Today at SPADC (Swift + App Development Conference) in Cologne, Robin-Manuel Thiel from Microsoft held a session about Project Islandwood. He talked about all the possibilities the iOS Bridge offers for developers. Furthermore, he presented how developers can compile their existing iOS applications on Windows 10 and run them natively as an Universal Windows App across all Windows devices.
The Windows Bridge for iOS is an open-source project that allows iOS developers to create Windows apps using existing Objective-C code and skills. The goal of Microsoft is to help developers writing great Windows apps that use as much of existing code as possible.
The Windows Bridge for iOS is not a funeral for Windows 10 apps. Also it is not an one-click solution. The bridge only works in one direction – you can bring your iOS apps to the Windows Plattform but you cannot convert Windows app to iOS.
Benefits of the Windows Bridge for iOS
- Quickly get up and running on the Universal Windows Plattform (UWP)
- Access UWP APIs directly from Objective-C
- Additionally take advantage of the Apple frameworks
The Windows Bridge for iOS will support Swift in the future as well. It is not available yet because Swift is still changing a lot. Furthermore the language is not that stable yet und most apps are still written in Objective-C.
In a demo at SPADC, Microsoft converted two iOS apps to Windows. A video of this session is now online.
