The Microsoft Store may not be as essential to Windows 10 as the Google Play Store is to Android or the App Store is to iOS. But there are a few key advantages to downloading Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps from Microsoft’s store rather than from third-party sources.
You can get updates automatically. Install an app on one device and it’ll be associated with your account on other devices (including PCs, tablets, and Xbox consoles). And apps run in a sandboxed environment, which makes it less likely that they’ll be able to infect your computer with malware.
But they also can’t tap into all of the APIs available to other types of Windows applications, and they lack some functionality that you get with legacy apps… which are some of the reasons that many software developers haven’t ported their existing apps to the UWP and that many users have largely ignored the Windows Store.
Now there’s at least one less reason to avoid UWP apps though: starting with Windows 10 Build 1803 (Redstone 4), you’ll be able to run multiple instances of a UWP app.
You could already open multiple UWP apps at once. But now you’ll be able to open the same app multiple times.
In other words, you could have two video players running at the same time, each showing a different video. Want to open multiple instances of a document viewer, text editor, or game? You might be able to do that too.
Actually, let’s say that last part again: you might be able to do it.
Multi-instance support is actually going to be an opt-in feature. Developers will need to make some changes to their apps in order to support it. For some apps, those modifications will be relatively simple. For others, it could entail much more work.
So there’s no guarantee that your favorite UWP apps (you have favorites, right?) will support multi-instance behavior. But at least it’s going to be an option soon.
via Neowin
Holy f*ck I am a hard core windows 10 designer/coder/game developer/video editor/gamer/etc and I’ve never even considered using a UWP, let alone, multiple instances of that bullsh*t.
At present, there are a few WMP apps that offer multi-windowed operation, including the religious reading app Gospel Library, but they do only run within a single instance. It will be a great addition once the functionality is enabled for actual multiple instances of WMP apps.
Wait, they didn’t do that until now? To be honest the only UWP app I use is the W10 calculator, and I’m sure I can open as many instances of it as I want…
It is actually multiple windows of the calculator app tied to only a single running instance. Check Task Manager and you will see just one executable for one window or thirty-five windows of them. There are a handful of apps on the Store that pull off the same trick. In going forward, developers can simply enable multiple instances for the same effect.
I wonder how it would cope with video players.
Sure, two 480p24 videos are simple… but when you move up to h.265 for UHDp30, they require hardware acceleration. Would Windows10 operating system stop the second App from attempting to play? Or will it pause the first one? Is it up to the developers to code that in? Or will it simply crash the App and crash the System?
Now that you mention it, I actually haven’t tried any UWP apps. It just never occurred to me that it would be a thing I should do. And I’ve been using Win10 since the pre-release Insider builds. Not sure exactly what the benefit would be, since my primary activities of gaming, coding, web browsing, and mining either require access to the extra features legacy apps provide, or they don’t exist in the store (and in some cases, are explicitly disallowed).
All major components built with win32 such as Explorer.exe shell or file explorer will be built with UWP soon with CShell and composers. So u will be interacting with uwp whenever using windows 10.
All xbox play anywhere games are UWP, eventually once everyone is on win 10, goal is to get steam and other storefront to do UWP also.
Also check out the Groove app, its absolutely gorgeous.