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by ralphie02 3254 days ago
This is probably where Windows 10S (pushed in education) comes into play. It's a version that offers "secure & superior" performance over normal Win10. Since 10S can only install from the Store app, devs are `forced` to port their app.

Only time will tell how effective this strategy is. I for one would love for this to succeed if it means better security for users (especially on older, technologically challenged folks)

3 comments

I feel like it's more likely that the Education apps they're trying to push to UWP would be ported to the web. I am a firm believer that there are places where desktop apps make more sense but from a market standpoint, porting to UWP gives you access to Win 10/10S but porting to the web gives you Win 10/10S, iPhone, Android, Windows 7, OS X, Chromebooks, etc. That's a lot more coverage for your dollars spent.
Not to mention a decent path to Electron (mac, windows, linux native-ish) and Cordova (android, ios native-ish). React-native is conceptually better than UWP at this point.
Win 10S can run desktop apps that have been "converted" using the Desktop App Converter (nee Centennial) and uploaded to the Store. This is how iTunes will be coming to the Store later this year.

Currently the only device shipping with 10S is the Surface Laptop, and it can be upgraded to regular Windows 10 Pro for free for the rest of the year. I suspect that step 1 of the Surface Laptop setup experience for users-in-the-know will be to do this upgrade, just like "uninstall craplets" has been for previous Windows laptops.

Well, I don't see how Windows 10S helps push adoption of UWP since you can already distribute Windows Forms, WPF, or Win32 desktop apps on the Store today. At that point, why bother making a UWP app?

Also, Edge only have a handful of extensions. If they want to compete against Chrome, they have to do something about that, otherwise people will just use Chromebooks.

UWP will handle touch-enabled Win10 devices better. And while it's not a segment anywhere near the size of iPad, it's still there, so if you can reach it, why not?

The problem is that right now, doing UWP means no Win7 support, and that's a far larger segment - there are twice as many Win7 installs as there are all Win10 installs, and Win10 tablets would be positively minuscule in comparison. So this will change if and when Win10 becomes the dominant Windows desktop OS.

Win32 apps run with full thrust, instead of the actual UWP container, so ideally one should migrate to a proper UWP app.

But we all know how users and many devs, actually value security.

The devs may value security but they need the tools to actually build a working app. From what I have seen UWP is way too limited for a lot of apps.