You’re a Wizard, Harry! Windows 10 with iOS and Android Apps

I love WP’s built in stuff. It’s perfect for folks new to smartphones and just want a phone to work but don’t really mind not having the latest apps at hand (or using third party alternatives).

It’s nice to see that the app gap might not be a gap anymore. Windows 10 allows you to use Android and iOS apps. Essentially similar to the old story of using much of the code from another platform.

In the demo, you can see an app from Android on Windows Phone – using the code from the Android app. This helps minimise build time.

It integrated with the Windows navigation, location API, security stuff etc so it feels more like a native app.  Tomorrow they’ll show how to further enhance these apps with live tiles and microsoft services. You can make a ‘simple’ port or extend to windows.

The Premise sounds great. Lumia hardware, great WP features from the start and apps, apps, apps. But the whole write once appear everywhere still needs to be shown to be a doable thing. At the moment, everyone who has tried has kinda done a “meh” job at it.

Is this a good thing? Is this a bad thing? We’ve had this discussion many times before. Some say it’s abandoning Windows – who would write for WP now that all you need to do is write for iOS/Android? On the flip side, it’s not just WP audiences now is it. It’s all of Windows.

For me, as long as the apps are stable and of decent quality (I hope the hiccups at the demo was due to bad connection/poor GPS rather than the app just not working). I welcome their appearance on Windows. Plus with the previous post, it means you can get them on your desktop too.

Even cooler thing is that with Windows, you can have iOS apps that might not be on Android, Android apps that might not be on iOS and of course WP apps. I’m still yet to see a better instagram app than 6tag or better image editor than Fantasia painter. It absolutely amazes me how backwards the equivalent are on the other platforms.

Via: TheVerge

Category: Windows Phone