Windows Marketplace For Mobile Kill Switch Details

An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft recently gave more details on Windows Marketplace for Mobile during the Tech Ed New Zealand 2009 session titled 'Distributing and Monetizing Applications through Windows Marketplace Mobile,' led by Loke Uei Tan, Senior Product Manager on the Windows Mobile Team. Geekzone covered the event in good detail, but one of their points caused a lot of uproar in the blogosphere: 'If an application is approved but later removed from the marketplace it will then be automatically removed from all mobile devices.' That sounded a bit ominous to Ars Technica, so they checked in with Microsoft. 'In the vast majority of instances where an application is removed from Windows Marketplace for Mobile, users of this application will continue to be able to use these applications on their phones,' a Microsoft spokesperson told Ars. 'In the rare event an application from Marketplace exhibits harmful behavior or has unforeseen effects, Marketplace has the capability to remotely uninstall these applications. While we hope to avoid this scenario, we will make refunds available in such cases.'"

Comments

Thats kind of scarry

[Anonymous Coward]

What if the program encrypted your data and then it was remotley un-installed, what then?

Re:Thats kind of scarry

[palegray.net]

Sounds like a good reason to back up unencrypted copies of your data. I don't put a lot of faith in software on any platform, which is why backups are important. Then there's the hardware failure side of things, which further bolsters the need for backups; what if you dropped your phone in the toilet?

Re:Thats kind of scarry

[EdIII]

I don't put a lot of faith in software on any platform

I don't put a lot of faith in a platform in which I am not the all seeing, all powerful God of it's digital universe.

That's the problem. The platform that Microsoft (and others) provide is one in which they don't respect that cold hard fact. They refuse to respect it. In physical terms, it would be like renting a place and the landlord can come in and take out furniture and property at their whim. Sure, Microsoft is offering a refund. I don't care. I still had to come home to find my couches missing.

The poster you replied to mentioned encryption. That would be like finding the refrigerator missing and all your food on the kitchen floor. Will Microsoft be compensating you for the spoilage? The inconvenience? Most likely not, in fact, I am extremely shocked they even offered a refund.

This situation played out on the Kindle with 1984 (talk about a cosmic joke).

To bottom line it, people need to be educated about how all this "stuff" works. When they start to understand that they have zero control and are basically being treated like 4-year olds with their property, I expect change will come then.

Until that point, I guess we just have to hope these corporations are benevolent with our best interests in mind and would never, ever, compromise their ethics at our expense for a buck.

Re:Thats kind of scarry

[palegray.net]

You seem to be largely agreeing with me on the major points here and extending their premise, but I'll expand on a couple of points.

To bottom line it, people need to be educated about how all this "stuff" works. When they start to understand that they have zero control and are basically being treated like 4-year olds with their property, I expect change will come then.

This depends on people caring to learn about the platforms they use every day. Unfortunately, most folks won't bother, and will complain at every turn when things don't work the way they want on platforms designed to allow them the luxury of "not worrying about managing them."

Finding some way of making learning about a platform an appealing idea, or at least making it profitable for other organizations outside the primary vendor to learn about it and support it (and the data that resides on it) would go a long way toward mitigating the risks you've described.

I'd love to see an open platform, perhaps built on Linux or BSD and running truly open userland software, that offered the same type of services the major players in the market now seem to have a stranglehold on. I don't see how this will play to the network operators' ongoing aspirations toward sharing total control over platform with primary device vendors, but one can hope for better options in the future. If enough market demand were present, it would happen rapidly. Unfortunately, my first expanded point seems to make that rather unlikely.

dumbass

[shentino]

Didn't you learn from the Kindle incident?

Re:dumbass

[StreetStealth]

Well, this is different. Kind of.

A book, being a non-executable, isn't going to suddenly delete your data or leak personal information to a third party. As long as the kill switch is only used for actually dangerous applications, it should be fine, with one caveat:

It shouldn't be automatic. The user should be prompted with a severe warning, and then allowed to continue at their peril. Because there are always exceptions.

Actually, if Amazon had set up their system to do something similar, there wouldn't have been a firestorm. "Warning: The seller of this book has been discovered not to own the distribution rights to it. You may keep this copy, or click here to exchange it for a properly-licensed one." That's all they would have needed to do.

So what?

[imemyself]

This is not that big of a deal. I don't like someone else having control over my hardware, but unlike with Apple's phones, nobody is requiring you to get Windows Mobile apps from the Microsoft "marketplace". If you're worried about something like this, then just skip the app store and get the .cab installation file straight from whoever made the software. The great thing about Windows Mobile is that its not locked down like other mobile OS's. You don't have to jailbreak your own hardware just to use it. Hell, you can load up Visual Studio, make a little .NET app for you phone, and install it on your device yourself.

Why not ask the owner 1st?

[Anonymous Coward]

I see the reasons for doing this, but I'm not sure I agree with the implementation. To me, a better way to handle this would be to not remove the application but to disable it instead and the next time the user tries to start it, give a short explanation on why it was disabled and maybe a link for more technical details with an option to enable/delete/stop. Sure, most users would probably immediately delete it, but it would be the users CHOICE too.

Re:Why not ask the owner 1st?

[broken_chaos]

Sure, most users would probably immediately delete it, but it would be the users CHOICE too.

You haven't really worked with many users, have you? Their program stops working and gives them an option to make it work again, do you really think they'll read/follow why they shouldn't make it work?

Re:Why not ask the owner 1st?

[Statecraftsman]

Yes and yes. Why is it so hard to start with respect for the user and work from there?

Re:Why not ask the owner 1st?

[Arainach]

Because it was tried. And it was discovered that users don't read.

Re:Woah. That was me!

[beelsebob]

and have done
Your citation does not say what you said it said. It does say they have the ability to remove them though, you're right. Have you got evidence that apple actually have removed an app, ever?

It's a matter of trust

[erroneus]

If any other company said "we are doing it this way because it's for the best... trust us" we might still have the same reaction to it. We see it everywhere we go. Amazon did it with their removal of eBooks. And in every case of internet censorship I have ever heard of, it went well beyond its stated purpose of "guarding against child porn."

It's bad enough that "we don't trust." It is worse when a company believes it can "impose a trust relationship... or else."

It's so simple

[spacefight]

Don't buy this shit.

Refunds as in "pre-installed MS Windows" refunds?

[cheros]

I can't believe they are actually serious about this. Let's do the car analogy. I sell you a car, and find out later that a lot of those cars have been used as getaway cars in robberies etc. The police would like me to withdraw this car from the market.

So, doorbell rings on Sunday afternoon and a guy stands there with a box with has everything you left in the car, an envelope with the payments you have already made and a confirmation that the rest of your loan is cancelled, and he wants your remaining keys (because they kept a set when they sold you that car - think about that one for a moment). And he shows you the clause in your agreement in 6 point font in light grey on white where they make this legal. The car is about to be towed - they opened your garage already because they somehow gained access.

You need "car functionality": You have to bring the kids to school on Monday, you have a work appointment straight after, and you have to do some shopping because it got late on Saturday.

Would you:

(a) thank the guy, accept the box and figure out WTF to do next
(b) tell the guy to drop the box, hand over his copy of your car keys and tell him to be off your drive -minus your car- before you come back to the door with an appliance to assist in his removal which may or may not consider his health in the process.

Bonus question:
Would you EVER consider buying a car from that company again, even if it somehow got sorted out?

This gig has just closed the market for me for phones with an MS OS. I hope Apple doesn't try to pull this one either - they have no removal clause in their T&Cs (which is probably why they are rather retentive in their app checking to start with).

Where the hell have we got to over the last decade? Since when did it become acceptable for a company to become judge and jury about what you buy? /rant