Hacker News Reader

Comment by tadhgk | Hacker News Reader

Future of irrelevance to who exactly? The 1-in-10000 users who like to play with root level access and scripts and stuff perhaps, but do the other 9999 even notice the change? I'm thinking not.

Granted it's a big change from earlier times, the strategy of sandboxing works really well for security and general OS integrity (as iOS has proved) in a world that has no patience for fragmented and exploitative software. Perhaps we lose a little something in the process, but it's in the service of a better overall integrated service and experience.

Oh and by the way: Microsoft is going the same way too with Metro.

View on HN

"Microsoft is going the same way too with Metro."

Not exactly. Metro and its app store are only "half" of Windows 8. The other half isn't sandboxed in the walled garden style. To put it another way, Microsoft isn't building the Windows App Store on the back of existing software, but from the ground up using only sandboxed apps.

Microsoft isn't likely to create the sort of moving target for developers that Apple has recently because doing so would not be consistent with the B2B model that underpins their corporate culture.

FYI, this is not true for Windows RT (the ARM version). That version will only support applications purchased through MS's store. Given that MS is clearly pushing for Metro to be the future of Windows, I think this is somewhat concerning.

On the other hand, Windows on ARM is an extension of the Windows franchise in the same way that WP7 with it's app store is. In a sense it is like talking about the iPad when discussion the Mac App store...or would be if iOS applications ran on the Mac.

Metro is a future of Windows, just as Server Console mode is (though admittedly on a potentially different scale).

> Metro and its app store are only "half" of Windows 8.

The parent said "going the same way". It seems pretty obvious to me that they are deprecating the desktop and Windows 8 is just step 1 of that.

Well of course, it's all in what one believes to be the way Apple is going in regards to the Mac platform. In the context of the original article, that way was toward a walled garden in which the wall was moving and growing higher from a developer's perspective in order to effectively bring more applications in house.

I don't see Microsoft going that way because they give a shit about software developers.

The concern is not the user experience of developers. As you point out, that's a small crowd with little market significance.

But sandboxing cripples, besides our ideals and personal experience, the apps we make. Users (of powerful, hard-to-sandbox apps) will suffer from this. Those users far outnumber the developers, and have great market significance.

The 9999 who go "ugh, there are no good apps on the Mac" because they were all removed from the app store.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com