Slashdot Mirror
Windows 10 Can Run Reworked Android and iOS Apps
An anonymous reader writes with this interesting news from Microsoft. After months of rumors, Microsoft is revealing its plans to get mobile apps on Windows 10 today. While the company has been investigating emulating Android apps, it has settled on a different solution, or set of solutions, that will allow developers to bring their existing code to Windows 10. iOS and Android developers will be able to port their apps and games directly to Windows universal apps, and Microsoft is enabling this with two new software development kits. On the Android side, Microsoft is enabling developers to use Java and C++ code on Windows 10, and for iOS developers they'll be able to take advantage of their existing Objective C code. 'We want to enable developers to leverage their current code and current skills to start building those Windows applications in the Store, and to be able to extend those applications,' explained Microsoft's Terry Myerson during an interview with The Verge this morning.
or provide a translation engine
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Why would anybody want this? I can't think of any mobile apps that would be useful on a regular computer. Most of the really useful mobile apps are only really specific to the fact they're being run on a mobile device, and/or are really only helpful for bridging a gap between a phone and a computer.
Now, when can I run Windows 10 on my iPhone?
I at least find the approach interesting. I wonder if this is going to go the same route they tried with browsers in Metro where they could talk to a back-end process (Win32 or otherwise).
the headline accidentally left out a word.
Windows 10 Can Run Reworked Android and iOS Apps, Badly
a.k.a. "a better DOS than DOS" and "a better Windows than Windows." That did not end well.
It just requires a little more "reworking."
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
"We want to ENABLE developers to leverage their current code and current skills to start building those Windows applications in the Store, and to be able to EXTEND those applications"
Embrace, extend, ______.
MS tried to kill Java when Sun was pushing it. Now they're supporting it.
Hey Google and Apple, how about changing your API just enough to break Microsoft's implementation every time they release a version? Pleeeeease.
LOL
What I'm reading is that MS has all but given up on Windows as a mobile development platform for the sake of being able to run Android/iOS apps.
It also serves as a tacit acknowledgment that MS isn't connecting with mobile developers, and that mobile apps drive mobile platforms.
" advantage of their existing Objective C code."
Of course, Apple has been pushing Swift ... by the time this tool gains traction, how many of the newest sexiest IOS apps will not port because they aren't Objective-C?
So not only have you windows malware, now you get extra bonus as Anrdoid malware as well.
...if I want to run the wide range of apps available on Android, why would I spend money on a phone that limps along with "reworked" (WTF?!?!) apps? Go for the real thing, duh! Even Microsoft is admitting defeat here.
DEVELOPERS!
The UI was "artsy" in WP7, but it's just cluttered and ugly now. You can't even use live tiles like widgets. No one will adopt this platform until they fix the UI. WP marketshare actually shrank last year. Heck even Blackberry predicts they'll sell double the units this year.
In the 80's Microsoft wrote their applications to be able to import files in formats from other companies, but not export back to the same formats. Examples were lotus 1-2-3 and Wordperfect. This tactic was a trick to encourage and then lock in developers to work only on the Windows platform using Microsoft's software. It also explains their reluctance to make easily available export tools to Open Office formats unless forced by a government such at the UK.
Examples of this trick:
Have gnu, will travel.
It's a popular operating system developed by Microsoft, a large software company headquartered in Redmond, WA.
As this is the first time you've heard about that company and their products, you have no reason to care.
Required reading for internet skeptics
Apple and Google have filed a lawsuit against Microsoft, reportedly the complaint stems from competing too much.
DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS!
hmm... the filters says not to use so many caps because it's like "YELLING". ;)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
If they just ran the Windows 10 platform on Android to begin with they wouldn't need to port apps. They wouldn't even have to pay the patent fees!
From past systems like this, I think it would mean that you can technically use Objective-C code, just not any of the system frameworks... but that would be a pretty huge limitation if so, and involve a ton of re-work for anything existing.
I don't know why companies get so exited around being able to re-use a subset of business logic, and nothing else.... get a rules engine people!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I am a big believer in emulators. Just have an emulator that can run android or ios apps sort of like wine emulates windows apps for linux.
Every OS should have a suite of emulators that can run any program from any other operating system.
Yes, you take a performance hit when you emulate but if your computer is speedy you don't notice.
I have a virtual OSX, Virtual linux, and a couple virtual flavors of windows on my PC. I can run pretty much anything. At top speed without a performance hit? No... OSX especially is a little bit slower because the optimization isn't great. I love my virtual machines.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
they had that for a long time...
looks like they are helping them use android/ios API on windows.
(API = Application Program Interface, how an app talks to an OS)
It looks like in fact Microsoft is providing some kind of middle layer which provides much of the iOS framework libraries, they are calling it "Islandwood". Couldn't find details beyond that though.
It doesn't mean much to me that a game was ported with minimal effort since that would mostly be using OpenGL and the like.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I am at the build conference where this information came from.
It was not an interview in any form. Also key details were wrong (hyper v is not used to bring native apps to the app store, it is AppV). Lots of details were missing like the phone os' android subsystem for emulating android apps.
Don't read the article, watch the keynote after it gets posted to channel 9.
Microsoft was an amicus supporting Oracle in their efforts to copyright APIs.
Now they want to turn around and do the exact same thing, only for Android and iOS. And to top that all off, their entire success is based on the fact that they were able to rip off the CP/M APIs and clone them for IBM and do so for much cheaper than what DR wanted.
Who cares. Windows is dead and obsolete.
I can't wait for Windows 10 to finally support C++ applications. I've been using it since the 70's, and it's really great to see such a prolific language finally hit the Windows platform. This truly is the year of the Windows Desktop.
'nuff said
In a youtube video from 2007 Steve Ballemer was interviewed on the announcement of Android. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwIUEnXctuA
It's worth watching to see how strong Microsoft was in phones back then. And how little they understood what was coming.
Favorite quote from Ballmer in 2007: "There are 150 different handsets running Windows Mobile." Does anybody know how many phone handsets run Windows today? 1? 2?3?
And here's the interview of Ballmer about iphone as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eywi0h_Y5_U Again, hindsight is an awesome thing. Microsoft was totally blindsided by the iphone.
Microsoft is killing themselves. Lowering the cost of porting applications is no substitute for generating organic demand for a platform people see value in using.
MS has a technologically sound platform yet their desperate attempts at "Apple emulation" is costing them dearly in terms of hackers and developers in a position to want to write software for WP.
The platform is openly hostile to customization and demonstrates no respect for privacy or rights of its users.
In addition to failing to offer basic features available in other platforms including insanely enough even features present in previous generations of "Windows Mobile".
Until this changes good luck getting anyone to care about using the platform much less develop software for it.
This sounds like what IBM did with OS/2 to run Windows apps. We all know how that turned out. Right once run anywhere is a farce and marketing pipe dream. Byte the bullet and write native. If it is not worth writing native maybe the platform is not worth it.
I wonder if they will make the same mistake they did with Windows Phone and not provide any OpenGL ES support
No thanks.
“Mind Control: To control mental output you have to control mental input. Take control of the channels by which developers receive information, then they can only think about the things you tell them. Thus, you control mindshare!” ref
Oh, you'll wake up when it works
Well, if it works well all it will mean Windows gets some of the exploding Mac app market, a breath of fresh air in the stagnating Windows application space (for everything but games that is).
Apple is sort of phasing out Macs anyways, aren't they
You must be thinking of the slumping PC market.
Apple doesn't talk about Macs much but they are the sleeper hit, they keep growing in sales (unlike Windows PC) and Apple spends a lot of effort developing new macs.
Retina 5k iMac, perhaps you've heard of it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
So they've spent some more time muddying the purpose of their OS and they want us to bring our efforts to their platform, after years and years of making sure nobody could take their efforts under Windows to other platforms?
Good luck there MS, I for one will not be supporting you.
It's OK Bender, there's no such thing as 2.
If I have to make any changes to my code at all, or have to use Microsoft tools, then I'm not interested. Windows Phones aren't a big enough market or an interesting enough platform for me to bother.
OK... smells of incompetence to me. For years they've been hinting of the ability to run iOS apps on OSX,m but it's always been implied it's too difficult. YEt Microsoft didn't seem to have any problem, and surely OSXs code can't be more imcompatible than Windows. Sheer incompetence.. and another reason to run Linux instead on my Mac..