Windows Support as Amazon Store is End of Life

[Cory__Williams]

Good morning team,

I've woken to an email this morning from Amazon advising that as of March 6th 2024, the Amazon Appstore will no longer be available for Windows. Confirmed here in this post: Download the Amazon Appstore on Windows 11 - Amazon Customer Service

Subsequently I did a quick search and found that Microsoft is ending the support for the Windows Subsystem for Android (WSA). Windows Subsystem for Android:trade_mark: | Microsoft Learn

As a new customer I had planned to roll out Field App for certain users who are in the field and have a Windows device. I'm not keen to rollout a solution to users with a lifespan of less than a year that has limited support.

With Field App no longer supported under the WSA framework, are there any plans to bring back a stand alone Windows application for Field App?

If not, could you please advise the recommended approach?

[WetherbeeDorshow]

Wow. This is a brutally sudden and unfortunate announcement. We have clients who just bought new rugged tablets with Windows 11 that will not be able to install fieldmaps if they do not get it done today. Seriously, how did ESRI not know this was coming..... Hoping there is a quick fix!! Thanks for the post.

[WetherbeeDorshow]

@JeffShaner Any insights on this?

any insights on this?

[JeffShaner]

@Cory__Williams @WetherbeeDorshow,

ArcGIS Field Maps is a product built natively for iOS and Android devices. With WSA, we were able to leverage the Android app and provide a Windows 11 solution with little development effort. This change in direction is unfortunate and there is no quick fix.

At this time, we have no intention to build a Windows 11 version of ArcGIS Field Maps. Other Esri COTS apps are available on the Windows 11 platform - including ArcGIS Survey123, ArcGIS QuickCapture, ArcGIS Earth, and ArcGIS Pro.

We'll have more details to follow now that the official announcement from Microsoft is out.

[BrettLessner]

Jeff,

I think the fact that those other solutions are on Windows but Field Maps isn't is part of our frustration. We use Field Maps on Windows because it’s the ideal application for our workflow. Not having an equivalent application will impact our daily operations and have tangible financial impacts on us and our contractors.   

[RyanUthoff]

Also, let's not forget that just 4 months ago, Esri provided official guidance (https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/products/collector/field-mobility/deprecation-notice-arcgis-collect...) to transition to Field Maps on Windows 11 from Collector (which was also supported on Windows) because Collector was being deprecated. And now suddenly we're being told that it's no longer going to be supported.

[MichaelDavis3]

Unfortunately Microsoft has been all over the place with their dev technologies lately.  We certainly have had our own struggles trying to plan and roadmap our own apps given their tendency to just axe entire product lines via press release.

With the Runtime SDK for WPF being retired and given the state of the Xamarin/.net MAUI transition the last couple of years ESRI's decision to go the WSA route is understandable.  With .net MAUI now approaching something resembling production-ready it might be the best path forward to bring Field Maps back to Windows tablets.  

They totally had the rug pulled out from under them with this announcement, but my hope is that if enough customers can demonstrate the need to continue Field Maps on Windows they'll be able to devote resources to a .net MAUI implementation.

Personally we only use Windows tablets with Field Maps for field work in secure locations that don't allow cameras (iPads).  This represents a tiny but important fraction of our usage.

[JohnathonOliver]

While I'm sympathetic to Microsoft's erratic dev technologies, this hasn't impacted Survey123 or QuickCapture or ArcGIS Earth...... At least not in ways people outside of Esri can see.

I'm not trying to be a jerk about it, but it sounds like Esri took the easy way out and just used WSA instead of building a native Windows 11 app that should have been done in the first place, and now their end users are the ones who have to suffer.

[MichaelDavis3]

One of the things I love about developing apps with ESRI is they use the same SDKs we do to build their production apps.  In this case Survey123 (and I suspect QuickCapture) are built with the ArcGIS Maps SDK for QT (https://developers.arcgis.com/qt/) which supports cross platform development but breaks most of the native platform UI conventions and make it difficult to support capabilities like external GNSS devices.

Field Maps on the other hand is built using the native SDK for each platform (Android, iOS) which gives it a much more consistent UI and the ability to use each platforms unique capabilities to their fullest extent.  So given the currently available runtime SDKs .net is probably the only path forward.