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Microsoft's only choice to move forward is to throw the Win32 baby out with the bathwater. And that brings us to the introduction of Windows 10 S.
Windows 10 S is just like the Windows 10 you use now, but the main difference is it can only run apps that have been whitelisted to run in the Windows Store. That means, by and large, existing Win32-based stuff cannot run in Windows 10 S for security reasons.
To bridge the app gap, Microsoft is allowing certain kinds of desktop apps to be "packaged" for use in the Windows Store through a tooling process known as Desktop Bridge or Project Centennial.
The good news is that with Project Centennial, many Desktop Win32 apps can be re-purposed and packaged to take advantage of Windows 10's improved security. However, there are apps that will inevitably be left behind because they violate the sandboxing rules that are needed to make the technology work in a secure fashion.
"A casualty of those sandboxing rules is Google's Chrome browser. For security reasons, Microsoft is not permitting desktop browsers to be ported to the Store."
(Score: 5, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday May 11 2017, @01:45PM (10 children)
Indeed, you got it. This was utterly predictable. Everybody's jumping on the "walled garden" bandwagon, because they want to carve out their niche and make it harder for users to bolt and change systems. Everything needs to be locked down and under central control.
All TFA's fretting is a bit of smoke and mirrors -- about old .NET stuff and Win32 and my favorite quote: "systemically bad end-user and IT organizational habits of keeping old versions of apps around rather than move into newer licensing models and newer versions of the apps." Sure, there are very legit security concerns with the older stuff, but people don't upgrade because they don't WANT "newer licensing models" that cause them to "rent" software instead of buying it. They don't want to be forced to upgrade to a new version of software with a different UI when it doesn't have any new features they want and the old version works perfectly well -- but of course software companies want people to upgrade, because otherwise you don't sell as much product.
The ironic thing about this, from my perspective, is that Windows and MS DOS owed part of their success from the generic "IBM Compatible" model that emerged in the 1980s, which allowed free exchange of software that didn't have to conform to particular hardware specs. IBM encouraged freer exchange, but Microsoft came to dominate the software market. Yet MS at least tried to remain a somewhat open platform. This is a little different, but now Microsoft (following Apple, Google, etc.) is now trying desperately to "lock down" its platform and require everyone to go through its policies.
Heck, the whole Chrome thing feels like a flashback to 1998. Are we going to have the browser/Netscape lawsuit against Microsoft monopolizing tendencies AGAIN?!
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday May 11 2017, @01:53PM (1 child)
Oh, obviously I forgot to mention "money" -- I guess I didn't say it because it seems obvious that's what the "walled garden" model really is for at its heart, despite talk about security and standardization and updated protocols and whatnot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11 2017, @04:13PM
If I wanted Walled Garden I'd go Apple, they do it much better.
Microsoft needs to release a version of Windows that supports VR and AR in a way that actually augments people. It's hard to get enthusiastic about crippleware that's also spyware. Leave the lock-in market to Apple.
I'd be interested in a Windows OS that lets me easily manage multiple virtual screens and 3D areas of arbitrary size. No need to buy many huge screens, just get high res VR/AR goggles.
Not interested in yet more crippled phone style crap.
(Score: 2) by Geezer on Thursday May 11 2017, @01:55PM (2 children)
Are we going to have the browser/Netscape lawsuit against Microsoft monopolizing tendencies AGAIN?!
Nope. All MS has to say is, "You can install Chrome any time it meets our standards."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday May 11 2017, @02:39PM
Just to note: what you say was true of Netscape back in the day too. Anyone could download Netscape (or get a CD in the mail, I guess?) and install it. The issues in the original case were various, but one of them was about manipulating APIs to favor Internet Explorer over 3rd-party browsers.
(And by the way, I don't *really* think we'll see such litigation again. I just think it's an ironic historical parallel here, because obviously Microsoft probably wants to restrict Google's marketshare with Chrome, just as it was trying to do with Netscape. But given how these walled gardens now operate elsewhere, I doubt there's much anyone can do about it. There would need to be monopoly suits against a bunch of the big players, since Microsoft is here just trying to play "catch-up" in this particular kind of bad behavior.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11 2017, @03:34PM
Yeah. The lawsuit will go forward right after Google allow Internet explorer on Chromebooks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11 2017, @03:59PM
Are we going to have the browser/Netscape lawsuit against Microsoft monopolizing tendencies AGAIN?!
Nope.
By the time this is over, if it gets that far and the dice roll in Microsoft's favor, they'll have too many tentacles in the infrastructure to be able to do anything about it, since so many computers will be irrevocably hard-locked to Microsoft software and possibly too lobotomized in all the wrong ways to be able to run anything else. Court orders may get around that, but there's plenty more. For instance, they'll be holding everyone's data hostage in one way or another ("break us up? I'm afraid that will lead to incompatibilities and probably severe data loss in cloud migration, your honor..."), so all three branches of government will have businesses and private individuals begging them not to let their critical data and baby pictures be wiped out by this.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday May 11 2017, @04:30PM (2 children)
But, Linux? If all the adjoining gardens are walled, what happens to Linux? Are we going to be walled in too? Will there even be a gate for us to come and go through? Will we be trespassing if we go through the gate?
Alright, more seriously, I've been bitching for years about Microsoft maintaining that stupid-assed "legacy" crap. Linux does legacy so well, that you can run Linux on machines that Microsoft will puke on. It ain't fast, and it ain't necessarily pretty, but it runs faster than painfully slow, and a simple elegant desktop has it's own beauty.
But, unlike Windows, Linux doesn't bend over backward to maintain decades old exploits, so that people can run un-maintained applications.
Face it - if an desktop/laptop app is maintained, it's already upgraded/updated to 64-bit computers, long, long ago. The unmaintained applications have probably been dropped, and if the app had any real use, someone else has written a drop-in replacement. 32 bit applications have never been able to use a 64 bit machine, or a 64 bit OS's security benefits. Every single 32 bit "legacy" application in use today, is a huge security hole.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by LoRdTAW on Thursday May 11 2017, @05:33PM
More like walled out from our own hardware.
Microsoft (and other walled garden conspirators) to the open source world:
"I don't want to talk to you no more, you empty headed animal food trough wiper. I fart in your general direction. Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11 2017, @05:43PM
That was my 1st thought as well when I saw "Win32" in the summary.
These days, if you have an old Windoze-only app to run, your chances of getting it running under a supported version of MICROS~1's OS are lower than just using WINE under Linux.
Just get (gratis and libre) Zorin OS (an Ubuntu derivative that ships with WINE).
Zero cost and less bullshit to put up with.
...and, as you say, will run on old hardware.
...and if you can't find a native Linux app to do your task these days, you must really be an edge case.
Linux [and] un-maintained applications
With Open Source, if you keep/get an old version of a distro and build a fat binary of that old app (all the dependencies compiled in), you can keep running it forever.
Your options with FOSS make MICROS~1's stuff look like the bastard stepchild that it is.
if the [unmaintained] app had any real use
There are too many written-once-and-abandoned Windoze-only apps with instances of those still in service (e.g. for machine shop gear where the equipment vendor has folded his tent) to dismiss them so easily.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Dunbal on Thursday May 11 2017, @04:48PM
Nah, Microsoft is only jumping on it 10 years afterwards when everyone is trying to get off....