Windows 10 Now Has 350 Million Active Users

alphanumeric · 04 Jul 2016

Adalwar said:

I think people are not aware of what W10 is. W10 is a move from MS to push everybody on dependency of the "Store" like Google Play and Apple. I am affraid that this will mean that W32 app will be left out of support in near future.

Define W32 app? There is a Windows 10 Mobile, Desktop, XBOX, and IoT. What can be run or not run, depends on the platform/device your running Windows 10 on. I don't see the desktop version ever being limited to Apps only, if that's what your saying?

Adalwar · 04 Jul 2016

alphanumeric said:

Define W32 app? There is a Windows 10 Mobile, Desktop, XBOX, and IoT. What can be run or not run, depends on the platform/device your running Windows 10 on. I don't see the desktop version ever being limited to Apps only, if that's what your saying?

Dear Sir, what I am seeing and all evidences point to it, it is also logical, yes W10 is a push to Apps only OS. In the background MS is expecting all Programmers will be forced to move their Apps to Win RT. That is why W10 is so "important". That is the real point of W10.

alphanumeric · 04 Jul 2016

Adalwar said:

Dear Sir, what I am seeing and all evidences point to it, it is also logical, yes W10 is a push to Apps only OS. In the background MS is expecting all Programmers will be forced to move their Apps to Win RT. That is why W10 is so "important". That is the real point of W10.

Totally disagree, I don't see that happening any time soon. IMHO that is.

EDIT: If that's was true why did they discontinue Windows RT? It was a failure.

Fafhrd · 04 Jul 2016

Most members here are very aware of what Windows 10 is, and have no worries that Windows 32 applications will cease to be supported in favour of Store apps, which for the most part are frivolous, lightweight and transient ephemera, often with zero support.

What is more, the established software houses with products that are long term market leaders, as well as in-house commercial development departments have their investments to protect, and they work closely with Microsoft Enterprise and development staff to make sure their products will work with Windows in the long term.

There are no shortages of traditional programming jobs in the adverts. To state that pushing Store apps are the reason and future for Windows 10 is just wrong.

alphanumeric · 04 Jul 2016

It brings store Apps to the desktop platform for the first time, but not at the exclusion of everything else. They want Apps on the PC, not just on the phone/mobile platform. That's all there is to it, IMHO.

CountMike · 05 Jul 2016

alphanumeric said:

It brings store Apps to the desktop platform for the first time, but not at the exclusion of everything else. They want Apps on the PC, not just on the phone/mobile platform. That's all there is to it, IMHO.

Specially if those APPs from the store could be made to work on ALL DEVICES as they are. That will happen as portable devices become more powerful so they can compete favorably with desktops. Laptops are already there, notebooks, very close and tablet's, even phones getting there.
Microsoft may be going for distribution of their SW thru the Store but to stop millions of third party desktop environment SW from working would be instant suicide for them.

alphanumeric · 05 Jul 2016

CountMike said:

Specially if those APPs from the store could be made to work on ALL DEVICES as they are. That will happen as portable devices become more powerful so they can compete favorably with desktops. Laptops are already there, notebooks, very close and tablet's, even phones getting there.
Microsoft may be going for distribution of their SW thru the Store but to stop millions of third party desktop environment SW from working would be instant suicide for them.

They were late to the "App" market and are playing catchup now. The Universal Apps should help. I'd love to see some of the Apps I use on my desktop PC be available to also run on my XBOX. Yes, they would be shooting themselves in the foot if mandated that Apps were the only thing you could run on your desktop or laptop.

Adalwar · 05 Jul 2016

I think W32 support will define. For example, the WinHelp for 32 is not working in W10. In W8.1 was also not working, but MS posted a KB for it.
For W10 there is no KB, there is a workaround but with the Updates it is reverting back to the Original.
For me this is a evidence that MS is not interested in W32 anylonger.

dmex · 05 Jul 2016

Adalwar said:

I think W32 support will define. For example, the WinHelp for 32 is not working in W10. In W8.1 was also not working, but MS posted a KB for it.
For W10 there is no KB, there is a workaround but with the Updates it is reverting back to the Original.
For me this is a evidence that MS is not interested in W32 anylonger.

WinHelp has major security issues and was discontinued for that reason. DCOM, COM, OLE, RPC, VBScript and lots of other very ancient technology - identical to Win32 - is still working and mostly supported on Win10 (even the Visual Basic runtime!).

Since the first Windows 2000 release, all the Win32 layer does is wrap the Native API (NT) and removing Win32 would necessitate a complete rewrite of NT from scratch to prevent anyone from very easily porting Win32 apps to the Native API... You also have to consider the millions invested in Win32 development over the decades and how removing that support would be catastrophic for Microsoft - why on earth would Microsoft remove Win32 when it would prevent Win10 from executing almost every last Windows application in existence that has been written since 1995?

It's just insane to think there's any truth to that. Microsoft is never going to remove Win32 support.

Adalwar · 05 Jul 2016

alphanumeric said:

Winhelp32 is for legacy programs, as near as I can tell. The OS and software are moving to 64 bit. So what? How does 32 bit versus 64 bit equate to its going to be Apps only world?

It is not clear for me that OS and Software will be moving to 64 bit, there are too many 32bit Software around and I think it will not be possible for many reasons to move to 64bit. A 64bit OS needs more RAM and HDD capacity and for smaller devices 32bit OS is the right choice.
About WinHelp32, there is a KB for 32bit and 64bit to support it in W8.1. There is none for W10.
So, seems W32 is not important and I assume that it will define. Now, I question why is that? My conclusion is that W32 will become more and more incompatible with future versions of W10 and people will be forced to move their Software to Universal App´s to protect their investions.
I have a older 32 bit Software that still works totally on 8.1, but in W10 there is a fork, either the Software works and most of things in W10 stopps working including saving settings or W10 things are working and the Software does not work totally.
So,based on this situation I can guess the tendency of what will happen with W32 Software in future.
I not an insider , but that is my opinion.