I would like to know what exactly is " universal app" meant ?
That any OSes can use it, not just Windows ?

I don't understand this really. Are universal apps different in some fundamental way to those using the Win32 API? I know they are bigger and have less rights but they are basically doing the same thing.

Surely if you though there was a market you would port it from one to the other (probably without really changing anything) although whether anyone would want to run Photoshop on a smartphone is debatable...

davidhk said:

I would like to know what exactly is " universal app" meant ?
That any OSes can use it, not just Windows ?

Hee hee, not just me wondering about that then :)

Brink said:

Here's Microsoft's definition. :)

What's a Universal Windows Platform (UWP) app?

excerpt :
At the core of UWP apps is the idea that users want their experiences to be mobile across ALL their devices, and they want to use whatever device is most convenient or productive for the task at hand.
.................................................................................................... ....................................................................................

Let me see if I understand it correctly................
So, in short, universal apps are for all WINDOWS devices.
Yes ?
If so, are there any Windows Store apps that are not applicable to All Windows devices ?
I am still foggy on that.

Hi there

without wanting to be the "5th" player in a String quartet - I can see ZERO possible use for running something like photoshop on a tiny mobile phone screen -- I like the BIGGEST screen I can get hold of. If I could stick an 80 inch screen in my office for this I'd do it at a shot. !!!!! --My Office isn't that big unfortunately --or at least the distance I'd have to sit away from the screen makes the room too small.

Similarly if you are using things like Layers etc in photoshop to produce professional quality prints you need to be able to Window and dynamically re-size these - not have fixed pixel sizes --also having a Menu is also nice.

Aren't some of these so called "Universal Apps" simply trying to "Re-integrate" Win 8 via the Back door and we all know how much the general public liked Win 8. !!!

My bugbear with mobile phones is once you've added a few apps is the endless horizontal scrolling you often have to make on these devices. To me except in a very small number of cases give me a decent Cascading Menu system any time.

In addition a load of "Real work" type applications can STILL be handled far better via a mouse and keyboard - or a pen etc -- Touch simply is NO good for a huge number of apps and saying that it's so is a mega load of "Little Round Objects".

Simple example translate say a word type document (with an inbuilt spread sheet and some power point slides) into two or three languages by ONLY using touch and not being able to use a number of different monitors or even open windows concurrently.

No thanks. --I'm Outta here as the saying goes on Universal Apps for anything sensible. even on comparison web sites you want to check maybe 5 different results concurrently. I'll accept things like Weather -- the BBC actually has a very good one for mobiles -- are OK as they are relatively simple requiring almost no user interaction but otherwise IMO forget it -- and in this case perhaps being an old fashioned Engineering Dinosaur actually is OK here. !!!! Don't innovate just for innovations sake. Do something that really does bring benefits to the table.

Cheers
jimbo

davidhk said:

Let me see if I understand it correctly................
So, in short, universal apps are for all WINDOWS devices.
Yes ?

Yes.

I think (but I'm not sure which is why I asked) that the Windows kernel can be talked to in various ways. There is the old Win32API which does all the decent programs we are aware of (Word, Excel, Photoshop whatever) and the new model which is more restricted security-wise and therefore is (presumably) a more secure sandboxed environment. This gives us the rather more feeble programs like Mail, Weather, News and so on.

I could be completely wrong and it could be that Win32 is not an API but I bet you 50p I'm right. If not in detail at least in gist.

alphanumeric said:

There are more than just phones and PC's. Windows 10 (or a version of it) will run on XBOX and other devices like the Raspberry Pi. Also what's to stop you from docking said device to a big screen?

The way I read it is, instead of developing and App for the PC and one for Mobile and one for the XBOX, you just make one universal App that will run on all platforms. If you think the Windows store sucks check out the XBOX store. There are some Apps I run on my PC that I would love to run on my XBOX but can't. They don't show up. If they were universal they would.

Hi there

some apps definitely could benefit in the way you suggest - but usually if they are to run on things like mobiles they are essentially Touch based and require minimal user input / interaction.

A lot of other complex stuff isn't suitable for this type of operation -- so the seemingly "Positive Sales spiel" on "Universal Apps" implies that it is the eventual aim that ALL apps will run this way -- that's simply NOT true until we can operate devices by mind or eye contact (a la S. Hawkins - although with more universal hardware suitable for general population). That is still YEARS away - if ever from becoming the norm.

So IMO the words "Universal apps" just lead to confusion although nothing WHERE FEASABLE to have a consistent interface for all programs -- and actually the standard Windows GUI did that fairly well. People need to remember that currently (and into the reasonable forseeable future) some apps just won't be any good for converting to this format.

Maybe a better solution would be to have WINDOWS itself running on an XBOX - then you could run apps without any change --a decent interpreter could presumably intercept the Windows code and re-create for an XBOX --CPU is more than powerful enough for Overhead --things like SAP (one of the biggest software companies on the planet - run things like ERP software and cloud based HANA services) have an "English like" programming language called ABAP which runs on a load of different platforms while keeping the same functionality.

Cheers
jimbo