They don't need 6gb on a phone but they love it. They want MOAR even if its functionally completely useless to them. Even often, when they can't afford the functionally useless features.
That's the consumer mindset. And that is where Windows, across all platforms might have the edge one day, if for no other reason than iOS and Android users don't fork over the coins.
I'd love to see the windows store in a years time, have 50+ AAA xbox and other win32 game ports. I'd love to see windows on arm, bring all those mobility and social apps (not snapchat its probably going to die, lol). I'd like to see a good quarter of those centennials at least make their way over to full UWP and run power PC software across devices.
Imagine adobe apps on a phone for example, a little illustrator design in the doctors office, or some beefy full non-freemium games whilst on the go.
All that is kind of dependant on the sales of Windows 10 hardware releases. Windows s, Windows on arm tablets, notebooks and servers, mixed reality headsets, and Project scorpio (which I suspect might just be a modified PC, to unify PC and xbox even more). If even one of those can be a decent success, or all a little bit, we'll see some action in the store.
Maybe UWP's 3rd and 4th years will be their rise. I suspect well see some good action anyway.
I think the real trump card might be VR for windows. You can't run decent VR from a phone, or via android or ios.
Those companies no doubt will produce very competitive AI which will probably eventually max out server capacity lol, and apple some AR. Both googles and apples AI in the end, may be hard to compete with. Let's hope MS can employ third parties to even that playing field.
But windows/xbox being the superior gaming platform, and the market dominant "static power hardware" has its advantage. A real advantage. The dream of that totally lifelike VR - its not happening on all in ones, or on phones. It will require VERY high end static boxes.
Just like no-one wants to stream 720p theses days, no one is going to want the inferior basement quality VR in the end either. If MS can _just_ manage to be a success in the VR war, UWP apps will flourish long term.
I kind of hope though, MS, apple and google all stay around, or some other set of competitors. If we ever get reduced to one tech company, we are all screwed. companies like apple treat their consumers bad enough as it is. Giving people total power is never good.
is for the unaware consumers who buys laptops because it's cheap. It's Netbooks all over again.
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