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whm1974
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Windows 10 S Mode isn't good for the industry?

Sat Feb 10, 2018 11:52 am

Reading this and the article it links to, I'm wondering if Microsoft is trying to take complete control of the software development industry and force everyone into using the Windows Store:
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/ ... gain.11170
Looks like Gabe Newell of Valve was right back in 2012 when Windows 8 was released. Of course I want to get into Linux development anyway, but I'm thinking that Windows S mode by default will push tech-minded folks into using Linux. I really hope that Microsoft will get a lot of heavy push back about this.

Vendor Lock in anyone?
 
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Re: Windows 10 S Mode isn't good for the industry?

Thu Mar 01, 2018 12:17 am

How can Microsoft possibly use S Mode to "take complete control of the software development industry" when most software users are using a web browser to access services that are hosted in the Cloud (likely on a Linux back-end server)? :roll:

Does not compute.
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LostCat
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Re: Windows 10 S Mode isn't good for the industry?

Thu Mar 01, 2018 1:29 am

So basically you're saying Apple and Google already have complete control of the industry eh

Gabe likely recognizes the difference between an optional but overall unused OS offered mainly for the education sector and Windows as a whole.
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derFunkenstein
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Re: Windows 10 S Mode isn't good for the industry?

Thu Mar 01, 2018 1:36 am

"If you build it, they will come" only applies to baseball fields in Iowa, not software platforms. Microsoft has learned that the hard way for going on six years. I see no reason to think Win10 S or S Mode will change that.
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synthtel2
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Re: Windows 10 S Mode isn't good for the industry?

Thu Mar 01, 2018 2:15 am

Games do seem more potentially troubled by MS shenanigans than average software, since they're less able to run in a browser, but the non-UWP Windows environment is going nowhere fast and supports pretty much everything, including both DX12 and Vulkan. If they get serious about putting non-UWP stuff in their past, they're going to hit a lot more resistance than just that from gamers.

If they really wanted to be obnoxious about this, I think what they'd do is only roll out new graphics API features to UWP, as in not giving the non-UWP environment access to DX13. If Vulkan is still there keeping pace, though, that may only push people away from DirectX in general. The recent Microsoft action I'm most intuitively uncomfortable with is Win10 on ARM not having OpenGL support, for related reasons.
 
LostCat
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Re: Windows 10 S Mode isn't good for the industry?

Thu Mar 01, 2018 2:36 am

synthtel2 wrote:
If they get serious about putting non-UWP stuff in their past, they're going to hit a lot more resistance than just that from gamers.

I don't see how. UWP is supported in desktop apps already and there's nothing in the way of any devs using it for whatever (for the most part.)

Even if they do roll out new graphical features to UWP, it'd still be accessible to desktop apps.
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synthtel2
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Re: Windows 10 S Mode isn't good for the industry?

Thu Mar 01, 2018 3:30 am

People have very strong expectations about what MS can and can't do with the non-UWP environment. If nothing else, there's a ton of legacy software there that they don't want to throw under the bus (and there'd be serious uproar if they somehow did). With UWP though, not only do people have much weaker versions of those expectations, but MS has already (wrongly) taken a sizable chunk of the PR hit they'd get for abusing it, and the remaining barrier is lower.

On vanilla Win10, I see nothing to worry about. Win10 for ARM, Win10S, whatever niche version comes next.... I dunno. If something sufficiently different like that somehow takes off, MS will have all kinds of opportunity to do "interesting" things with it, and messing with graphics APIs could be a critical force multiplier for many of those scenarios.

(I don't really have big problems with MS as a company these days, but their history is full of too many lock-in tactics, and I definitely still don't consider it safe to make plans that won't work right if they head back in that direction.)

synthtel2 wrote:
If they really wanted to be obnoxious about this

To clarify: not saying that that action would be in itself the obnoxious one, but that that action would be a bigger tip-off if they're up to no good than anything that's actually happened so far.

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