With Threshold, will today's tablet-only apps be available for phones?

[UchihaZephyr]

Since phones and ARM tablets will run the same OS, will we automatically be able to install something like the Nook app on a Windows phone?

 

[loofmodnar]

I think that's the goal whether or not it happens depends on how close they get the APIs. Likely developers will at a minimum need to recompile the app for the new version to enable it. More likely, there'll be some UI work involved in making apps actually work.

At this point, it's the only way to really kick start Win app development. If it's ridiculously easy to create a single app and have it work on WP, Threshold and Xbox people might take the platform seriously.

 

[Crumble Shake]

Not really.

At the moment, another issue is that a lot of code has to be rewritten between the two, since there's a lot of differences between Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 at the backend, and different ways of interaction, but presumably this issue will go away with Windows 9.

But the issue that remains is that an app that's made for a tablet has had its UI designed for the screen sizes available to a tablet, not to mention that they're all designed for landscape screens. A developer would have to make a whole separate UI to get that app to work on phone screen sizes in portrait, which isn't far from the situation with universal apps at the moment, where phone and tablet apps share a lot of backend. Basically, you won't be able to go into the Windows Phone store and see an app for Windows and download it for your phone unless the developer has done all the work of making a Windows Phone component.

It will, however, be far far easier for developers to make their Windows apps available on Windows Phone.

 

[Joshua Jackson]

But the issue that remains is that an app that's made for a tablet has had its UI designed for the screen sizes available to a tablet, not to mention that they're all designed for landscape screens. A developer would have to make a whole separate UI to get that app to work on phone screen sizes in portrait, which isn't far from the situation with universal apps at the moment, where phone and tablet apps share a lot of backend. Basically, you won't be able to go into the Windows Phone store and see an app for Windows and download it for your phone unless the developer has done all the work of making a Windows Phone component.

Of course, if their apps are already designed with snap view in mind, a phone's vertical layout and pixel width shouldn't be an big issue.
There are a lot of apps where snap view just creates a horizontal scroll bar, though.
JJ