Windows 10 Can Run Reworked Android and iOS Apps 223
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.
assuming they reverse-engineer the libraries (Score:2)
or provide a translation engine
Re:assuming they reverse-engineer the libraries (Score:5, Informative)
Why would anyone need to reverse engineer open source libraries from Android?
Re:assuming they reverse-engineer the libraries (Score:5, Funny)
To avoid Oracle's copyrights!
Re:assuming they reverse-engineer the libraries (Score:5, Interesting)
Why would anyone need to reverse engineer open source libraries from Android?
because they are also providing MSFT implementations of the Google APIs which of course are not open source. should be easy enough. e.g., provide a maps implementation that works exactly like Google maps.
Re:assuming they reverse-engineer the libraries (Score:4, Interesting)
Nokia already did that for the Nokia-X. Maybe that's why Microsoft bought Nokia.
Why? (Score:2)
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
they're probably talking about wanting to run Android/iOS apps on Windows 10 phones.
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To me it still doesn't make sense why they call the desktop OS Windows 8/Windows 10 and the phone OS Windows 8/Windows 10. Why they have two types of tablets: one that runs Windows 8 and can thus run Windows 8 programs, and another that runs Windows 8 and thus can run Windows 8 but also applications of Windows 8. Unfortunately the first tablet with Windows 8 can't run Windows 8 programs because the Windows 8 programs have to be completely rewritten in another language. On the phones with Windows 8 you can a
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The problem ms still has with this is nobody wants to buy their android/ios apps AGAIN. So ms might be able to get new people who have never had a android or iphone before (how many of these people would there be?) the windows phone will still have a lack of incentive for people to swap phones because nobody wants to buy their entire library of apps again. ms may as well throw the towel in. they came in too late to the phone market even after steering nokia to its death for the ms cause.
A android/ios app ru
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually this is hilarious. I remember the first version of MS Word that ran on the PPC Macs, it used a translation layer so they could use the Windows code on the Mac. It was a Dog, it ran slow and crashed often.
Sorry, sonny; that isn't even close to being correct.
The abomination that you are thinking of was MS Word 6.0 (IIRC) for Mac. Notice the "6.0" part of the name. That really does mean that it was the sixth major version of MS Word for the Mac. And it was truly horrible.
What you apparently don't know is that MS Word (and Excel) were available in GUI form for MacOS for at least two major revisions before a fully-GUI version was released for Windows.
Sorry for the Mac-centric link; but it was the only place that I could find that had the dates correct [lowendmac.com]. I personally used MS Word 4.0 for Mac pretty much until the end of MacOS (Classic) in 2001, and it was very stable and "just the right size". Note that this article confirms that the awful, "ported" (emulated) version is Word 6.0...
I didn't know about the Xenix version, or that it was designed by Xerox PARC guys. So, technically, the Mac version was the second GUI version, I guess, then Windows was the third.
Now, get off my lawn!
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While it was poorly worded, he meant to say the first PowerPC-native version of Word for Mac System 7.5. That would probably be Word 6.0. And it was ass-slow and terrible.
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While it was poorly worded, he meant to say the first PowerPC-native version of Word for Mac System 7.5. That would probably be Word 6.0. And it was ass-slow and terrible.
And what was really hysterical was that the 68k versions of Word ran circles around Word 6.0, even though they were running through Apple's 68k -> PPC JIT Compiler!!!
Yes,,WORD 6 sucked. I know. I tried to use it for about a month when it came out.
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they're probably talking about wanting to run Android/iOS apps on Windows 10 phones.
Are you sure about that? I have only seen Windows phones, and not owned one but as an owner of a Windows 8 tablet, the desktop OS looks a lot like a portable device and vice versa. In fact, it seems they have been planning convergence [microsoft.com] for some time. Windows 10 might be the OS where the differences between mobile and desktop are only in the relevent aspects of the UI.
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Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
Windows 10 universal applications will be able to run on all devices, including phones, tablets, desktop, table, Microsoft Band, IoT, Xbox One, etc. If you create a W10 universal app then it will run everywhere. Even the same exact binary will run across all these devices (although, of course, you'll need to make your UI responsive enough to make sense in these environments and with different input mechanisms).
Legacy desktop applications will pretty much be limited to desktops and tablets under Windows 10.
This should be much less confusing than RT was. RT had different capabilities across the same form factor, while Windows 10 will have the same capabilities for the same form factor.
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>they're probably talking about wanting to run Android/iOS apps on Windows 10 phone.
They are planning on selling only one piece.
No, no, no, that's not true! I once met a guy who had a Windows phone and he said his wife had one too, so they've sold at least two pieces. There may even be a third Windows Phone user out there (although I've never met him/her/it).
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I know someone with one, so that's three for sure. I wouldn't be surprised if they've sold tens of phones.
"This is a Windows Phone. Prime quality. Feel it! And I can promise you it is not the only one we have. In Russia we have ho hooo... dozens of Windows Phones. Dozens! But this is our company's most popular product of all. Blue Screen! Finest quality. Try. By lucky coincidence we have more than 800 billion tons of it."
Re:Why? (Score:4, Interesting)
That joke may have been funny about 5 years ago. Might.
My parents, siblings and their spouses use Windows Phones. They aren't horrible, though they do suffer from a lack of apps. Which is probably why MS is going to the trouble of making porting really easy.
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run games on a PC that I play on IOS or Android and not run down my battery or use too much data or sometimes they are pretty good games
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What kind of multi-touch screen are you running on your PC?
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laptop.
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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.
While "really useful" is not the word I would use to describe them, Hinge and Tinder are mobile only. Neither has a web site that does more than point to a mobile app.
As I recall, some Craiglist scraping apps had features unavailable on any web site or desktop application.
Waze finally has a useful web interface after years of only being able to check routes on the mobile app.
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Why would anybody want this?
Well, the strategy worked so brilliantly for the Amiga (Emulate an Atari ST! Emulate a Mac! Emulate anything that isn't an Amiga!) that obviously Microsoft have decided to give it a go too.
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You've obviously never used Korg Gadget on an iPad. This app SCREAMS to be run on a system with more horsepower and a bigger screen.
Interesting approach (Score:2)
*Badly (Score:4, Funny)
Windows 10 Can Run Reworked Android and iOS Apps, Badly
Re:*Badly (Score:5, Interesting)
I think the main question is how much reworking is needed to make the apps run well. Reworking could mean anything from ensuring there is no requirement for things that possibly couldn't exist on a standard windows machine, such as games that require tilt controls. It could also mean rewriting 90% of the code. There's no reason why they shouldn't be able to get this to work. If they can get Android and iOS apps to run on windows tablets, phones, and desktops, then that will be one more reason for users to switch back to Windows. Personally, I have a Windows tablet and I love it. The only real problem is the small number of apps. If they could make iOS and Android apps run on it, then all the better.
I think rework = no iOS libraries. (Score:2)
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!
Nevermind - Islandwood (Score:3)
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.
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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.
That's what I was thinking. The devil's in the details beneath the word "Reworked".
By that same headline, pretty much any app written for any platform can be "reworked" to run on any other platform.
It's a ridiculous claim at this point. Typical Microsoft marketing babble.
Wake me when it works; I need a good long nap...
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It does work, King used it to port candy crush saga.
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Oh, you'll wake up when it works. But you might have to change your crappy handle on Slashdot.
Apple is sort of phasing out Macs anyways, aren't they? It sure seems that way.
Mark my words, in 18 months, it will be as if this announcement never happened. It's the Microsoft Way.
And I should know: I write Windows Application software all day for a living.
Why do you think I like Macs?
Kind of the opposite (Score:2)
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, perhap
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There's no reason why they shouldn't be able to get this to work.
it's a massive engineering effort, and they admit as much in the article. even if you 98% of the things working, the last 2% is going to cause unacceptable app crashes.
think about the engineering effort to take the entire iOS *and* Android SDK, plus the Google APIs, and make them all work with MSFT. that's not just string manipulations, it's all of the APIs that connect to cloud services, sensors, and so on.
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Personally, I have a Windows tablet and I love it. The only real problem is the small number of apps. If they could make iOS and Android apps run on it, then all the better.
Why do you think a small number of apps is a problem? I have a Lenovo Yoga Tablet 2 with Windows 8, and it can run any Windows software ever written that it meets the minimum requirements for. I have never once thought "boy I wish I had an app that did X". In fact, I wish some of the apps that I do have (Skype, for one) were not apps at all but normal Windows programs.
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I think the main question is how much reworking is needed to make the apps run well.
It's pretty straightforward really, you take your iOS app, you throw away everything other than int main( int argc, char **argv ), and then you replace the rest of the code with the Windows 10 equivalent.
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Just think about the UI for a moment. Ported apps are going to suck, and be a horrible mish-mash of three radically different UIs. Android has a back button, iOS and Windows do not. On iOS you usually get some custom "back" functionality, on Windows most apps don't use that paradigm at all.
What about notifications? I haven't seen Windows Phone's implementation, but Android notifications are light years ahead of the simple ones that iOS supports. There is a lot of functionality built in to the Android notifi
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Actually, Android and Windows Phone both have dedicated back buttons. iPhone is the outlier here.
Notification functionality is pretty much identical on my Windows Phone and Nexus 5.
This stuff is all simple. The hard thing to emulate would be in-app advertisements and in-app purchases. Developers take th
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iOS apps don't access a filesystem, they use the device's media databases which are all descended from the iTunes database.
This is almost 100% wrong. Certainly close enough that we may as well call it. I haven't written an iOS app yet that didn't access the filesystem directly. It's rather a common operation. There are no databases on the device that descend from the iTunes database. That doesn't even make sense. There's the iTunes database (not a descendent), and the assets library (photos, videos), which is a separate database. Another popular database is AddressBook, again, not descended from iTunes, whatever that wou
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It would also need to be reworked so the app isn't tied to your itunes/google play account anymore but to ms's app store. If people still need a itunes/google play account to make the app work then ms still has that problem where people have a itunes/google play account already... why wouldnt they just stay there and buy apps off itunes/google play to run on the windows phone.
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the headline accidentally left out a word. Windows 10 Can Run Reworked Android and iOS Apps, Badly, while Android and iOS can't run Windows Apps at all
In "bold", i added the phrase you accidentally left out - no need to thank me fellow slashdoter!
So you consider something that runs "badly" to be something worth crowing about?
I guess it depends on how badly, doesn't it?
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Well, in Greece we have the (rougtly translated) saying "something is better than nothing"!
The American equivalent is "Half a loaf (of bread) is better than no loaf at all."
But, remembering the painful days of software Windows emulation on Macs, I don't think that either the Geek nor American phrase applies here!!!
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Well, in Greece we have the (rougtly translated) saying "something is better than nothing"!
The American equivalent is "Half a loaf (of bread) is better than no loaf at all."
I like your American equivalent - it's more "paradigmatic"!
But, remembering the painful days of software Windows emulation on Macs, I don't think that either the Geek nor American phrase applies here!!!
Hmmm.... maybe the G[r]eek could apply?
Shades of OS/2... (Score:4, Insightful)
a.k.a. "a better DOS than DOS" and "a better Windows than Windows." That did not end well.
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Wow. Talk about completely inaccurate. Where do you get your information from, the turds in your toilet bowl? Windows 95 had a 4GB address space. It could not access memory above that limit at all. Windows NT introduced APIs for paged memory management to take advantage of the PPro's 36-bit address space.
So can a Commodore 64 (Score:3, Funny)
It just requires a little more "reworking."
Yes, can we do this to Microsoft? (Score:5, Funny)
Hey Google and Apple, how about changing your API just enough to break Microsoft's implementation every time they release a version? Pleeeeease.
LOL
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That.... that would be awesome.
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Stop it... now you're just teasing. ;)
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Why would they want to do this? MS providing a "reworking"/"publishing" tool that lets you easily port iOS and Android apps to Win10 means that more developers are targeting non-MS platforms as their primary platforms. This sounds more like MS is signalling, "We haven't been very successful with this, so we're going to follow your lead for now." There's been a pretty radical culture change in the DevTools/Frameworks/Runtimes teams at Microsoft, signalled by the fact that all of their core runtimes and we
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Neither would, because they make sure that their APIs are stable for older apps to use. New functionality doesn't break the old. Of course Microsoft will have to keep adding support for these new functions, or just hoping apps degrade properly when it isn't available.
Having said that, Apple has gone out of its way to break compatible implementations of its DRM before (remember when Real implemented Fairplay or whatever their music DRM is called?) so I wouldn't put some asshattery past them.
MS giving up on mobile development (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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This reminds me a lot of how IBM tried to deal with 32 bit Windows compatibility. They created a set of libraries and APIs to try to facilitate the easy porting of Win32 software to OS/2. In the end, developers simply didn't bite, because IBM's desktop market share was too low to make it worth it. I see Microsoft running up against the same problem; why bother going through the effort, even with assistance, of porting mobile apps from the two dominant platforms (and by dominant I mean dominating something l
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Incorrect. IBM provided run-time support for existing Win32 software. No porting, no recompile. Windows was essentially a full-fledged subsystem of OS/2.
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My memory may be failing, but the IBM's license agreements only applied to Win16 and Win32s, and not to Win32, thus IBM could not place the Win32 API in OS/2, and thus developed a developer migration toolkit.
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My memory is also failing! You're correct - it was limited to Win16 and Win32S. However, at the time OS/2 2.0 was released all (or nearly all) Windows software was 16 bit. Those 16-bit Windows apps didn't need any SDK, recompile, or anything. They ran as-is.
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Except that, as Metro so clearly demonstrated, mobile apps suck on a desktop monitor.
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Which means nothing so far as Android or iOS apps are concerned. Porting an app designed for Android or iOS would likely mean significant changes to the user interface of the app.
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Not entirely. The UX has been converging across the platforms, at least, much more today than 2 or 3 years ago.
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I doubt either. I'm predicting that Microsoft remains a niche player in the mobile world, as it desktop market remains stable or very slowly dwindles. Nobody writing apps for mobile app platforms gives a flying shit about Microsoft's offerings. Maybe if porting was super easy, they might give it a go, but if that's the plan, then I think we're in for more dismal Surface and Windows phone sales.
Frankly, I don't know why MS just doesn't distribute an Android layer for Windows.
Re: MS giving up on mobile development (Score:2)
The Windows Phone platform and tools may indeed be inferior to Android and iOS. However, this business decision doesn't suggest that anymore than the fact that far more software is written for Windows than Mac proves the inherent superiority of Windows.
Only "old" iOS apps? (Score:2)
" 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?
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How many Obj-C apps have been rewritten in Swift? I can see new apps and old apps that needed major rework, but most companies aren't going to invest the time it takes to port from Obj-C to Swift with little or no gain in market share.
Metro UI (Score:2)
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.
Re:Metro UI (Score:5, Insightful)
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But they're still using flat, ugly single palette squares that turn your home screen into a claustrophobic nightmare. And what's the point of a live tile when you can't interact with it?
This is an old tactic (Score:4, Interesting)
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:
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How does a tool that allows you to re-work your existing iOS or Android source projects into Win10 projects compare to a tool that allows you to convert a document from 1-2-3 or WP into Excel/Word? Or rather, how could it possibly lock a software developer into the Windows platform? This is more like a life-support tactic to allow developers to publish to mobile Windows with minimal effort, with the hope that the platform catches enough traction that developers would start developing native Windows 10 mob
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<a href="http://www.example.com">example title</a>
Convert Lotus 123 .wk4 to Excel 2010 - Microsoft Community [microsoft.com]
.wk4 to Excel 2010 [microsoft.com]
Convert Lotus 123
Office XP WordPerfect 5.x Converter Security Patch: KB824938 [microsoft.com]
Results of google searching for openoffice converter at microsoft.com: microsoft openoffice converter site:microsoft.com - Google Search [google.com]
And lastly check what page hits a google search of microsoft.com returns: microsoft converter site:microsoft.com - Google Search [google.com]
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Huh? Application developers in the 80's were dependent on and 'trapped' by Microsoft's Office file formats? That's just a weird theory. Which applications do you mean? Don't say 'Wordperf
Reworked, because .... (Score:2)
Wouldn't it be easier to just have an emulator? (Score:3)
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.
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Yes, you take a performance hit when you emulate but if your computer is speedy you don't notice.
On the other hand, if your "computer" (i.e., cell-phone, tablet) is not speedy, you will. And if your computer uses batteries, you will also notice.
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A car is not a bus is not a train is not a boat is not a plane... but they all move people from one place to the next.
You don't like my terminology? Please give me one word that describes all clarification just as the world "transport" covers my other examples.
Absent that, I'm going to conflate things for the sake of brevity because the conflation doesn't impair my point.
Hypocrites (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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Would you care to provide some links to support your claim? I mean what I assume is your claim that Microsoft wrote an amicus brief supporting Oracle in the lawsuit. There is no such thing as being 'an amicus'.
I can find many supports showing Microsoft in support of an appeal of the case, including a posted story right here on Slashdot
http://developers.slashdot.org... [slashdot.org]
I can find zero stories about them being in support of Oracle.
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Would you care to provide some links to support your claim? I mean what I assume is your claim that Microsoft wrote an amicus brief supporting Oracle in the lawsuit. There is no such thing as being 'an amicus'.
I can find many supports showing Microsoft in support of an appeal of the case, including a posted story right here on Slashdot
http://developers.slashdot.org... [slashdot.org]
I can find zero stories about them being in support of Oracle.
Yes.
http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-... [arstechnica.net]
And amicus is the correct term.
Finally! (Score:2)
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Do you have a time machine?
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WinRT has supported C++ as long as it's existed. What they added was C++ Android compatibility.
Windows sucks because they emulated Apple. (Score:3)
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.
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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.
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If you're a 12 year old that wants to install as many apps as possible, you're not going to get a Windows Phone in the first place.
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By better interface, you mean 16-color brain damage that acts like it's from the 1980s.
Exactly!
And you thought XP was Fisher-Price land...
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I think iOS is roadkill. They're already huffing Android fumes instead of innovating. This could be it. I like Android so I hope it's the second place OS in about a year. Apple can make novelty watches and eMedicine gadgets.
Stop trolling; it's unbecoming.
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Why? Is there something particularly good about the iPhone hardware. It's expensive, has very little storage for the price, and has a non-replaceable battery. Why would anybody want an iPhone unless they wanted to run iOS?
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You also have a phone that will last 5+ years unless you regularly drop it on concrete. You'll get OS updates for 3+ years and apps galore. And the batteries are replaceable, though it's not something you're average consumer will do himself.
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