Can Project Centennial apps run on Windows 10 Mobile (and other questions answered)

[Windows Central]

Earlier today, the first glimpses of Microsoft using their bridge called Centennial to repackage existing Classic Windows Apps was spotted in the Store. In short, Microsoft is taking Win32 apps like Paint and WordPad and "converting" them to the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) so that they can be listed in the Store.

Going through the comments, it is evident there is a lot of confusion around this topic including what is the point and whether these apps can run on Windows 10 Mobile. Here are some answers.

Full story from the WindowsCentral blog...

 

[a5cent]

About time an article like this is published. Thank you!

Now that Windows Central has cleared up some of the confusion, it would probably be good if Windows Central stopped using the term "conversion to UWP" in the context of Project Centennial. It suggests something that is just plain wrong, and it's a big part of what caused the confusion in the first place.

Something else you may want to consider:

There are still things that Win32 apps do that is not present in UWP.

The above is misleading, as it makes it sound as if it's MS' goal to make UWP functionally equivalent to Win32, which is wrong. There will (intentionally) always be things that Win32 can do (or does differently) compared to the UWP. That's the whole point of the UWP, as adding all the features and functionality of Win32 to UWP would necessarily also mean replicating all the flaws that are part of Win32. If UWP ends up being just a different way of doing ALL the exact same things Win32 already allowed for, then MS might as well never have built the UWP. It would be pointless.

In a nutshell... there will never be a way to automatically convert a Win32 app into a real UWP app, no matter how much MS expands the capabilities of their UWP, simply because the two are so conceptually different.