Microsoft ditches web wrappers and vows real native apps for windows 11
Windows 11 is about to shed its sluggish skin. Microsoft has finally admitted that wrapping websites in Electron costumes was a battery-draining dead end, and is assembling a hit squad to rebuild flagship apps from silicon up, not from browser tabs over.
The man microsoft picked to torch the web app cemetery
Rudy Huyn, the ex-dropbox engineer who once squeezed Instagram into Windows Phone, has been handed the keys to a new studio inside Redmond. His mandate: ship apps that feel like they were born on NT, not ported from a Chrome process. No prior Win32 experience required—just an allergy to RAM bloat and a fetish for 60 fps animations.
The internal memo, briefed to TechBloom last night, lists Clipchamp, Copilot and the built-in Photoslauncher as the first candidates for defibrillation. Each rewrite must hit three metrics: half the memory footprint, twice the launch speed, and native dark-mode toggles that don’t flash white on boot. Miss two and the project is killed; no second chances.
Web refugees should not celebrate yet. Sources say the new stack is WinUI 3 locked to Windows App SDK 1.6, meaning Windows 10 users will watch the party through the glass. Microsoft will not back-port; it wants the upgrade charts to spike.
Why meta and spotify will not jump aboard
The elephant in the room is ecosystem leverage. WhatsApp and Spotify rebuilt their Windows clients on Chromium for a reason: one codebase covers Mac, Linux and the web. Asking them to maintain a separate WinUI branch is like asking Tesla to ship a diesel engine—technically possible, commercially absurd.
Microsoft’s bait is Store visibility and zero platform commission for consumer apps through 2025. Insiders call it “Netflix money”: upfront cash injections that paid off for Disney+ on Xbox. Negotiations are underway, but Zuckerberg’s team has already declined, citing React Native momentum.
Meanwhile, PC makers smell a marketing grenade. Lenovo and Asus will badge 2025 laptops with “Native App Ready” stickers, betting that shoppers finally associate Windows with speed rather than fans spinning like jet engines.
The clock is ticking. If the first wave of rewritten apps does not land before 24H2, Microsoft risks another Windows 8–style mutiny. Huyn’s team has nine months, two build conferences, and one chance to prove that Redmond can still write code that hugs the metal instead of hugging the cloud.