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Microsoft's Skype Drops Modern App In Favour of Old-Fashioned Win32 App
mikejuk writes: Microsoft, after putting a lot of effort into persuading us that Universal Apps are the way of the future, pulls the plug on Skype modern app, to leave just the desktop version. Skype is one of Microsoft's flagship products and it has been available as a desktop Win32 app and as a Modern/Metro/WinRT app for some time. You would think that Skype would support Universal Apps, there are few enough of them — but no. According to the Skype blog: 'Starting on July 7, we're updating PC users of the Windows modern application to the Windows desktop application, and retiring the modern application.' Microsoft is pushing Windows 10 Universal Apps as the development platform for now and the future, but its Skype team have just disagreed big time. If Microsoft can't get behind the plan why should developers? (Also at Windows Central and VentureBeat.)
Yes, really. There's no 64-bit Skype. Skype is always 32-bit.
Why? Because there's no need for a 64-bit version.
Universal Apps have a permission system, like Android. That means that, with a little tinkering, an app like Skype can be configured to work properly yet still have no privacy-violating access to parts of your computer it has no business being in.
But a full-blown Win32 app isn't restricted in the same way - or at least, preventing it from behaving maliciously is a lot harder. As a datamining tool, a Win32 app is far, far more valuable than an app.
In case people have forgotten, the Skype team was working with the NSA long before Microsoft acquired them. This decision should surprise no one.
It's Microsoft's biggest asset (as well as client/server development platforms). Just because somebody else seems to be doing well in the mobile space, why does Microsoft see a need to translate that into ruining one of the good things going for them? If Microsoft trashes the desktop PC they do so at their peril. And I say this as an avid Mac user at home and Win8/.NET/SQL Server developer at work. The vast majority of 5 x 7 workers are NOT going to be productive with a tablet. They ARE going to be productive on "traditional" desktop computers (whether they use apps in a web browser all day or not).
It's more an example of the "create a new universal standard" approach to programming: The obligatory XKCD cartoon is:
https://xkcd.com/927/
TFA says Windows RT will continue to get the Skype Metro app. So actually... I'm kinda struggling to see the logic here. Skype will still be maintained on both platforms, it's just people with Windows 8 tablets with an ix86 architecture will now have to navigate to the (touch-awkward) desktop to use Skype.
Uh, what?
And yet I can't get myself too upset about this because the Metro app had that horrible "Cannot use anything other than the logged in Microsoft account unless you want to force all your apps to have different accounts" "feature". For those saying "So?", if you've tried to use 8.1 in the latter mode, Windows acts like you're committing a crime each time you install a new app that requires a Microsoft account. And to give you some idea of what requires a Microsoft account, Microsoft FUCKING SOLITAIRE will bug you constantly until you associate it with one. There's no "Leave me alone, no, I don't need my current Spider status stored in the cloud you idiot, why would you even think that's something I want let alone insist on demanding login credentials every time I start this game" checkbox.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Well, Microsoft refers to it as Win64.
Win32 is essentially the same as Win16, with 32 bit pointers in a single address space. Win64/Win32/Win16 are all the Windows API with different memory models.
Disclaimer: I was programming these things in the 1980s and 1990s, which is why I'm getting hammered in another thread for pointing out that "PC" has always been used to refer to computers based upon the IBM PC architecture and its descendants, and no, Amigas were never PCs, even though they were personal computers. Youngsters these days. Tsk.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
No, no I dont. I want it to have the fullscreen capability, but not full screen forced on me.
The worst apps on my Surface Pro are the stupid as hell metro apps.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.