What does it mean to be a Universal Windows 10 app?

Now that we are evidently heading into a storm of new and updated apps for Windows 10, there seem to be a lot of misunderstandings from the casual reader about Microsoft’s Universal Windows Platform (UWP).

A lot of this comes down to details of app development that non-developers do not understand, which is fine. It’s akin to an astrophysicist explaining a black hole e.g. what Stephen Hawking does in his well-read books. While he “dumbs down” what a black hole can and cannot do based on mathematical theory, the real nitty gritty details are left for those with Ph.Ds. In other words, don’t expect to win an argument with him over how information could escape, but why light cannot.

One common misunderstanding over so-called universal apps revolves around why we see some apps on mobile but not PC (think Pandora, until yesterday) or in reverse like Twitter’s new Windows 10 app. It can be confusing and that’s why we’ll break it down for you to better understand.