This month, the team took additional steps. Last year, Microsoft introduced 'XAML Islands,' which is technology aimed at helping Windows developers to use UI elements from UWP in their existing Win32 applications, including Windows Forms and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) technologies. 'We're not quite there yet.' But the ultimate idea is to make 'every platform feature available to every developer.' 'By the time we are done, everything will just be called 'Windows apps,'' Gallo told me.

Over the past year or so, Microsoft has been trying to undo some of the effects of what Gallo called the 'massive divide' between Win32 and UWP by adding 'modern desktop' elements to Win32 apps.

But Microsoft execs - including Gallo - continue to maintain that UWP is not dead. And Win32 apps wouldn't get UWP features like touch and inking.Īrguably, Gallo told me, 'we shouldn't have gone that way,' meaning creating this schism. Developers would have to do work to get their apps to be UWP/Store-ready.

The downside: UWP apps would work on Windows 10-based devices only. Developers would be able to use a common set of programming interfaces across Windows 10, Windows Phone, HoloLens and more, officials said, when selling the UWP vision. When Microsoft launched UWP originally with Windows 8 (and continuing with Windows 10), officials promised that the platform would provide apps with better performance and security because they'd be distributable and updatable from the Microsoft Store.

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