![Windows Store Windows Store](https://s14633.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/windows_storelogo.jpg)
Microsoft has a modern platform for apps that would make your computer safer, more reliable, and perform better. All that’s needed is for you to give up everything that you do on your Windows computer today and start over again with new programs from the Windows Store that don’t look or work like the programs you’re using now.
Perhaps you can understand why that’s not going well.
Let’s look at the background from Microsoft’s perspective, then take a look at how it’s going in the real world.
All of the programs you use today were built on an aging platform – let’s call it “Win32” for simplicity. That’s Chrome, Word, Excel, Outlook, Acrobat, Photoshop, Quicken – everything.
Each program is purchased or installed separately from individual sources. In the past we bought each one in a box at Best Buy. Now we download them directly from the developer or from Amazon.
Security is a problem. Each Win32 program has access to the system at a deep level that doesn’t quite lock out hackers and bad guys, and each one can potentially crash the entire computer.
Performance is a problem. There’s no central authority for updates so each program runs its own background routine to check for updates and pop up notifications when they’re ready. That means lots of background processes and scheduled tasks slowing things down.
One more thing: in the last ten years developers have moved on to more lucrative channels and stopped developing new Win32 programs. Although there are a lot of essential, mature Windows programs available, not a single important new Windows program has appeared in the last ten years. This is a problem for Microsoft, which wants the Windows world to thrive and grow.
In 2008, not long after the introduction of the iPhone, Apple opened the App Store for iPhones and iPads. Apple curated the apps that were allowed to be listed in the App Store and enforced tight restrictions on the apps for security and reliability. Apple also kept control of the process for updating apps, making updates more reliable and less intrusive.
The App Store was just a teensy bit successful. There are more than 2.2 million apps in the App Store that have been downloaded more than 130 billion times. Along the way, Apple has made a ton of money from its 30% share of revenue, and the App Store has generated more than $70 billion for developers.
Google followed suit with the Play Store for Android devices, and was also successful – both at making money and at keeping the Android ecosystem under at least a bit of control.
Microsoft is jealous.
Windows is in decline, and at least part of the reason is that computers are too complicated to use. People are paranoid of hackers and bad guys (with very good reason!), they’re irritated by updates, and they’re furious about bugs and crashes.
It might not seem like it but Microsoft has made huge strides toward making Windows more secure and reliable. But its hands are tied in some ways by the Win32 architecture, and it can’t help looking over at Apple’s and Google’s piles of cash from the app stores and dreaming of how it can get some app money for itself.
Enter the Windows Store.
Windows Store
In 2012 Microsoft introduced the Windows Store in Windows 8 as an app store for new, “modern” apps that were built on a new platform and shared a common look and feel that was quite different than traditional Win32 programs. The Windows Store had the same characteristics that had worked for Apple and Google – better updates and more security for the apps, and a 30% share of revenue for Microsoft.
Then there was a hitch: no one cared. Developers ignored the Windows Store, or they half-heartedly delivered a modern version of a familiar program and then abandoned it when no one downloaded it. Most people didn’t know the Windows Store existed, and even if they looked, they found no reason to hang out there.
By that time the decline of Windows computing was under way, accelerated by the disastrous reception for Windows 8. Microsoft knew – quite rightly – that nothing was going to stop that slide if Windows continued to be an aging platform for the same old Win32 apps.
With Windows 10, Microsoft doubled down on the Windows Store. It merged all its other platforms into the single Windows Store – movies, music, phone apps, even e-books. It changed the rules about apps to reduce the workload for developers and allow new technology to power the apps (including the next generation of “Progressive Web Apps,” one of the hot industry buzzwords).
So far in the life of Windows 10, no one cares. Users and developers are ignoring the Windows Store.
Microsoft stares at the future of Windows in decline and thinks about what it would be like if it could wave a magic wand and *POOF* all our computers are running nothing but Windows Store apps. We’re safe and our laptop batteries last longer and updates don’t require restarts very often and our computers don’t crash and we’re so happy that we have a resurgence of love for Windows computing and no one buys Chromebooks and we all use laptops instead of phones to take selfies.
It’s a great vision, isn’t it?
Microsoft even created a special version of Windows, Windows 10 S, that runs only Windows Store apps and can’t run any Win32 apps at all. A Windows 10 S computer can’t run Chrome or any other program you’ve ever installed on a Windows computer. It can run specially modified versions of the Office programs but that’s about it for anything familiar.
You’ll forgive me for repeating the obvious but, no one cares. There is no demand for this. It meets Microsoft’s business needs, but users and developers didn’t ask for this and frankly don’t need it. Our Windows computers are helping us get our work done just fine, more or less, and there are no advantages to this new replacement that justify the cost of the transition – a cost measured in dollars and the frustration of having to learn new ways to do everything.
Feel a bit of pity for Microsoft. It is trying to respond to our complaints and deliver a better version of Windows. But there is one, and only one, way to market this vision and convince us to make the transition: by telling us that Windows 10 is just awful. It can’t say that clearly, for obvious reasons. When the message is couched in marketing speak (“streamlined for security and performance”), it sounds weak and unconvincing.
Microsoft is not done. I suspect literally almost no one is running Windows 10 S, but there is still marketing to be done for schools and low-end cheap laptops. The store might be renamed to “Microsoft Store” with a new icon – maybe that will help it turn the corner, eh? The store is a bit of a cesspool of terrible apps and poor experiences, but Microsoft has promised to redouble its efforts to clean it up – although come to think of it, it promised to redouble its efforts to clean it up in 2015, so now it must be working at quadruple the pace. It still looks like a collection of crap to me. Maybe Microsoft can redouble its efforts a couple more times.
The story continues. I think the Windows Store will continue to be irrelevant and Windows 10 S will be an embarrassing failure, but who knows, maybe Microsoft will find a way to make it work. Let’s see if anything draws you to the Windows Store in the next year or two.
Random Me, only an idiot would compare mobile app stores on a phone to an mobile type app store on a desktop.
FrankieTheSkin, until reading your comment did I realize that Windows 10 looked like a phone indeed. Microsoft Store is way inferior to App Store and Play Store. Here I am looking for an ePub reader in Microsoft Store. It has some readers but they are no good. I can get free and decent ePub readers in App Store without breaking a sweat. I think Microsoft Store app environment is inferior to Win32. Take WordWeb as an example. WordWeb app from Microsoft Store is not up to par with its Win32 counterpart. The same applies to VLC and other programs.
Why on Earth would I want to give Microshit even more control over my machines than they already have? Why would I want Microscum to run background processes that do nothing but collecting data that’s none of their business and use it to pester me with ‘tailored ads’ I never asked for? Why would I replace Windows 7, which I was already reluctant to use, because it lacks a few things I liked about the previous versions, which for the most part works exactly the way I want it, and at least offers a theme that allows me to preserve the traditional Windows look, why would I trade that for an ugly piece of crap that assumes I want it to look like a phone? Why would I want to use apps that are vastly inferior to the ones I use and essentially are mostly aimed at providing DRM and stricter ‘licensed, not sold’ fuckery, rather than being ‘better’ or ‘more secure’, which are just terms to sugarcoat it? Why exactly should I trade something I can instruct to stop bugging me and wait until I restart my computer because I feel like it with something that restarts my computer against my will? Even if all developers switched to the Windows App Store, I’d still ignore it completely, just like I ignore every Windows after 7. My computers are not phones, I don’t use them for the same things, I don’t want them to look and act the same, I neither need, nor want ‘one experience on all devices’, Windows 10 and its store apps are no more than a massive pile of dinosaur shit in my eyes, and luckily I’m old enough to expect to be gone by the time nothing else will work anymore. I for one have spent a significant amount of money to buy enough Windows 7 Ultimate licenses to be sorted for as long as conventional PCs prevail, and I’m confident that will be the case until after I’m dead, hence I’m good, no need for Microcunt’s new bullshit.
I run Windows 10 OS, I have problems with Windows Store as it’s slow and weak.
The reason that users are not interested in the Windows Store, is because the developers are not interested in it too. Take Google Chrome as an example. It’s one of the fastest browsers in existence with the only downside that it takes too many resources (mostly for low end PC users).
What if it was available on the store as a Windows 10 UWP optimized version? Chances are that we could have the same performance, if not more than before, with an even more lightweight version of Chrome.
The Windows Store could actually offer us a better experience but developers (sometimes not even MS themselves) are not interested in it.