Irrlicht3D

> This would lose the security properties of iOS, which is a big part of the value proposition for iPhones and iPads.

Right. Apple is adding more and more security features from iOS into macOS. But, people are going to complain about that too.

> Other operating systems can run in _parallel_ with iOS

Absolutely, but there is a performance hit and memory management becomes an issue. You still need a host OS as well to unify the UX. Also, there needs to be some way for IPC between the applications of different OSes.

> Microsoft implemented WSL

WSL has networking and memory management issues. WSLg sort of works. Its architecture is wild [1]. Display scaling is terrible though. IPC between Windows and WSL guests is limited.

WSL 2 was released in 2020 and it still has issues. It's not a simple problem to solve.

Microsoft has also gone from WinRT, UWP, WinUI, MAUI, and now WinUI 3 trying to unify application development [2]. Again, it's not a simple problem to solve.

I think the only OS that has actually unified application development across all form factors is Android/Chrome OS. But, people complain about how limited Chrome OS is.

[1] https://github.com/microsoft/wslg?tab=readme-ov-file#wslg-architecture-overview

[2] https://www.irrlicht3d.org/index.php?t=1626

_I posted this on the techcrunch article, but thought it might be useful to post it here as well_

Perhaps one thing that the "startup world" could adopt is the practice of postmortems. The game industry, which many have pointed out have many parallels between a new game venture and a startup, embraces failure in the sense that they talk truthfully about "what went right, and what went wrong". There are postmortems at industry events (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLqk4aqpXlQ), and the industry's media publishes them (http://www.gamasutra.com/features/postmortem/). Of course, in many cases the postmortems are of popular/successful games, but at least they speak freely about things that went wrong ... and there are even some small failures that work up the courage to post about it (http://www.irrlicht3d.org/pivot/entry.php?id=1289).

The point is that the culture in the game industry does not look down on failure, even while celebrating successes. And yes, I do realize the irony of me using the game industry as an example of healthy culture (ea_spouse, etc.) :P

its sort of the business model at this point. you cant just subscribe to security updates without new features. to justify the cost they always have to cram new, and by new i mean change.

google feels the same way. things that work need to be rebuilt and rereleased to justify headcount.

the mail -> new outlook is just another in the long tradition of microsoft pushing a new native gui framework, only to abandon it in house. How can they ever expect developers developers developers to commit to another future abandonware.

https://irrlicht3d.org/index.php?t=1626

they really should be going in reverse and making all their apps pure native and then getting them to also render as html.

Why is there no Silicon Valley of Europe?

Because programmers and other IT professionals are paid laughably low wages and shown even less respect than they are in the US. It's a similar situation in Japan and Australia. Yet whenever politicians talk about the need for startups to compete with Silicon Valley, you never hear them say a word about the insultingly low wages that are the norm in Germany, France, UK, Belgium, and others.

Want to create a Silicon Valley of Europe? Then pay Silicon Valley wages, you cheap bastards!

The Irrlicht guy wrote about this:

http://www.irrlicht3d.org/pivot/entry.php?id=1295