Microsoft releases samples of iOS apps for Windows Bridge

Microsoft provides samples, documentation, and sample code of iOS apps portable to the Universal Windows Platform on GitHub. In addition, the Windows Bridge for iOS is expanded with new functionality.

Microsoft is releasing two complete XCode projects on GitHub for full iOS apps compatible with Windows Bridge: a todo list and a calculator. In addition, the company publishes two bite-size samples of code to demonstrate certain functionality and includes guides for using Live Tiles and notifications.

Microsoft has added new functionality to the SDK at the same time as the announcement. For example, the company has merged the complete CoreFoundation framework with the WinObjC codebase, bringing classes such as NSString and NSArray within reach. Apple released CoreFoundation’s source code in December, when the Swift programming language was also made open source.

Finally, Microsoft has added NSLayoutAnchor and UILayoutGuide to Auto Layout. This is part of the Bridge’s ability to preserve the UI of the iOS apps when transferring. Microsoft has further removed bugs and improved performance.

Windows Bridge for iOS, or WinObjC, is Microsoft’s open source project of an Objective-C development environment for Visual Studio with support for iOS APIs. The intent is to allow developers to customize their iOS apps to run on Windows 10 with relatively little effort. Microsoft also had a project for porting Android apps to the UWP platform, but this Bridge was discontinued at the end of February.