Microsoft recently confirmed about releasing the modular Windows 10X to single-screen devices first. This change of plans may be driven by the reevaluation of the market potential of dual-screen devices.
But Windows 10X acceptance by existing Windows users may not be without its challenges. One of the key reasons behind this may be limited feature support of Win32 apps by Windows 10X.
Microsoft during its Developers Day event had announced that Windows 10X will support most of the Win32 apps. It will do so by making use of Win32 containers.
But while that is certainly a good news, some of the experiences may not be supported. As you can see in the slide screenshot below most of the tasks like start, windowing, input, graphics, drag & drop and clipboard are supported but system tray applets, file explorer add-ins, mouse, keyboard or window hooks are not supported.
Coming to the Win32 application execution while Microsoft claims that users will notice improved performance on Windows 10X as compared to the desktop, there are some features which won’t be available. on Windows 10X Win32 app startup tasks won’t launch at logon and background tasks might be suspended.
So, while there is a big relief for developers and users that Win32 apps would be supported some experiences won’t be available for users on Windows 10X. It will be interesting to see how or whether Microsoft will ultimately try to add these Win32 features to Windows 10X.
