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Microsoft has stopped developing new features for user-friendly Office Mobile applications for Windows 10, reports the Verge.
Word Mobile, Excel Mobile, and PowerPoint Mobile debuted with Windows 8.1. Their importance is twofold: they have a user interface designed to be user-friendly, and they are built using Microsoft's Universal Windows Platform (UWP) framework. They have been regularly updated since their introduction, but not anymore. The use of UWP meant that the same kernel of applications could be used on Windows and Windows 10 Mobile desktops, but with Windows 10 Mobile no longer becoming a concern, this compatibility n & # 39; 39 is more of a priority.
In a statement to The Verge, Microsoft said: "We are currently prioritizing the development of iOS and Android versions of our applications and under Windows, we give priority to Win32 and Web versions of our applications."
On the one hand, Microsoft's decision is not surprising. The traditional Office Win32 desktop version is the most powerful final version of the application. For practical reasons, Microsoft has no choice but to continue to develop this version because it is this version on which the business world depends. This is the desktop version that has been seen as the most recent feature of Office 365. In this context, developing a second version of Office is also for the Windows desktop is superfluous. Mobile apps made sense when Microsoft encouraged the use of Windows on tablets and Microsoft was present in the smartphone space because Win32 applications were simply not useful for these platforms. forms. This does not matter anymore.
On the other hand, this move is not without costs. Microsoft has attempted to encourage third-party developers to create UWP applications. UWP applications have some desirable features: they are safer (because they work in sandboxes and have a phone-style security model governing their access to files, cameras, GPS and other sensitive features). (The OS is no longer able to suspend or terminate them to free up memory), and some parts of the UWP APIs are much more modern. In general, UWP applications should play much better with high-resolution displays, for example.
But the UWP applications had big drawbacks: they only work on Windows 10 and, in general terms, they require a rewrite of applications from scratch. The first problem became less important with the growing market share of Windows 10 and the last problem was partly solved by the "desktop gateway" of Microsoft, which allows to migrate a Win32 application to charm. If Windows 10 Mobile was on several hundreds of millions of smartphones, the price could be worth it, but it is not currently the case. This leads developers to make the same choices as Microsoft, namely Win32. While Microsoft implicitly endorses this path, it is hard to imagine that adoption of UWP will increase rapidly.
The decision is also a little surprising because Microsoft has recently shown new hardware using UWP Office applications. The company demonstrated its Surface Hub 2 systems this week and part of this demonstration included the use of UWP Office applications. After all, Surface Hub 2 is a tactile material, which makes touch applications better suited. The current Surface Hub can not run traditional Win32 applications, which requires UWPs, and the features to better behave and control UWPs would appear to be useful on appliance-like hardware, such as the Surface Hub.
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