Microsoft Announces Continuum, Turning Windows 10 Phones into Desktops

This gets incrementally closer to an ideal computing model I call &quot;personal application omnipresence&quot; [1]. Notably it brings a presumably-standard means for applications to scale their views to myriad input&#x2F;output capabilities on the fly. Attach a monitor and the view expands and adjusts accordingly; attach a keyboard and the UI adjusts accordingly.<p>This is great progress, but I remain fixed in my desire for singular running instances of my personal applications to run on an application server I control and to which I attach views from all of my devices. I want to have a singular e-mail application that I see on all of my devices. I want to have a singular web browser application that I see on all my devices. And so on.<p>We need to make my many devices appear as one rather than making a single device act as many devices.<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;tiamat.tsotech.com&#x2F;pao" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;tiamat.tsotech.com&#x2F;pao</a>

This is something Canonical and Ubuntu have been trying to do for a while. It&#x27;s definitely interesting to think about as phones become the de factor computing devices.

As a long time Android developer this has me super interested!<p>After years of writing apps (toys), struggling with design decisions made to get java running on 2007-level hardware like: 64k method limit, components with crazy life-cycles making concurrency difficult without leaking things, frankenstein Java ecosystem, brittle and complicated build system...<p>Microsoft comes along and says &quot;screw that shit&quot;, write mobile Applications as &#x2F;desktop&#x2F; applications using C#, F#, or C++.<p>This is also masterful because, as Windows Phone market share is hovering at almost zero, many people who simply need a low-powered device like chromebook, tablet, can just get a phablet Windows Phone and presto, they are now Windows Desktop &#x2F;and&#x2F; Phone users.<p>From an app monetization standpoint, its great because now I can make money on form factors from phone, tablet, laptop, desktop with one code base - instead of Android (phone) and which has more or less failed on tablets.

This was demoed in the Build Keynote presentation, jump to 3:55:15:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;channel9.msdn.com&#x2F;?wt.mc_id=build_hp" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;channel9.msdn.com&#x2F;?wt.mc_id=build_hp</a>

I&#x27;m no MSFT fanboy, but this is a big deal. Within 10 years, if not 5, we&#x27;ll plug all of our phones into keyboards and monitors; and only the odd geek nerd will have a desktop or proper laptop.

Two thoughts here. I love the contrast between Apple and Microsoft. That is Microsoft frequently announces products&#x2F;technologies with no shipping dates. While on the other side of the spectrum Apple builds out their products in secrecy announcing only when they have a ship date. As a developer building on their platforms I prefer Apple&#x27;s approach as it lowers my risk of developing against a vapourware product.<p>Second, I&#x27;m betting Microsoft announced this before its ready in order to get out ahead of Apple and Android&#x27;s mobile dominance and be seen as a leader in mobile. Though, I&#x27;d also bet that given where current technology is Apple&#x27;s Continuity approach provides the better experience today. But, no doubt what Microsoft showed is the future.

This is the first thing Microsoft has done in 10 years that truly interests me. This is exactly what I was hoping for with a Linux based smartphone similar to what Ubuntu was going to do.

I was hoping for this from Android phones. My Note 4 has 3 gigs of RAM and a fast processor. I bought a HDMI converter to hook it up to a large monitor but the connection was problematic.<p>I would argue that the amount of SSD storage on phones is not too big of an issue. More as a learning experience than anything else, I augmented my Linux and Mac laptops with a little Windows 8.1 HP Stream 11 this year that only has a 32 gig drive (with another 32 gigs added via a memory card). With OneDrive, not having much disk space is not much of an issue. I installed git, bash, IntelliJ, Java 8, and my current writing projects with enough room to spare because a lot of what I access (infrequently) can live in the cloud and only be cached locally if needed.<p>Anyway, my Android Note 4 has a pretty good Java IDE, useful apps (including Office 365 and my favorite games) and really could be my primary computer with excellent docking support. Add cloud development tools like nitrous.io, web version of visual studio, etc., and we are getting close to what should end up being the future of the way most people interact with productivity and entertainment devices.

They said they&#x27;re waiting for hardware for this to actually work. I believe they&#x27;re waiting for new Intel chips for phones.

I&#x27;m surprised the technology isn&#x27;t &quot;fast enough&quot; yet. Most top end phones are quad core, output 1080p, have 2-4gb ram, etc. Specs like that easily meet the listed minimum requirements of windows... odd.<p>They&#x27;re now basically giving google and apple time to easily catch up to what could of been a killer feature that sells windows phones.

This was what excited me the most about Ubuntu&#x27;s Edge smartphone (2013): <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.indiegogo.com&#x2F;projects&#x2F;ubuntu-edge" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.indiegogo.com&#x2F;projects&#x2F;ubuntu-edge</a> <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=EtNhlVn3ETQ&amp;t=1m56s" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=EtNhlVn3ETQ&amp;t=1m56s</a><p>Happy to see someone copied it.

i remember this article from ten years ago by Phil Greenspun; he predicted that this was going to happen some day.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;philip.greenspun.com&#x2F;business&#x2F;mobile-phone-as-home-computer.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;philip.greenspun.com&#x2F;business&#x2F;mobile-phone-as-home-co...</a>

It annoys me that Apple didn&#x27;t ship this a few years ago. We had business units test switching to 100% iPad with VDI, and many of them actually enjoyed it.<p>It would be fairly trivial to deliver a great experience like this. In my case, I&#x27;d have 20,000 iPhone user ditching laptops.

HTML5 with CSS3 (offline) web apps offer that, Motorola Android offered that called &quot;WebTop&quot; (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Motorola_Atrix_4G" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Motorola_Atrix_4G</a>), Ubuntu Phone offers that, Apple&#x27;s continuity offers that. Windows RunTime apps may offer that in future - no specific date.<p>Microsoft had all the technology already for years inbuilt in Windows and Win32 API, called Windows Terminal Server and Remote Desktop (RDP) - it works great with all Windows applications in enterprise. Yet Microsoft hasn&#x27;t delivered it yet to consumer devices.<p><pre><code> Microsoft to agree to license Citrix technology for Windows NT Server 4.0, which resulted in Windows Terminal Server Edition in 1998 </code></pre> <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Citrix_Systems" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Citrix_Systems</a>

Heh. So after everyone accused Windows 8 of turning your desktop into a phone, Microsoft has decided to shift into reverse?

Not exactly announced today...but hey who really fact checks these days?

reminds me of <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;c3PUYoa1c9M?t=55s" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;c3PUYoa1c9M?t=55s</a>

Will you have administrator privileges? And side loading? Otherwise it is of no use at all.