Did it really occur to nobody at Microsoft that "now open the Windows App app" is going to confuse a lot of people?

Even after reading the whole article, all I can infer is that this is a "seamless" replacement for Microsoft's "Remote Desktop". I'm assuming it's 100% Microsoft cloud based, although I'd be curious if it can be used without the Internet.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-app/get-started-co...

I installed the Windows App on Windows and the first screen prompts with "Connect to your cloud resources with a work or school account. Sign in". This definitely does not make Windows App seem like a replacement for Remote Desktop, which requires no cloud account.

As far as long-term impact, Im curious to know how this might impact Windows developers. Does this push developers to choose native platforms over the unnecessary aditional abstration of running within windows? IE: If your user base simply starts using their iphones to occasionally access your application via the windows app, does this push your team to just choose to build an iphone app?

Or does this become the best way for developers to build a cross-platform experiences?

When the app started it asked me to sign in (WTF), entered my Microsoft Account (personal, not azure AD) and was meet with the error message: Personal accounts are not supported (WTF).

Utterly useless app at least for accessing on-prem devices on a home network.

I go back to the good old remote desktop app that comes with windows because that is working flawless.

Of course it doesn't work flawless.

If you have been a good boy and followed Microsoft best practice and configured your Microsoft Account to be passwordless account as I have you of course cannot login because, as you would expect, the RDP app doesn't work with passwordless accounts.

It only like 4 - 5 years since Microsoft introduced passwordless accounts so of course that too little time for an organization with 100K+ developers to implement their own best practices in their own products. sigh.

I thought back then that the biggest mistake was to not lean more heavily into the existing Win32 ecosystem, which was the one big asset Microsoft had. Imagine if they had spent less time building tablet UIs nobody wanted, and more time working on solutions to let people access the Win32 world from your tablet, which is what I see in this video.

I am not in that target group.

You mean Windows?

No, I mean the app.

Which app?

The Windows app.

Is it in the Windows app store?

Yes, and you can use it to connect to your other devices.

Oh, so like RDP?

Sort of. But you need an MS 365 subscription to use it. Also, you cannot connect to remote desktop services from a Windows OS using Windows App, only MacOS, iOS or Android.

So I should get a Mac or Android to use the full feature set of the Windows App?

Sort of, but you can connect to your Windows 365 or Azure Virtual Desktops using the Windows App on your Windows OS.

So the Windows App on Windows is just for accessing cloud PC subscriptions with Microsoft, but not any of my physical Windows PCs?

Yes. That's why it's called the Windows App.

security is easy because you aren't running anything locally, can't save anything locally, probably can't even do true copy/paste

when they want to fire you, the client reboots and you have nothing from your job accessible anymore

and you wonder why Microsoft is so busy building hundreds of Azure datacenters...