Microsoft is bringing traditional Windows apps back into the fold, after years trying to get developers to shift focus to a new class of Universal Windows Platform apps that can run across PCs, consoles, smartphones, headsets and IoT devices.
A new initiative called “Project Reunion,” announced Tuesday morning at Microsoft’s Build developer conference, aims to provide a unified development platform for both modern UWP and traditional Win32 apps.
UWP apps are offered and sold in the online Microsoft Store. Win32 apps, based on application programming interfaces that trace their roots back to Windows 95, can be purchased and installed apart from the Microsoft Store.
Project Reunion will offer a common set of APIs, allowing developers to upgrade older apps with features such as the modern Fluent user interface previously limited to UWP apps, writes Kevin Gallo, corporate vice president for the Windows Developer Platform, in a blog post this morning.
Microsoft has been moving in this direction for a while, implicitly acknowledging that it hasn’t realized its dream of getting developers to write one app to run across a wide variety of Windows 10 computers, devices, consoles and headsets.
Delivering his Build keynote address on Tuesday morning, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said the company has seen a 75% increase in minutes spent on Windows 10 per month, with 1 billion active monthly devices running Windows 10. Nadella said this translates into “a rich opportunity for developers to create both new applications and extend the reach of their existing applications.”
