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Microsoft Launches Early Version of Windows Bridge for Porting iOS Apps to Windows

Cuban Missles said:
I know we all hate M$, right? Still I have to say that MS has made significant improvements in attitude and approach since Ballmer left. The only bad thing is that they are going subscription based for everything which is a non starter for me and that they are playing catch up in many if not most areas. If it weren't for the subscription issue, I might have actually given them another look.
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You can by MS Office for Mac as a standalone product, no subscription needed. If you need to install on one than more machine, it will get way too expensive to go that route, but you do have a choice.

I went subscription with Office for my home use because it would be too much money to buy standalone for my Mac, Macbook, my wife's Windows Desktop and her laptop. Using 365, I not only save a lot of money, I also can install on my iPhone and iPad. They all work together really well on my Apple Products.
 
itguy06 said:
They were this nice in the early 90s too. Embrace, Extend, Extinguish is the motto of Microsoft and it has not changed. A Tiger does not change its spots and while everyone is singing MS's praises they are doing what they did before. They'll work to get "on top" and then slowly become the arrogant POS they have always been.

Better to ignore them and they will go away. We will all benefit from no more Microsoft. And, yes, I've hated them since before I was a Mac user.
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Actually we will all lose if Microsoft went away. Microsoft does better at Office on the Mac than anything Apple can offer on their systems. Yes, Microsoft screwed up Outlook 2016 when it came out of Beta, but they have fixed the problem and it is working flawlessly again. Apple Mail just cannot compete with it.

When I got back into Mac's last year after a 14 year hiatus, I tried using Pages and Numbers, and they just did not live up to my workflow. Apple Mail wasn't too bad, but after using Outlook for years, it just didn't work as well. When I got Office for Mac 2011, everything was better again.

I do use mail and calendar for my iPhone/iPad because that is what my employer allows. Hopefully they will allow us to use Outlook soon, because it is just better.

I do prefer Mac OS to Windows, but I prefer Microsoft Office on all my Apple Devices.
 
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ds2000 said:
This can only be a good thing. MS are upping their game. I've been running Windows 10 as a work terminal on parallels for a project for a week now and its superb... I still like my OSX more but its a damn fine OS. MS allowing Devs to port Apps with greater ease can only benefit us end users :)
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This is is exactly where my mind is right now. I’m slightly worried that M$ is catching up. I wish Apple all the success but I did enjoy being a Mac user more when hardly anybody else had even seen one.
 
Curtterp said:
Actually we will all lose if Microsoft went away. Microsoft does better at Office on the Mac than anything Apple can offer on their systems. Yes, Microsoft screwed up Outlook 2016 when it came out of Beta, but they have fixed the problem and it is working flawlessly again. Apple Mail just cannot compete with it.

When I got back into Mac's last year after a 14 year hiatus, I tried using Pages and Numbers, and they just did not live up to my workflow. Apple Mail wasn't too bad, but after using Outlook for years, it just didn't work as well. When I got Office for Mac 2011, everything was better again.

I do use mail and calendar for my iPhone/iPad because that is what my employer allows. Hopefully they will allow us to use Outlook soon, because it is just better.

I do prefer Mac OS to Windows, but I prefer Microsoft Office on all my Apple Devices.
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Again me in a nutshell. I think MicroSoft are cheating though as believe Word is actually the editor for Outlook. In addition I’m not sure they are using open standards and somehow they’ve got most of the corporate world doing it so you have to make sure that your app is compatible with a closed standard.
 
As a Mac OS X developer, being able to port Objective-C apps to Windows 10( noticed OS X wasn't on the supported list ) would be a good option. It would allow OS X developers to leverage their work and possibly MS would not charge the 30% commission ( as Apple does ) to sell on their Windows store.

Of course, Apple's (IMO) current OS trajectories ( for iOS and OS X ) seem to suggest a possible merger of the two OSs. Wonder if MS has considered that possibility in its bridge work.
 
briloronmacrumo said:
As a Mac OS X developer, being able to port Objective-C apps to Windows 10( noticed OS X wasn't on the supported list ) would be a good option. It would allow OS X developers to leverage their work and possibly MS would not charge the 30% commission ( as Apple does ) to sell on their Windows store.

Of course, Apple's (IMO) current OS trajectories ( for iOS and OS X ) seem to suggest a possible merger of the two OSs. Wonder if MS has considered that possibility in its bridge work.
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The 30% fee is pretty standard everywhere. Blackberry, Android, and Microsoft as well have it.
However if your sales go over $25k, MS only takes 20%.
 
MH01 said:
Don't get upset ;).

People tend to use spell checkers for words they cannot spell. It's a cheat.
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I agree that many tend to rely on the spell checkers, but given your analogy would not using an old school dictionary also be cheating?
 
H2SO4 said:
Again me in a nutshell. I think MicroSoft are cheating though as believe Word is actually the editor for Outlook. In addition I’m not sure they are using open standards and somehow they’ve got most of the corporate world doing it so you have to make sure that your app is compatible with a closed standard.
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Now please don't tell me that you believe that Apple is an "open" company that champions open standards...

On a more technical note, in older versions of Outlook is was possible - but not mandatory - to use Word as the EDITOR in Outlook, but that didn't magically turn Outlook eMails into Word documents. (They used the OPEN standard RTF - Rich Text Format - instead.)
 
Alenore said:
What did you miss in "work-in-progress"?
Thing is, no one will ever switch if there is no apps. They have to start at some point, and if a develop can release an app on another platform easily and possibly gain more, they probably will. At least, I would do.
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And that's exactly the problem they have. No one will switch if there are no apps but no one will make apps if there are no people.

This offering isn't going to bring much in the way of developers to the platform. You aren't suddenly going to have Netflix and the big names making apps for Windows Phone. This changes little to nothing. The entire developer community has done nothing but laugh about this announcement from Microsoft.
 
APlotdevice said:
Yeah, but those desktops and laptops can still run traditionally distributed apps. Why should a developer bother with the Windows Store, especially when so many users are still running pre-8 Windows?
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With the release of Windows 10, there is going to be a lot of people on that platform... More than enough to make it worth a dev's time to run a simple port process.
 
ugh. Too little, too late. The ideal timing of the release of this tool would've been when they released Windows RT/Surface. The answer to the valid complaint of "lack of apps" would've been to encourage developers of iOS apps to use this porting tool.

But then again, I'm still a fan of the Zune. And the thought of the Surface 2 hardware with the selection of iOS software is still my ideal mobile setup.
 
OldSchoolMacGuy said:
It's certainly not as wonderful as Microsoft makes it sound. It allows apps with very limited functionality and doesn't have access to most of the APIs.

And most importantly, it doesn't address the biggest problem. No one is using Windows Phone. Developers aren't developing for the platform because no one uses it. Why spend all the time making your app work right (and this is going to take possibly even more work than building the app much from the ground up on the platform) and keeping it updated if you have such a small user-base and very small potential for revenue from it. It's not worth the time or effort to be on the platform.
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Actually - with a hair more tweaking from what I've read/heard, these ported iOS apps should be able to also run on Win 10 PC's - something they won't do on a Mac.

Now there's a user base and something to think about.....
 
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APlotdevice said:
Why would you want to use an app designed for phone on your desktop? Apps for iOS/Android/etc are generally much less capable than their desktop counterparts.

The whole concept that Microsoft is trying to push with W10 just seems intrinsically flawed to me.
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It's very apparent Microsoft is looking to blur the lines between tablets and laptops (see their Surface line) and more and more OEMs are incorporating touch into their screens. Being able to run a ported iOS or Android app on my SP3 with touchscreen would be seamless and the best of both worlds. Apps for non-mobile use would obviously not be impacted by this.

Oddly enough, I believe the better question is why isn't Apple doing more to begin merging OS X and iOS?
 
itguy06 said:
They were this nice in the early 90s too. Embrace, Extend, Extinguish is the motto of Microsoft and it has not changed. A Tiger does not change its spots and while everyone is singing MS's praises they are doing what they did before. They'll work to get "on top" and then slowly become the arrogant POS they have always been.

Better to ignore them and they will go away. We will all benefit from no more Microsoft. And, yes, I've hated them since before I was a Mac user.
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This is untrue. Microsoft is a very different company now then it was in the '90s. You seem to forget that in other areas then mobile, MS IS actually on top in a few areas. Microsoft used to be rigid and very aggresive towards competitors. You imply that now with MS being the losers in the mobile market they are forced to change attitude. This is only partly true. Fair would be to admit that Microsoft changed it's way with the linux community and open source regardless of this whole mobile discussion. Generally Ms is a lot nicer today to the world then they were before. Furthermore, it is my opinion that Apple is more arrogant then Microsoft these days. Dont't mistake me for a flamer or microsoft fanboy, I'll pick apple products over microsofts any day.
 
OldSchoolMacGuy said:
And that's exactly the problem they have. No one will switch if there are no apps but no one will make apps if there are no people.

This offering isn't going to bring much in the way of developers to the platform. You aren't suddenly going to have Netflix and the big names making apps for Windows Phone. This changes little to nothing. The entire developer community has done nothing but laugh about this announcement from Microsoft.
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Just FYI Netflix makes an app for the Windows Store. Most major companies do (Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, etc.)

This is to address the smaller developer's visibility on a suddenly viable platform with potentially hundreds of millions of users once they have upgraded to Windows 10. Why would developers do "nothing but laugh" at the prospects of selling their product to potentially millions upon millions of people?
 
npmacuser5 said:
I agree that many tend to rely on the spell checkers, but given your analogy would not using an old school dictionary also be cheating?
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Look, I am pro having spell checkers, and myself rely on them, I was just replying to a cheeky comment with a cheeky reply.
 
If this is what i think it is and developers will not have to code the same app from scratch to work in Windows, they can just import their iOS version with Windows Bridge, for quicker compiling, i still say "how well will it work"

Even thought its native after conversion, i put this in the same bracket as "converting old VB code to .NET"

sure, u can do it but since many old code featured are either redundant in .NET, u will have problems...

If Windows Bridge is any better. then good on MS. However, any code conversion cannot be all perfect all the time.... That's why i'd rather do it from scratch.. It may be tired in the long run, but at least u know there there be no problems.
 
1st off the market is NOT settled and won't be for a while. We might be impressed with the phones of today, but they'll get better soon. Apple is actually a bit behind in the tech... Look at the front cameras, memory, SD cards, edge, etc... choice is a great thing.

Apple screwed the Mini and a good (not great) upgrade to the iPT. The LAST thing we the consumers need is Apple for full control over mobile.

MS screwed up big time, no doubt.

ObjC is an excellent choice as it has a huge code based of important mobile development that Swift might get someday.

IMO, we'd be best off if ALL mobile was one language. Mastering all these dam languages is not fun, nor productive. Maybe developers will get a bit more respect from platform providers and maybe the 30% and oppressive rules will be challenged.

Let's have a war over devs, make cheap test devices and lower cuts for the platform providers.

Apple doesn't have a strong chance in Asia where there's HUGE population.
 
Tech198 said:
If this is what i think it is and developers will not have to code the same app from scratch to work in Windows, they can just import their iOS version with Windows Bridge, for quicker compiling, i still say "how well will it work"

Even thought its native after conversion, i put this in the same bracket as "converting old VB code to .NET"

sure, u can do it but since many old code featured are either redundant in .NET, u will have problems...

If Windows Bridge is any better. then good on MS. However, any code conversion cannot be all perfect all the time.... That's why i'd rather do it from scratch.. It may be tired in the long run, but at least u know there there be no problems.
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It's not code conversion. They're adding an Objective C compiler to Visual Studio.

https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2015/08/06/windows-bridge-for-ios-lets-open-this-up/
 
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