We’re releasing the iOS bridge as an open-source project under the MIT license. Given the ambition of the project, making it easy for iOS developers to build and run apps on Windows, it is important to note that today’s release is clearly a work-in-progress – some of the features demonstrated at Build are not yet ready or still in an early state. Regardless, we’d love for the interested and curious to look at the bridge, and compare what we’re building with your app’s requirements. And, for the really ambitious, we invite you to help us by contributing to the project, as community contributors – with source code, tests, bug reports, or comments. We welcome any and all participation in building this bridge.
I can think of a few developers who are probably poking around this code as we speak. Good move by Microsoft.
While Microsoft moves now to objective-C and iOS API Layer, Apple moves on to Swift …
Microsoft has already stated that they will add Swift support to Visual Studio: http://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-also-working-towards-swift-…
Thanx for the link!
As an app developer for iOS and Android, I am not really intersted in such bridging tools.
As long as the marketshare of Windows Phones is so low, I don’t want to invest time and money in a Windows development machine and the related software stacks.
Moreover I still have to see the first bridging technology that works without issues. There are always incompatibilities for which a solution requires a deep understanding of the destination platform and that is exaclty the thing that one wants to avoid
Probably you are not, but a lot of people will give this a try.
I am not really interested in iOS, Android or Windows Apps developer (I am a backend developer working in some ‘classical’ technologies) but I really appreciate the new stuff Microsoft is building: Bridges with iOS and Android, new cross-platform development tools, Clang/C2 (a Visual Studio backend for Clang) and a lot of things open source.
No matter if you will use or not this technology, I actually do not see why these initiatives should not be applauded.
I am quite sure that your current development machine is capable of running Windows and maybe even have a license somewhere. Trials work otherwise. And Visual Studio 2015 Community Edition is free and will provide everything you will need unless you are a very professional developer in a team. I don’t think the hardware/software stack is the problem.
The problem is that of market share. If developers keep thinking that these apps are only for Windows Phone instead of Windows Universal there is nothing more that Microsoft can do to make this a success.
(I am from Europe where marketshare of WP is about half that of IOS and I do like WP a lot. I understand that in the rest of the world WP hardly registers)
No, the real problem is that they only try to imitate Apple with their closed off ecosystem. They can always open up their platform to make it more attractive. Now it’s just another failing Apple-imitation. Even universal is still closed off.
On top of that the people that did step in originally with Phone 7 won’t forget such an episode easily. (In this part of Europe, there’s basically no Windows Phone btw.)
[quote]They can always open up their platform to make it more attractive[/quote]How much more open should their platform get? It runs on basically all the pc’s in the world “for free” now including the developer tools, and they are building open source bridges to other platforms (Android, IOS, Win32 and Web). Also, you can sideload apps because that is what businesses want.
(and if you think developers are still crying over the WP7 dead end…nope, everyone understands why that (and RT) happened and understands that it will not happen anymore with “One Windows” as the future)
No, we understand why Microsoft claim it won’t happen anymore. But I also remember Zune, and Plays4Sure. Three strikes, you’re out… and I count four.
Edited 2015-08-09 23:39 UTC
So…is there still anyone left that you can play with or is everyone out?
(I am understanding correctly that the game we are playing is “make any interoperability or continuation error and you are out”, right?)
No, they could’ve opened up the hardware when they deprecated their software, so people could at least install something like Android themselves on their devices. I remember HP doing this with their WebOS tablets.
Those phones are still locked down today and the only party that can upgrade them now is not going to do it.
You remember wrongly what HP did with the TouchPad (running webOS): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebOS#HP. And if you think THAT was a good way to handle a “going nowhere” OS….WOW.
BTW, it IS possible to run Android on a TouchPad but that is because of the community, not because of HP. And the only reason anyone remembers the TouchPad is because HP dumped them for 99 dollar.
Windows Phone 7 received several updates, some big, some small and then it died which Microsoft announced quite a bit in advance. Also, Microsoft didn’t make these phones so I have no idea how they could have “opened up the hardware”
Complaining about Windows Phone 7 and thinking that this is any reason not to develop Universal Apps…makes no sense
It’s interesting you’re using openness in multiple ways, but do not differentiate on purpose.
It’s about the openness of the whole device+system and about the openness which means letting people install applications that Microsoft never saw.
In this case the criticism about the lack of openness is mainly aimed at the fact that Microsoft forces devices to be locked up. You talk about the freedom to install random applications.
If you look at the situation they created, it exactly means this:
If Microsoft right now would release the source code of Phone 7 and let all Phone 7 users install custom builds, the chances of their new platform succeeding would increase significantly.
Really? Windows Phone 7 users (the very few devices that would still be alive right now) would have a SIGNIFICANT effect on anything?
This is especially absurd because your argument is about open sourcing an OS that nobody cares about at all, in an article that is about open sourcing a cross platform development tool that builds a bridge to an OS that is (one of the two) only important mobile OS’es….and people don’t seem to care much.
I guess you got hurt by the dead end of WP7 but your arguments really make no sense
No, it isn’t.
http://www.howtogeek.com/219651/windows-10-allows-you-to-sideload-u…
That’s even possible on iOS. Opening up means allowing 3rd party repositories as a minimum.
Being able to build and deploy software via XCode is not at all the same thing.
To do anything else, you need an Enterprise Developer’s license to deploy to iOS devices.
Microsoft, at this point, allows you to install a Universal App on your own, without needing special tools or licenses.
Like Android.
Wonder what incentive developers have to write code for Microsoft, while MS makes all the fucking money. Will devs get a cut for contributing?
Luckily enough other people care more about scratching their itch or working on something they care about to make projects like this work. The most succesful open source projects are the ones that have a very strong leadership to do the grunt work and individuals/volunteers that fix/add things that they care about.
At work I get paid to program and somebody tells me what I have to get done. At home I program just for fun and abandon 90% of my projects very soon but the last 10% give me pride. If I only do those 10% at work I would continuously have to look for new jobs.
Well, sure. I get what you’re saying. But I think it’s asking a bit much of people to work for free on a for-profit project. It’s like the difference between contributing to Wikipeidia, vs. another site which makes money off of ads and gives its contributors nothing.
and yet you post here on OSNews, where the owner of the site makes money from ads but we don’t get anything for offering our valuable opinions in the comments
The article states that the project is Open Source and released with the MIT license, so presumably anyone can install and use the software for free, which makes it a not-for-profit project.
So how much does Wikipedia pay to their contributors?
It doesn’t, but it doesn’t make money off its contributors’ hard work either, AFAIK. It’s basically a volunteer project, so to me it is like a charity that accepts donations to keep itself going.
MS probably don’t expect people to contribute.
They just want to ensure at least someone tries this out. No Open Source -> developers will just ignore it.
This will likely happen anyway, but now at least it has a shot.
But, bridging technology and its inherent issues aside, the future of this is only going to last as long as a final decision in the Oracle v. Google case if the court goes the wrong way. Not that I think they’ll do otherwise, since they flat out asked the executive branch how they should rule on it like the spineless worms they are. The case isn’t directly about Microsoft, of course, but this goes just a little bit beyond APIs and could easily get tied up in the fallout from that battle.