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Comment by ocdtrekkie | Hacker News Reader

Tim Sweeney has continually dogged this line of attack against the UWP platform again and again, despite Microsoft even making changes to address his concerns.

1. Regular Win32 software support is probably never ever going away, because it's the bedrock of the Windows platform to this day.

2. Universal Windows Platform apps can be installed by third parties just like normal applications. Steam could support distribution of UWP apps if it chooses to.

3. Cheapy Chrome OS alternatives aren't going to be competing with gaming PCs that are the bedrock of Steam... ever.

Tim's pretty much flat-out refused to recognize these facts, and has been scare-mongering this point since Windows 10 came out or before.

UWP being a sandboxed app platform is just "better" than the legacy software design from a security standpoint. Nothing about UWP inherently makes it lock out third party distributors, it's just that nobody else has chosen to distribute them yet.

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Developers are 'ignoring' the Windows Store because for existing Win32 applications (or applications rooted in large Win32 codebases), Win32 is just fine without a rewrite, while greenfield applications usually target other platforms like iOS and Android where users have been used to the app paradigm from very early on, and are more prone to dropping a few dollars on a download or microtransactions.

Furthermore, despite Win32 apps being able to clobber your files and settings, users don't seem to be demanding a change.

This leaves UWP apps in the awkward middle ground, where high-quality software doesn't need to be UWP, and you can still make successful software without ever targeting Windows, and thus the Windows Store is full of both shovelware and a baseline of obligatory applications that MS persuaded to fill out the store, with few true gems inbetween.

Tim Sweeney's crusade is entirely ideological, and is largely misplaced: MS is, perhaps strangely, the good guys who will be ruthlessly obsoleted by more locked-down platforms if they don't have an equivalent play. Windows 10's SaaSification was widely derided and yet many of those same detractors use Android phones where your habits and preferences were mined from the start, or iOS which has no way of sideloading software outside of the vendor's own storefront. 10 years out in an alternate timeline where high-powered ChromeAndroidBooks and iPadMacProAirs make up the computing landscape, his frustrations with Microsoft will seem silly.

> UWP being a sandboxed app platform is just "better" than the legacy software design from a security standpoint.

In the same way that a car filled with concrete is better from a security standpoint. But in both cases you've limited it in practice. The fact is developers are ignoring windows store because it's far too limited.

There are cases where it works and makes sense, and cases where it doesn't. UWP makes the most sense for something self-contained, that doesn't need to modify other parts of the system as a basis of it's operation. (Games actually make great UWP apps for this reason!)

The other half of this is that since UWP apps are generally so safe, I can tell people if they want games for their Windows PCs... they can probably safely install anything on the Windows Store. Whereas telling people they can install any Windows software they find online would be quite the opposite.

The fact that UWP apps will never meet all possible needs for software is a big part of why Tim Sweeney's claims are so ridiculous: Non-UWP software is never going to fully go away.

I think Mr. Sweeney's concern is wise and it's good that he is voicing his opinion on the matter. It does appear that Microsoft is moving in the direction of only allowing UWP apps from the Windows Store by default, but not yet Win32 programs.[1] It could eventually become the case that UWP apps are more common than Win32 programs, and/or Microsoft may choose to distribute Win32 programs through the store and disallow third party downloads by default.

[1] http://i.imgur.com/WQXpTUM.png

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