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Comment by 0x006A | Hacker News Reader

They must live in quite a bubble if "universal" only includes Microsoft platforms.

I guess Google and Apple also live in a bubble? Not really sure what your point is. Is your expectation that Microsoft Universal apps also run on Android and Google? On Web browsers? Would you like them to use a different term?

It's just that a mobile app that runs neither on Android nor iOS (90%+ of all phones) is not exactly universal.

If all it does is run on all Microsoft platforms, from Windows Phone to XBoxOne, it's just a "Microsoft" app. If Microsoft decides to call what the Xbox runs "Windows" they'll become... Windows apps...

Throwing around words like "universal" suggests a real cross-platform API, not "convergence of Windows with Windows Phone". Lots of people would like to see real cross-platform, not more vendor lockin.

Its fine if they only target Microsoft Products as a Platform, calling it Universal was confusing to me. Of cause Google and Apple also have there bubbles too, they seam to be more aware of the universe they live in to not brand themselves as the universe.

So you are aware that Apple also calls apps that run on both iPhone and iPad as Universal apps?

Just like a universal binary on OSX?

Exactly, except Microsoft has taken it to the logical conclusion we all want supporting all platforms, and sadly Apple hasn't. I have code that runs on both iPhone/iPad and shares most of it with the Mac version yet I have to build the Mac as a separate app and submit to a different store. That sucks.

I bet that apple is working on this, and Microsoft just got there first. Not to take anything away from Microsoft, this is awesome!

Totally.. see the appearance of TextKit on iOS using tons of NS* classes instead of UI* classes, and UITextAlignment being replaced with the OSX NSTextAlignment, etc.

I doubt its a very high priority though given how small the OSX Desktop market is in comparison.. it'll just be a very slow merging ;)

What's to say, once they complete the purchase of Xamarin, that universal also includes OSX, iOS, Android and even Linux?

Weirdly, PE executables on Windows are Portable Executables that the system model would permit to run under not just Intel but other architectures.

Sadly the other platforms died so the portable executable is really just the stuck executable.

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