Leaked MS Presentation Shows App Store Plans For Windows 8 339
FrankNFurter sends word of an internal Microsoft presentation leaked online today that contains details about Windows 8. The slides mention support for 3-D displays, connectivity upgrades, rapid startup times, and an integrated application store. Quoting Neowin:
"Consumers will be able to search on the web or locally on a Windows 8 machine to access applications from the store. Microsoft also details plans for application developers to help reach millions of users. One of the goals is to ensure licensing and monetization for developers is flexible with a transparent on-boarding process. It's clear that the 'Windows Store' will be a software service Microsoft provides and hosts fully in the cloud. The company will likely build the distribution model on Windows Azure to lure application developers."
No fucking way... (Score:1, Insightful)
...is this ever going to get past the antitrust hounds.
Licensing and monetization (Score:2, Insightful)
One of the goals is to ensure licensing and monetization for developers
Considering how badly Microsoft has hampered open standards and locked down their operating system for the sake of "monetizing" software in the past, how bad will it be now that they are, presumably, trying to beat Apple at their own game of a walled-garden app store? And on the desktop no less?
Re:Just hilarious (Score:3, Insightful)
It's worse with Microsoft.
They have a monopoly on the Operating System market. This will give them a defacto stranglehold on the entire Windows software market.
"Gee Mr Coder, you appear to have a Linux version.... we don't like these kinds of apps in our store."
"Gee Mr Coder, this appears to be an office suite.. we don't like competitors in our store."
Re:Just hilarious (Score:5, Insightful)
Everyone is up-in-arms over the bizarre prediction [slashdot.org] by some third-party developers [arstechnica.com] that Apple will move to an app-store model on OSX (and all the haters pre-condemn them for this "fact" despite Jobs refuting it [macstories.net]), and then it's Microsoft that comes out and proposes to do it.
Adding a central repository of applications is no more "The App Store Model" than Ubuntu's central repository of applications. It's only "The App Store Model" if that becomes the ONLY way of putting applications on your device.
"rapid startup times" (Score:4, Insightful)
.
Always a promise from Microsoft, never a reality in Windows.
Don't care... (Score:5, Insightful)
As long as I can continue to purchase and download software as normal I couldn't care less about an MS app store.
The second they try to lock down Windows so you must use their app store, I'll be gone from the Windows platform and won't look back.
So, whatever. Don't care. If Microsoft decides to shoot themselves in the foot trying to push this, they are easily replaceable.
Re:Just hilarious (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with Apple is that we have already seen what their vision of an app store is: A Garden of Pure Ideology.
It doesn't have to be that way. It can merely be apt-get with a fancier interface and a means to pay for stuff.
Microsoft could abuse this idea. However, Apple is already abusing this idea.
Re:Just hilarious (Score:5, Insightful)
"Gee Mr Coder, you appear to have a Linux version.... we don't like these kinds of apps in our store."
"Gee Mr Coder, this appears to be an office suite.. we don't like competitors in our store."
Isn't that the EXACT same thing Apple is doing with their App Store?
Re:Just hilarious (Score:5, Insightful)
On the upside, it's not really different than what Ubuntu does with software repositories... except that they'll presumably be charging for it. And it would be one way for an administrator to allow people to download software while being reasonably assured they're not going to install malware by accident. I would hope.
As long as Microsoft doesn't block installs from outside the store, I don't see a problem.
Re:Just hilarious (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Just hilarious (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a vast difference between merely providing an app store, and an app store that is the only method of obtaining 3rd party software for the platform.
Re:Just hilarious (Score:5, Insightful)
An interrogated app store IS NOT a terrible thing even for a desktop.
What would be terrible is if Microsoft made themselves the only app store for windows.
Take a look at Steam. It is really well loved by a lot of users but it is in effect an app store.
Here is the important part.
As long as I do not have to use Microsoft's app store I don't have an issue with them having one.
As long as I can install what I want from where I want I just don't have a problem with this.
Now Walmart, BestBuy and GameStop will be up in arms and the say good buy to the used software market for some stuff but other than that...
Re:Just hilarious (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody cares if somebody does an app-store. The model people fear is an app-store ONLY method where it's the only way to install programs. This doesn't appear to be that, so why SHOULD we care? The fears regarding Apple and OS X deal with the (very real in my mind) possibility that they could indeed setup an app store and mandate that it be the only source for third party software.
Re:Just hilarious (Score:1, Insightful)
They have a monopoly on the Operating System market.
No, they don't, unless you use the new age hippie definition of "monopoly".
Back in my day, a monopoly was supply side defined. For example, I could only buy my oil from Standard Oil, or my steel from US Steel. Shit, if we had Free Oil and Free Steel I think we'd have probably stopped labeling them "monopolies" and maybe called them "guys who sell stuff I can get for free".
You do know you can get a _free_ operating system to run on your computer right? Or you can buy e.g. Apple computers, or computers with all variety of free operating systems.
I know, I know... but..but...but... That's why I have hereby labeled this new kind of demand-created monopoly a "sissy's monopoly".
Lock-in alert (Score:4, Insightful)
Great. The future of PCs is trying to be like the mobile phone industry today. They call it "integration". I call it "service restriction." There's so many artificial barriers like this in IT right now it's seriously impeding our ability to innovate. Why do we need a dozen different platforms, fifty operating systems, and a plethora of incompatible development environments, languages, and libraries underneath that? And don't tell me it's because each fills a "special niche" -- that's only true to a point.
In the hardware world, we have cores -- dedicated chunks of silicon that each perform a specific task. They're licensed out for cheap, or in a growing number of cases, made available for free. I know programmers always have a library of their own code too because the truth is the same problems come up over and over again. But thanks to intellectual property and copyright law, there's virtually no code re-use. Nobody shares. And thanks to all of this, the operating system of 10 years ago could run on a P133 with 64MB of ram now needs 10x that just to boot.
If you'd come to me 10 years ago and said, "Hey, I'm from the future -- and look what we've done!" ... I would have said "Fuck this, I'll be a doctor instead." It's complete bullshit the things we do in the name of profit. Think of what our infrastructure and society would look like today if we didn't have cell phones and basic cable sucking $200 or more out of us a month, banks finding new and better ways to fuck us over, debt collection firms getting people thrown in jail, and all this other stuff that basically say "We're fat, stupid, and need more money -- and you're gonna give it to us or else."
What the hell happened to the idea that technology was supposed to make society better?
Re:Don't care... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Waaay behind on the 8 ball. (Score:1, Insightful)
Microsoft is still thinking PC. They push PC, letting other markets slip away.
Latest commercial for Windows 7 show some schmuck using his laptop to stream internet vids to his TV. Ummm...how very '90s. Ever here of networked TVs? You know TVs that can be connected to your network and they go out to YouTube or Netflix and grab content.....
Seriously, so far behind the times.
Re:Just hilarious (Score:5, Insightful)
Congrats- you've just proven that you have no idea what you're talking about. The term "monopoly" has an actual definition in economics, and it has nothing to do with control of supply (although that's sufficient to be a monopoly, it's not necessary to be one). A monopoly is any actor with monopoly power- the ability to set the price of a good, rather than having the market do so. If an actor has this power he can set the price above the equilibrium price, decreasing the quantity bought but increasing his own total profits. This creates a market inefficiency called "deadweight loss" as well as reducing consumer surplus in favor of producer surplus, neither of which are good for the economy as a whole.
Microsoft most definitely has a monopoly under that condition- they can set a price higher than equilibrium because there is no true replacement good. That makes them a monopoly.
Re:Just hilarious (Score:3, Insightful)
Easy for MS to do this without much risk (Score:4, Insightful)
The app store concept is not evil unless traditional distribution is eliminated.
I think it would be very easy for MS to have its cake and eat it too. MS does not need to lock out alternatives because others will do it for them!
MS could make the app store a new choice that expands the distribution of software. Unlike Apple's "i" products, this time the app store would be in addition to traditional distribution, not a replacement. Of course, the apps in the store have undergone some review from a virus/spyware/malware point of view, whereas traditional distribution is what it is. With the app store's new level of safety, users in general (and corporate users in particular) would quickly self-mandate the exclusive use of the app store. Corporate IT would hop on the bandwagon in 5 seconds if it had everything they needed. MS would market this as their best solution to the virus/spyware/malware problem "and of course, it's completely voluntary."
Using a convenient control panel setting, the users (or their helpful sysadmins) could make a unilateral decision to restrict installation of software to the app store. For MS, it's a win across the board: No DOJ investigation, more open than Apple, and for once MS has a way to do something useful about unstable and rogue programs that seem to slip past Windows' limited defenses.
Re:Waaay behind on the 8 ball. (Score:3, Insightful)
Because, clearly, most users want crazy new innovations.
... not really ... most users want working computers that are nicely integrated so they can do what they want with the least amount of effort.
Only a few people want cutting-edge innovation in their day-to-day OS. Typically, those Linux distros have stability issues. ;)
But my Ubuntu app "store" is free... (Score:4, Insightful)
The software center in the latest Ubuntu is a joy to use. If I only marked certain apps as "best of breed", it would be perfect. And the price on all those apps, $0. Seriously. If my mic volume worked, I'd never boot windows again. (My Mic works, but it is too low, even when cranked to 100%.)
I call it security (Score:3, Insightful)
You complain about having so many different platforms, but this is helpful in one regard - avoiding a homogenous system, which leads to more trouble in the event of compromise.
If you want to avoid duplication of efforts, it's pretty obvious at this point you want a core html5 app and then perhaps custom IPhone or Android specific applications as well. Then you can still have the system security of a number of platforms but lower development costs.
Re:Lock-in alert (Score:3, Insightful)
More like the last 25 years (since Windows 1.0) is trying to be like the mobile phone industry today. I see this "Windows Store" as one more step toward MS' goal of software as a service. How cynical is it to think that these virtual shelves will be stocked with:
And others. I would expect the retail price of these products to drop 15-20% to lure people into the (surprise!) required subscriptions. MS could then just put stub installers on the discs, which download the complete packages from the store anyway. Somewhere in the marketing rhetoric for this scheme would be something about combating piracy.
Of course, there would be deep volume discounts on the subscriptions to keep corporate bean counters from completely shitting themselves after doing some basic math.
Re:Lock-in alert (Score:5, Insightful)
What the hell happened to the idea that technology was supposed to make society better?
People.
People replaced "... makes society better" with "... makes company more profitable". I was going to say capitalism instead of people, but this would also happen in any other economic and political model. We've demonstrated again and again that we're just a bunch of egoistic little chimps, who at best have the well-being of their tribe at heart.
Re:Just hilarious (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Just hilarious (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyone that has been paying attention to Steve Jobs lately is right to be worried about the future of MacOS.
Re:More Microsoft 'Innovation'? (Score:1, Insightful)
Yes they already have an app store, it is called xbox live marketplace. It also pre-dates Apples entry by a few years. Apple didn't come up with the idea. In PC gaming, Steam is quite popular and also was years ahead of apple. Both are inclusive of other developer's products.
Don't give Apple that much credit. Watch out for that reality distortion field, it is easy to miss.
Re:Just hilarious (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah to draw a more proper parallel to Apple's method of App store lock-in:
All Apps must be made in .NET
Re:Just hilarious (Score:2, Insightful)
Dude, what are you talking about? We make money of our own software. Your "Gee Mr. Coder" statements make it sound that you think we should sell stuff for competing platforms. Really? You gotta be kidding. Are you insulating that isnt fair? Really? How is it not fair? Are there not other places than a Microsoft sponsored store where FOSS folks can get their stuff to users? Your "Mr. Coder" has lots of ways to get his software to users. Its like your saying Mr. Coder needs Microsoft....
That being said, why would we sell or provide Linux or other office products in our store? That would be the store that we paid a gazillion dollars to build - in terms of both hardware and software. Do you have any material reason other than "Microsoft is bad".
Come on Mr. open source Linux guy - get off your duff and go build the be-all-end-all FOSS app store that can beat Apple and soon Microsoft at our own games. Really, knock your self out. Do you best. I can safely speak for Apple as well - we welcome the competition.
Re:But my Ubuntu app "store" is free... (Score:1, Insightful)
It would be lovely if Linux package managers included user ratings and comments.