14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella attended the Gartner Symposium ITxpo 2016 in Orlando to talk about company products such as Windows and Office, but also about the LinkedIn acquisition that caused so much controversy after the public announcement.
One particularly interesting remark made by Nadella during his keynote concerns Microsoft’s operating system, which has embarked on a long-term transformation with the final goal of bringing together platforms and merging PCs, smartphones, and gaming consoles.
“Windows is the most open platform there is,” Nadella said according to ZDNet, adding that “bringing users, IT, and developers together is the approach we’ve always taken. When you bring them together, that’s where the magic happens.”
Microsoft’s efforts of bringing everything Windows together is based mostly on the concept of universal apps, which are supposed to run on all Windows devices with the same look and feel, but to adapt to different screen sizes without impacting user experience.
The criticism
The universal app platform has often been criticized, including by Tim Sweeney, the CEO of Epic Games, who explained in public comments that Microsoft’s not offering an open platform, but exactly the opposite.
“Does this new change mean that UWP is an open ecosystem? Let’s take a look at what it means for developers, specifically: If you apply to become a Microsoft Registered Developer, and Microsoft accepts you, then you take a UWP app you have compiled and submit it to Microsoft,” Sweeney said earlier this year.
“If Microsoft chooses to accept the app, then it will digitally sign the app using its DRM and return it to the developer, at which point the developer can distribute it to users, and users can manually install and run it on any machine with default Windows 10 Settings. Is this open? You be the judge.”
Microsoft has already replied to Sweeney, trying to prove that Windows and UWP are indeed open platforms, but for the moment, the Epic Games CEO doesn’t seem to be at all convinced that this is true. Microsoft’s CEO, on the other hand, reiterates the words that he said so many times, explaining that the company’s final goal is to empower every developer to do more.