But Microsoft also hasn’t said much lately to give us the idea that they will be coming anytime soon.
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The delay, and potential abandonment, of Project Astoria is a bad sign for Microsoft’s already weak mobile strategy. The Astoria bridge is not ready yet, but other tools offer great options for developers.
While Islandwood required the app developer to write code to support Microsoft’s Universal Windows Platform (UWP), Astoria allowed Android apps to run on Windows as-is. The biggest problem would be that it undercuts native Windows app developers, who have spent their energy helping to build its ecosystem and taking full advantage of the platform’s features.
Project Astoria is one of four tools created to help developers bring their apps to Windows. In fact, Facebook recently updated its app for Windows Phone with an enhanced user interface and new features.
The Astoria Android bridge, from the beginning, was the odd bridge out. It was only meant for bringing Android apps to Windows 10 Mobile phones (and if any OEMs ever build them, to small tablets running Windows 10 Mobile). Since then, there’s been no word on that bridge’s fate.
After releasing the Windows 10 November Update to MSDN subscribers and via Windows Update, Microsoft has made the ISOs of Windows 10 Enterprise build 1511 available from its Volume License Service Center.
“By limiting the number of developers involved, the engineering team is better able to get the feedback necessary to advance the toolkit and to ensure that the toolkits meet the needs of the developer community”, according to the signup page for the Windows Developer Preview Programs. Verge reports that “the company has pulled back on dedicating employees to Android app porting, favouring the iOS route instead”.
Windows 10 will be seeing more updates before the year ends and although the operating system does come with a few glitches, it also comes with a few promising and positive updates, such as a more powerful Cortana, a “Find My Device” function and updates to the Skype application. But whatever the reason this move is, it’s opted to break Microsoft’s promise that you could downgrade in the first 30 days after installing Windows 10.
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Now, it appears Microsoft has ditched or delayed that emulation project. Go to our 2016 registration page: InformationWeek’s Elite 100 list for 2016.
