Opinion: Why Microsoft’s Windows 8 App Store May Fail

[rantoc]

I knew who wrote this before even hitting the link from the main page, i think the opposite. If the store is made right MS have all the free marketing they need and if they keep the prices down in the beginning they will get customers - easy as that.

 

[Camikazi]

[citation][nom]internetlad[/nom]Opinion: Why Gruener's articles may be biased.[/citation]
Isn't the fact that it says "Opinion" mean that it will be biased? That is what an opinion is after all what a person believes based on their experience. And as we all know experience will change your views on things and make you biased in one direction or another.

 

[Guest]

xerroz: Windows comes with plenty of spyware and malware, there's no need for Microsoft to inject additional malware and spyware through their app store.

However, they will never be able to keep malware and spyware out of other people's apps, this is a failure of the closed source, proprietary model. It's all too easy to obfuscate malicious code beyond recognition to antivirus. Even if they were to use a manifest file similar to Android where an application must request special rights at install time, you'll still never be able to know for sure what anything is doing with those rights, and probably 99% of apps will want internet access.

 

[9_breaker]

Microsoft can do anything with windows , there's no real alternative

 

[hoofhearted]

What I don't get is how Apple has gotten away with what they do. They can censor certain apps if they allow certain functionality such as tethering, politically controversial content, and even competing app stores.

In the past Microsoft has gotten hammered for practices lesser than these.

 

[molo9000]

[citation][nom]hoofhearted[/nom]What I don't get is how Apple has gotten away with what they do. They can censor certain apps if they allow certain functionality such as tethering, politically controversial content, and even competing app stores.In the past Microsoft has gotten hammered for practices lesser than these.[/citation]

The difference is that Apple doesn't have a monopoly they could abuse. If you go into a shop to buy a smartphone, you have a choice between 4 or 5 good platforms. If you don't like one, get another.

Most people who buy computers don't have a choice but to buy Windows.
Mac OS only comes bundled with niche-market hardware (expensive laptops, small-form-factor desktop, all-in-one PC, workstation).
Linux, despite being free, is almost never offered preinstalled and is not really a choice for an average user who barely even knows what a web browser is.

The desktop OS market simply has a tendency to be monopolistic for several reasons.

- There are huge network effects: each individual has an advantage from using the same operating system as everyone else because of better software availability and compatibility

- high fixed costs, tiny variable costs, economies of scale and sub-additive costs ( a so called "natural monopoly"): The more users you sell a OS to, the cheaper it gets to make (per licence). That gives the largest provider of OSes a natural advantage and makes it difficult for others to compete.

- high switching costs for the user: Switching operating systems is difficult for most users. They need to buy new software, they need to learn new software, they may not even get the software they need for the other operating system, etc.

 

[teleman56]

Of course it will be a flop, it's another Vist or Windows Millenium, This crap is designed for tablets or cellphones not real PCs or PC users, unless the are dweebs.

Sell MS stock for the interim cause it's going to fall like the brick Windows 8 will be

 

[pocketdrummer]

"Enthusiasts may care about under-the-hood changes, such as more efficient memory usage, but I don’t think that the average consumer will care."

I'm sorry, but enthusiasts will be turned off entirely by Metro UI long before they care about efficient memory usage. An enthusiast would rather double their physical ram to compensate than screw around with a painfully inefficient, awkwardly implemented UI. Metro UI has already sealed the deal for me... I'm skipping Win8 just as I skipped Vista.

 

[Guest]

Actually, the author has a point. Windows 8 apps are supposed to be about an "immersive experience", which is MS speak for "apps are full screen now". Nice for games and watching media I guess, and we already do use full screen that, but I want _WINDOWS_ for my productivity apps. I refer to content in one window while working in another window all day long, some times I have tasks that involve several windows at a time. That is what Windows was created for in the first place. Windows 8 apps suck for serious productivity on that basis alone. While it is true that Windows is sold on a lot of home bound PCs and perhaprs tablets, MS bread and butter has always been for business uses. The author has good points about the UI being very intrusive. I mean click on the start menu "orb" and you are forced off the desktop back into Metro, filling the whole screen? Search seems to do the same thing!!! Also, the author is correct about touch on the desktop. I have tried it, I wanted to like it, I looked forward to it and once I had it realized that Steve jobs was right. It is useless and clumsy. As far as this app store goes, imagine trying to choose from apps that require the hardware environment of a tablet versus what you'll find on a desktop. So, they just segregate the tablet oriented apps from the PC orient apps you say, then why force a tablet oriented OS down the the throats of desktop and laptop users in the first place?

 

[JohnnyLucky]

"Apps, formerly called software or programs....."

Why do companies have to keep changing names? I can't keep up with all the changes.

 

[pcwlai]

The only common application programming model on all Microsoft devices right now is the .NET platform. It is good but it is not really cross platform even within the Microsoft hardware and software combination. Not even to mention the rapid development of the .NET platform in server side to combat against Oracle and Google which does not lie on the same horizon as desktop and mobile devices.

XBox Live is good as soon as it is just being a friend list and Avatar checking system on both desktop and mobile platforms. It is a closed system which Microsoft won't open to anyone and so, this cannot be tightly integrated for other developers to use. Even it is opened to desktop and mobile, it is still closed for XBox 720 which means, no developers will have interest on this if the main target audience cannot be reached.

Native applications is still the best way to code for games and entertainment software for mobile devices. Microsoft gets the best compilers and development environments but, they chose to not allow this for the mobile devices.

DLL hell is the signature of Windows which won't get solved. Even Visual Studio 2010 and Windows 7 cannot solve it perfectly. Why? Because Windows is Windows. So, packaged application that just works won't appear on Windows. It will only appear on Door but Door won't come until Microsoft is purchase by Google or Oracle.