Spotify’s Support of Live Tiles is Important (Premium)

The latest update to Spotify for Windows 10 adds support for live tiles in Start. No big deal you say? Wrong: This is huge.

I assume that most readers are aware of the issues with the Microsoft Store in Windows 10 and the Universal Windows Platforms (UWP) apps platform. That Microsoft has done all it can to drum up support from developers, and that those efforts, by and large, have been fruitless.

So Microsoft has kept scrambling, and they've expanded the ways in which developers can bring their existing apps, or in some cases code-bases, to Windows 10. There are various bridge technologies, for example, that help developers reuse existing code and, in many cases, target Windows 10 much more easily than would otherwise be the case.

Microsoft's Desktop Bridge is a key component of this effort. This allows developers to take an entire Win32/.NET desktop application, wrap it in a UWP AppX container, and, with little work, bring it to the Microsoft Store in Windows 10. To the user, the app works as it always did. But it is more easily discoverable in a store that is known to be safe and reliable, it cannot impact the system negatively (for the most part), and it can be uninstalled in a single click, just like a real UWP app.

The issue with Desktop Bridge is that that's all developers need to do. And when we looked at Spotify on Windows 10, that's what we've seen: A duplicate of the Spotify desktop application that does nothing to support key Windows 10 features.

But Desktop Bridge lets developer do more than just wrap their desktop applications and deploy them from the Store. With a bit more work, they can add native Windows 10/UWP features to their apps, too. And in this way, Desktop Bridge apps become better than their desktop application equivalents, and they offer a more native experience for users.

That's great, but this functionality is largely theoretical, since many developers who use Desktop Bridge don't bother to adopt native Windows 10 features. They just dump their apps in the Store and walk away.

And that's why this week's Spotify update is such welcome news. Spotify is that rare example of a fairly recent major new application, and the fact that Spotify even ported this application to the Store using Desktop Bridge was pretty surprising. That they are now making it even better when used on Windows 10 is better still.

That's why this seemingly small improvement is important: When a major third party developer like Spotify does something like this, it inspires other developers, small or big, to do the same. If Spotify supports live tiles---and, hopefully, more Windows 10 features in the future---then others will do so as well.

It's important for Windows 10 users, too. These kinds of improvements make the platform better, and they make using the Store version of a given app a non-brainer. This in turn helps the Store and the whole ecosystem. And I think we can all agree that they need all the help they...

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