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Windows 8 Apps to Play Nice on Windows Phone

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Despite maintaining two distinctly separate classes of computing products for its phones and tablets, we’re beginning to see a convergence between mobile and desktop computing where Microsoft is concerned. Not only is Windows 8 starting to look a lot like Windows Phone 7 with the Metro UI, finger-friendly and touch inspired experiences, and Live Tiles hubs, developers who create apps for the larger and more robust tablet can easily port their apps to Microsoft’s mobile Windows Phone OS.

According to a story on WMPU, a demo by Windows chief Steven Sinosky shows that Silverlight apps created for Windows 8 tablet can be easily ported to Windows Phone 7 by changing a line of code. Considering that Windows Phone 7 apps are either created utilizing the XNA Studio framework or Silverlight, Silverlight will be the common thread between the tablet and the phone.

Hopefully, the ease of porting apps between the two platforms will draw the attention of more developers as Microsoft is trying to increase the number of titles available on both Windows 8 and Windows Phone 7. At the Build conference going on this week, Microsoft is giving developers a Samsung-made tablet with Intel Core i5 processor to test their apps on.

Unlike Apple, which is relegating desktop OSes to notebooks and desktops while reserving mobile OSes for tablets and phones, Microsoft is taking a slightly different approach by saying that tablets are in fact full PCs and should function as such. The company wants tablets to run all Windows programs and aid in productivity and is saying that its phone OS is strictly for phones. However, in the post-PC world, we’re beginning to see phone and PC converge, and Microsoft’s forthcoming work with its tablet-friendly OS in Windows 8 is the result of such.

5 Comments

5 Comments

  1. Billy Padgett

    09/15/2011 at 1:36 pm

    Awesome for the Win Dev community. Although Windows has never had a lack of application support (Thats more of an Apple issue) so that should never have been a concern. I do whish though that people would quit using the “post-PC” buzz word we are not in a post-pc era Windows 8 is pretty much a testimate to that as Microsoft is stating a tablet is a PC (at least when it comes to a Windows device) the android and iOS tablets are merely consumption devices. It is not practical to create content on these devices. The PC is not dead its evolving the same way that MS is evolving the UX. We have been stuck in the same Computing pardigm since the GUI was created its time to move forward. You will still need us “truck drivers” to create things for you to consume and it looks like with the new windows model it will be easier for us to deliver that in more place. 

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