The Microsoft Build 2017 Recap: What To Expect When You’re Expecting Windows

Windows Store and UWP Updates

The Windows Store has never really gained the traction that Microsoft was hoping for, despite Windows 10 now on over 500 million devices. With Windows 10 S, which only allows Store installs (but can be upgraded to Windows 10 Pro for full app compatibility) Microsoft is hoping they can drive some more applications to the store. They’ve announced a lot of tools over the last couple of years to make it as easy as possible to get developers to move to the store, and there are significant advantages to both users and developers for having a system where they app is easily found, downloaded, and updated, but despite this it’s still been a challenge to drive developers to lock into UWP.

Part of that is that the sales pitch for UWP was to get apps to be available across different device types, and with the low usage share of Windows in the smartphone world, that was going to be a difficult sell. UWP needed to be aimed more at the desktop earlier, but regardless, a developer could target all of the Windows install base of over 1 billion machines by building a Win32 app, or just target Windows 10 installs with a UWP store app.

Possibly the biggest saving grace for Microsoft’s Store efforts got announced at Build last year, with Project Centennial, which was later branded the Desktop App Converter. This simple tool allows most apps to be quickly repackaged into a Store app, with few, or no, changes required to the app. This doesn’t make it a UWP app of course, but it does allow it to be put in the Store, updated through the Store, and includes the sandboxed security model of Store apps. It’s been a nice addition to the Windows arsenal, and Microsoft had seen some great desktop apps like Adobe Photoshop Elements come to the Store through this bridge.

At Build, Microsoft announced some other big apps coming through the Desktop Bridge. iTunes is coming to the Windows Store, which is kind of amazing when you think about it. The best part for Windows users who do use iTunes is that the app can’t do anything to your system, and if you install it, it’s all gone with none of the normal remnants lingering throughout the file system and registry. Autodesk is also bringing Stingray to the store, and SAP Digital Boardroom is also on its way. SAP is a big player in business, so for Microsoft to get Windows 10 S into the enterprise, these types of apps need to make their way into the store.

UWP also got some love at the conference, so even though the Desktop Bridge is going to be the carrot to get apps into the store, UWP needs to continue to improve in order to tempt developers to leverage its advantages. .NET Standard 2.0 for UWP was announced at Build, and XAML Standard will be available later on this year to help with cross-platform capabilities. With Microsoft’s purchase of Xamarin, it makes a lot of sense for them to try and leverage that purchase into further expanding UWP. .NET Standard is adding more than 20,0000 APIs to UWP, including the most requested APIs such as Reflection and SqlClient are coming with the Fall Creators Update.

The Store needs to continue to improve, and it does appear that Microsoft is getting some buy-in with some bigger companies, which is important. The Desktop Bridge for Windows continues to be a strong tool to remove some of the barriers to bringing an existing app into the new world without having to re-write the app from the ground up. It’ll be interesting to see how they progress between now and the Fall Creators Update.