HomeWinBuzzer NewsMicrosoft Uses Purchase of Xamarin to make Toolkit Bridges Exclusive to iOS

Microsoft Uses Purchase of Xamarin to make Toolkit Bridges Exclusive to iOS

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The company has revealed details about its bridge or toolkit for the Universal Windows Platforms applications, moving forward with a full commitment to iOS after purchasing specialist company .

The information comes just a day after the company confirmed that purchase of Xamarin for an undisclosed amount, a company that specializes in toolkits to bridge universal apps cross platform.

As part of the Universal Windows Platforms strategy, the company is moving away from its Project Astoria, which was created to bridge Android apps to Windows.

So far, is saying that Xamarin's iOS toolkit will be the only bridge for creating universal applications for devices, including the Xbox games console.

However, there is also reports that Redmond will encourage Android developers to adopt Xamarin and create cross-platform apps through existing iOS coding.

Windows-iOS-Bridge-Microsoft

Project Astoria was killed late last year, while the iOS oriented Project Islandwood was released as an last august. Redmond was criticized by developers for running two separate toolkits, so the company's purchase of Xamarin could give developers on both Android and iOS a toolkit to build universal apps on existing code.

Certainly the use of a common tool will help developers, with Windows Developer Platform team Kevin Gallo saying in a February 25 blog post that the company is working to bring more apps to the Windows Store:

We're excited to have Xamarin join Microsoft and the opportunities it will offer developers – making it easy to share common app code across Windows, iOS, and Android apps while still delivering fully-native experiences for each of the platforms.

The purchase of Xamarin comes after Microsoft ended a few of its other bridges, including delaying the “Centennial” bridge for coding Win32 apps to the Windows Store. Gallo points out that developers were confused by numerous separate bridges, especially as the majority of applications are available on both iOS and Android anyway.

We have carefully considered this feedback and decided that we would focus our efforts on the Windows Bridge for iOS and make it the single Bridge option for bringing mobile code to all Windows 10 devices, including Xbox and PCs. For those developers who spent time investigating the Android Bridge, we strongly encourage you to take a look at the iOS Bridge and Xamarin as great solutions,” Gallo said.

SOURCE: Windows Blog

Luke Jones
Luke Jones
Luke has been writing about all things tech for more than five years. He is following Microsoft closely to bring you the latest news about Windows, Office, Azure, Skype, HoloLens and all the rest of their products.

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