In an interesting but highly speculative article at TechCrunch, the idea is put forth that we'll be able to run Windows Phone apps on Windows 8--why you would want to do that, we're not sure. The thrust of their argument revolves around "Jupiter", Microsoft's upcoming developer framework for Windows 8:
"Jupiter may end up being the “one framework” to rule them all. That means it might be possible to port the thousands of Windows Phone apps already written with Silverlight to Windows 8 simply by reusing existing code and making small tweaks. Or maybe even no tweaks. (That part is still unclear). If so, this would be a technical advantage for developers building for Windows Phone 8 (code-named “Apollo” by the way, the son of “Jupiter”) or Windows 8."
Of interest is to note the Roman mythology here: Jupiter is the father of Apollo, with the latter being the code-name for Windows Phone 8. We suppose this would be highly useful for developers for somewhat obvious reasons, though the benefit to consumers would not seem as strong. Windows 8 is expected to feature its own app store with programs designed for that user experience and even if WP7 apps could run on Windows 8, scalability issues will abound. Still, it's not hard to think that yes, in some form this could be accurate as we're expecting for Windows 9/Windows Phone 9 to merge into a single system--but that's still a ways off.
Source: TechCrunch
Comments
This doesn't seem unusual at all, and personally I think this would be a HUGE value to the customers. Just think of all the iPhone apps that run on iPad. If Windows Phone 7 apps could be emulated on Windows 8 without any recompilation (like iPhone apps on iPad) then this would be a total win and increase the value of the WP7 Marketplace (e.g. people would be more willing to develop for WP7 since they would know their apps would automatically run on Windows 8, too)
You got your mythology all wrong. Apollo and Jupiter are not related.
False, it's certainly mixed and there's not much consensus. http://www.encyclocenter.com/Roman-Gods-3423.htmlhttp://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Jupiter_%28mythology%29"Diana bore Jupiter a son and a daughter—Apollo, god of the sun, and Diana, goddess of the moon, respectively"
I totally agree with wpmaniac. Its a no-brainer that this is a huge deal. Windows 8 is obviously tailored for tablets and touchscreens. Imagine a tablet running a full blown OS plus able to run mobile OS apps. Major win.
I don't see why running WP apps on Win8 would be such a bad thing however there's something else that I think would be more valuable. Rather than having apps roam onto different devices, how about application state appearing on different devices.For example, if I start tracking an auction on the eBay app I would expect the fact that I am tracking that auction to be synced across all my instances of the eBay app, either on my Win8 machine or my Windows Phone, that way I only have to specify the auction once.there are countless examples of where this would be useful and was the big promise of Live Framework back in 2008 before it got canned in August 2009 - I'm holding out hope that it gets resurrected at BUILD next week.
It would be awesome, and the difference to now would be tiny, technically. Silverlight allready works, and you can copy paste your wp7 app into a silverlight app, and it all just works. all they would need is the designs of wp7 to be ported, and some of the controls, too. other than that, it's already code-once run-everywhere.i so hope they do that. the wp7 theme for silverlight apps that could be installed trough the win8 marketplace would be perfect. and the amount of effort from microsofts side would be minimal
It should! I hope they do make this as seemless as possible. Silverlight and XNA already run on Windows so really it is not a big deal for apps to run on Windows 8. Just need to make things like location, accelorometers, cameras, tasks, calendar api's etc consistant.
In the first Building 8 video, they showed how apps will change the layout when u snap them side-by-side. And then they look like Windows Phone 7 apps!My guess is that the new framework will allow WP7 apps to be re-scaled and have a floating layout that will work on Windows 8 full screen, snapped on the side and on Windows Phone 8.
Imagine if Windows Phone apps displayed on Windows 8 with all the pivot screens displayed at once. You know like MS often shows with the app extending out beyond the phone.http://www.shoppingblog.com/pics/windows_7_series_phone_hubs.jpg
This is not new, it might have been improved but this is already possible. Currently you can make one app and make it check if its running on xbox/pc/or phone and it will change it self to work. However this is no easy task to develop. I can't really pin point if any developers have done this. However plants vs zombies is in all 3 platforms.
Sorry to add another note but if this is true then this may confirm that we can use C# and VB to make apps for windows 8. They had said it would be HTML.