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posted by CoolHand on Monday May 04 2015, @03:02AM   Printer-friendly
from the making-big-promises-again dept.

The Microsoft Build Developer Conference 2015, or Build 2015, runs from April 29th to May 1st. Already, many surprises have been revealed:

We got Android apps running on Windows. A Microsoft IDE running on Linux. .NET ported to Linux, too. Support for Objective C, the language that only Apple and NeXT has ever really used. Support for Google and Apple APIs - in fact, just carry on writing for Google and Apple. Wild, untamed Win32 binaries scaling the ramparts of the Microsoft Store. Phones turning into proper PCs when you plug them into a monitor and keyboard.

Rumors of Android apps running on Windows 10 turned out to be mostly true; Windows 10 will include an "Android subsystem" and many Android APIs to allow app code to be easily reused by developers, but Android apps won't automatically run on the OS. "[Project] Astoria also provides Java developers with hooks to Windows APIs that aren't present on Google's platform." In addition, Microsoft is courting iOS developers:

[More...]

The same goes for iOS developers. Myerson said a new tool being announced on Wednesday – we're told it's called "Project Islandwood" – will make it possible to convert Xcode project files into Visual Studio solutions. There's no code translation involved. All of the original Objective-C files remain intact. Myerson said a future version of Visual Studio will include full support for Apple's pet language, including Microsoft's much-vaunted IntelliSense tech.

It won't be possible to run iOS binaries on Windows devices, but the idea is that they will recompile for Windows with relatively little difficulty. The idea is that Microsoft's conversion tool handles the heavy lifting of converting iOS API calls to the corresponding Windows 10 APIs. During his keynote, Myserson showed off an app that he said used Apple's UIKit framework and Core Animation infrastructure, but which ran smoothly on Windows 10, including support for both mouse and touch.

Microsoft wowed the Build crowd with rehearsed HoloLens augmented reality demonstrations showcasing virtual app overlays in an apartment, an interactive 3D human body for studying anatomy, and a holographic "robot" and Minority Report-style UI elements surrounding a real robot on stage.

Microsoft has released a preview build of Windows 10 IoT Core for Raspberry Pi 2 as well as Intel's MinnowBoard Max.

Project Spartan, the replacement browser for Internet Explorer, has been given a final name: Microsoft Edge. Microsoft is defensively registering negative domains related to the new browser, although .sucks extortion is absent.

For the "enthusiast" PC gamer, Square Enix, Microsoft, and NVIDIA present "WITCH CHAPTER 0 [cry]" (video), a DirectX 12 demo running on four GeForce TITAN X GPUs.

This Gizmodo article has a nice writeup on all the happenings at the conference.

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 04 2015, @03:28PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 04 2015, @03:28PM (#178545)

    I think MS is doing it exactly backwards.

    Android is just a proprietary API on top of linux. Instead of a weak emulation of android and iOS - they should port the windows application layer to android and iOS.

    Make it so that any application developed for winphone can be ported to android and iOS with just a recompile - and not half-assed port, but a full-blown, fully integrated port that performs at full-speed. Give people a developer environment that is better than Google's or Apples and lets the code run on both major platforms - and also transparently runs on winphone as a freebie. Get enough major apps using winphone API and you'll reach a tipping point where there will be enough apps natively available for winphone to make it just as competitive as android and iOS.

  • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday May 04 2015, @05:52PM

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Monday May 04 2015, @05:52PM (#178657) Journal

    Apple is not stupid; they surely would never let programs using that into their walled garden. And while Microsoft would certainly be able to get it onto Android, Google would probably not allow it to be used in its own store.

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 05 2015, @12:40AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 05 2015, @12:40AM (#178876)

      Amazon is doing OK with their store.

      I think that Apple would have anti-trust issues denying such apps simply because they depend on microsoft's libaries. Equal opportunity blocking of apps based on function is one thing, but based on build libraries would be risky. Google might get away with it due to the existence of places like Amazon's store.

      • (Score: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday May 05 2015, @12:56PM

        by urza9814 (3954) on Tuesday May 05 2015, @12:56PM (#179077) Journal

        I think that Apple would have anti-trust issues denying such apps simply because they depend on microsoft's libaries. Equal opportunity blocking of apps based on function is one thing, but based on build libraries would be risky. Google might get away with it due to the existence of places like Amazon's store.

        They wouldn't block apps for depending on MS libraries; they would block the MS libraries in the first place. Probably would say it duplicated existing functionality, they seem to like that particular excuse.