Win32 and .NET desktop apps can now be published in the Windows Store
So if I understand it right, this is basically running apps in a Win32-emulator&#x2F;sandbox where all &#x27;unsafe&#x27; Win32 file and registry accesses are redirected into sandboxed locations.<p>I wonder why MS didn&#x27;t go this way from the beginning instead of pushing that Frankensteinian half-desktop&#x2F;half-mobile monstrosity called WinRT^H^H^H UWP on us.<p>The UWP application model has been modelled after the (now 10 years old) iOS&#x2F;Android app model, created in a time when mobile devices had a lot less memory and performance than notebooks. Win32 is a pretty bad desktop API, but UWP somehow managed to be even worse because it is an outdated mobile OS ported back into the traditional desktop environment, and everything that is not &#x27;mobile&#x27; (mouse, keyboard, window management, ...) has been implemented as an afterthought. For games (which I guess are the main usage for old-school desktop computers now), UWP is an especially bad fit.<p>I&#x27;m all for increasing security by running applications in a sandbox with granular permissions. However I am against &#x27;walled gardens&#x27; curated by platform owners, this closed-platform model kills innovation. Unfortunately these two different things got thrown into the same pot by Apple, Google, and now MS. UWP somehow manages to combine the worst aspects of a dead app shop, a dead mobile platform, and walled-garden power phantasies.<p>All of these problems aren&#x27;t fixed with the Win32 sandbox though, I&#x27;m pretty sure this is just an emulation layer on top of UWP, so all UWP limitations would still apply.