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Microsoft: It's TRUE, you'll get Android and iOS apps in WINDOWS

Redmond wants no developers to be left out

Apple, meet Microsoft's orange

It won't be possible to run iOS binaries on Windows devices, but the idea is that they will recompile for Windows with relatively little difficulty. The idea is that Microsoft's conversion tool handles the heavy lifting of converting iOS API calls to the corresponding Windows 10 APIs. During his keynote, Myserson showed off an app that he said used Apple's UIKit framework and Core Animation infrastructure, but which ran smoothly on Windows 10, including support for both mouse and touch.

Myerson said Microsoft used iOS games developer King as its guinea pig for Islandwood, and that the firm used the tech to port its wildly popular Candy Crush Saga title. The Windows 10 version of Candy Crush Saga, he said, has garnered 40,000 reviews in the Windows Store and currently has a 4.5-star rating.

This wasn't the only olive branch Microsoft offered to Apple's install base, either. Also on Wednesday, the software giant announced Visual Studio Code, a lightweight product that offers some of the code-editing capabilities of Visual Studio – including IntelliSense – and runs on Windows, Linux, and OS X.

Come one, come all

But it's not just mobile developers that Redmond wants to woo over to Windows 10. Myerson said that web and old-style Windows developers will be able to get in on the action, too.

For web developers, Microsoft plans to make it possible to wrap sites inside apps that can be listed in the Windows Store and that run in application frames on the Windows desktop. In turn, Microsoft plans to provide APIs that allow web apps to hook into Windows 10 features, such as notifications, Live Tiles, in-app purchases, and Cortana.

Redmond is also planning to open the Windows Store to Win32 and .Net apps. Because downloading native Windows applications from an app store is an inherently risky proposition, however – given all their capabilities and their ability to do mischief – Microsoft has added an extra layer of security.

"We've learned from AppV, our enterprise application virtualization technology, and we've adopted it for the Windows Store," Myerson said. "So now, Win32 and .Net applications come down from the Windows Store and they run in an isolated way from the rest of the system, so we can deliver on that promise to end users to deliver a great end-user experience."

Central to all of this is getting as many applications as possible into the Windows Store. Microsoft has said the past that it plans to unify its app stores for PCs and phones with Windows 10. It's now expanding that strategy to include as many kinds of software in as many forms as possible for every type of Windows device – including PCs, tablets, phones, Xbox, and more.

The idea, Myerson said, was to give developers access to the full range of kit running Windows 10, which he said was a potential install base of a billion devices.

"With Apple, you choose to invest in iOS or Mac OS. With Google, you choose to invest in Android or Chrome OS," Myerson said. "Windows is the only ecosystem that lets you bring your apps to all of these devices efficiently."

Expect more details on all of these announcement as the Build conference continues. The event is being held at San Francisco's Moscone Center through this Friday. ®

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