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Leaked MS Presentation Shows App Store Plans For Windows 8
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."
Everyone is up-in-arms over the bizarre prediction by some third-party developers 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), and then it's Microsoft that comes out and proposes to do it.
Question: Since Apple was labelled "the new Microsoft" due to its supposed policies, does this make Microsoft - um - the new Microsoft, again ? [grin]
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
It's about time. The current method of installing software in Windows is obviously very lacking, from a security and convenience standpoint.
...is this ever going to get past the antitrust hounds.
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?
"This algorithm runs in constant time. Come on, 2,147,483,648 is a constant..."
Everyone's been worried that it was going to be Apple that was going to lock down the platform with iOS for Mac.
Microsoft... Bringing you Today's technologies 4 years from now..
Wheres the innovation?
And really? an App store? For WIndows?
Cloud Computing? Really? Isn't it here now today?
Searching the Web or Locally? (Hmm... I dunno if I have been doing this my whole life)
Rapid Startup times? Every OS I have boots in less than 30 seconds.. Last time I booted windows it took 5 mins.
Who needs WiFi when we can have Packet Over Sheep! http://datacomm.org/PoS-InternetDraft.txt
No problem Sir. If Apple can do it, so can we!
Meeting...? Sorry, Tuesday isn't good for me..that's when I work on my iPhone apps. And Wednesday and Thursday - how about Friday, around 4pm?
Wow. So, after no less than 10 years, the concept of deb/rpm repository is finally arrived to the closed platform with the Apple app store, and their future Microsoft Windows and Google Chrome equivalent.
.
Always a promise from Microsoft, never a reality in Windows.
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.
So, will Adobe Creative Suite and MS Office be in the same list as the slew of fart apps?
Silly me!
Here I was actually considering putting a system together w/ Win7 installed, and they go serruptitiously announce the next version of Windows. Even before the current SP1 is released mainstream, and MS is still gloating over their Windows 7 sales numbers despite whatever inflationary methods they use.
You ALMOST got me Microsft! Almost.
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?
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
I'll worry about this when it ships. OK, probably not, I lied. Microsoft; innovation at its highest form of flattery!
Rember Lindows/Linspire. Its click'n'run software had a pay download feature.
The ideas are no longer in Redmond.
I for one, welcome our new App Store collective Overlords...
Hm... why would we need Windows 8, when we can use Ubuntu Software Center :D
I see a potential marketing problem.
.. my app.
Windows 8
Windows 8 my files.
Windows 8 my CPU.
Windows 8 all my money.
I eat only the real part of complex carbohydrates.
See that's what's great about Microsoft. There so damn timely. I mean search engines come out and BAM! It only took them like nearly 10 years to come up with one.
Microsoft is always following with the intention of thinking they can do it better. They never do. The one thing they did do better was market. That's why Windows became the default OS for nearly everything. Now they're losing that battle. This app store should be cool when it comes online in what, 2014?
No, Microsoft. Just, no.
The stories and info posted here are artistic works of fiction and falsehood.
Only fools would take it as fact.
Just wait for all linux-based distros to come pre-installed with an Android execution environment. Canonical is already working on it and might already be present in 10.10
A platform and framework for smartphones, TVs, tablets, now linux distros. I guess you could even port it to OSX and windows. Thousands of apps suddenly available everywhere! =D
The problem with current software installed through "repositories" is that apps don't follow a common API - instead every app is allowed to have a dependency to X library or require Y version of software Z, and also requires XYZ system changes, messing directly with your system files.
I think one of the strong sides of the App Store (iOS), Market (Android) and future Windows7 phones (XNA-based) is that all apps are required to be coded on top on a modern framework where every app is sandboxed, more secure, and runs on top of a common API. And of course no app is allowed to mess with your system files.
I think this new paradigm is a much more powerful and cleaner way of handling software installation, at least for the "user apps" scenario. And that might very well be the future of OSX, windows or even linux-based distros.
The "Apps Stores" is a idea from Linux, Ubuntu has a App repository years ago of iphone apps store, and now has the Ubuntu Software Center (and in october you can buy software too). Xbox360 marketplace too, years ago from apple. Read and learn Apple Fanboys, learn.
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.
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...
As far as I know, the used PC software market started to die in the fourth quarter of 2001 when Microsoft introduced Internet product activation for Windows XP Home Edition.
Didn't they just get sued for this with Internet Explorer?
A blog I run for the wealth
it's a lot harder to tell someone who's had a Windows machine for decades, perhaps their whole life, that they now can only buy apps from your store.
Compare it to the upgrade from a Commodore 64 computer to a Super Nintendo Entertainment System. On the C=64, nobody controlled who could publish an app on tape, disk, or cart. But the Super NES used a cryptographic lockout to enforce Nintendo's policy, which was only slightly less restrictive than it was on the NES.
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%.)
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Yeah, and [unsupported hardware] never happens with Windows, amirite? Oh...wait.
Say you have Doors XIB on your PC. Any device you buy whose box claims compatibility with Doors XIB will either A. use the class driver built into Doors XIB (e.g. USB mass storage, USB video, USB HID) or B. come with a driver for Doors XIB on a disc.
Now the trouble is that too many devices sold in electronics stores claim some version of Windows on the box but not any version of Linux. The disc has installers for Windows XP, Windows Vista/7, and Mac OS X, but not a .deb that I can install into Debian-based Linux operating systems such as Ubuntu. Nor does the manufacturer always publish detailed specifications allowing the developers of Ubuntu's subsystems (Linux, X.Org, CUPS, SANE, etc.) to get the hardware working.
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.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I think going forward, most OS's are going to have an App Store built in. It's simply to convenient and brings to many advantages to the average user. It's also almost certain to be abused to reduce consumer choice and make the application market less competitive. So rather than complaining about it, I propose we modify the app store so we get all the benefits and none of the drawbacks.
A central "store" app for downloading, buying, upgrading, and registering software does not really exist on any desktop today. Some handle noncommercial downloading, some handle nothing, some handle commercial titles only. The real hurdle is in getting some of the benefits (like vetted software and remote disable of malware) without getting the drawbacks (like a single gatekeeper and fewer choices due to artificial restriction). We can't trust any single vendor and we shouldn't have to. Rather we need a model where one app can manage multiple repositories, all with signed software, updates, and the ability to transfer payments for registration purposes. Then we need a separate component that vets the apps, verifies the sources and ACLs, and lets the user know how much they can trust the app. This info can come from multiple parties and be weighted to give an overall trust rating the OS can use to apply default security restrictions automatically. The multiple parties might be the OS vendor, a security company, and an open project akin to ClamAV and together they build a greylist for your apps.
The benefit here is competition and better quality as a result. If MS is deciding all by themselves what software is trustworthy, they have little motivation to fix problems in a timely fashion or work hard at it. If, however, three or four parties are offering a for pay service, they're all competing for your money and are directly motivated to do the best job possible, resulting in fewer mistakes and better data for end users.
It's called Capitalism. And it will kill the pace of any innovation it gets it's hands around!
No one said technological progress would fix a idealogically broken economic model. Ask Alan Greenspan what he truly believes in NOW!
[turns to Nigel] Shouldn't we be at 11 by now?
Windows XP
Service pack 4 maybe?
OR, get your favorite Linux distro.
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
app store needs to free to devs for free app. Also no blocking of user mods / maps in app store apps. Steam is open user maps / mods.
for payed apps $99 year + 30% is to high and $99 /year for free apps is real bad. apple has some good idea but makeing devs pay for free apps and locking out apps for having map editors or other stuff is bad.
I think the option of a 3D display is cool. That would definitely be a great windows feature pointing and clicking in 3D very cool. I like the idea of an app store would defiantly help with compatibility issues. I like how Microsoft is trying to step up there product.
http://www.thetechnologygeek.org
Well considering how many features like WinFS they have promised for every Windows version and then axed them I wouldn't count on any of those features to actually make it into the product.
Erik Dalén
Yeah, Microsoft innovates. Yeah, that's why they dominate the desktop marketplace. Once again, they are ripping off ideas from Apple.
If the OS were free and they made their money in the App Store, this would make more sense - they would be beholden upon revenue from the App Store to survive. But this is just an attempt to counter Apple's success and Apple's increasing mindshare. Microsoft's 'App Store' will be an ugly, controversial mess and will likely drive more business toward Apple.
First question would be - Don't they already have an 'App Store'? Oh, wait, it only sells Microsoft software.
What happens when somebody comes up with something that competes with an existing Microsoft application? I think we already know the answer to that one.
What happens when someone comes up with a truly 'killer app' that becomes hugely successful? Microsoft will first try to buy the app to capture that 'lost' revenue, and if they fail to negotiate a suitably low price, will duplicate the app in-house and compete for that market.
So, someone quickly que the glossy, focus-group approved, TV ads that promise shiny exciting new toys for your already buggy, overburdened laptop.
Everybody sing! I'd like to buy the world an APP, and keep it company, I'd like to promise happy times, and flying chairs to see.
Best regards.
> Say you have Doors XIB on your PC. Any device you buy whose box claims
> compatibility with Doors XIB will either A. use the class driver built
> into Doors XIB (e.g. USB mass storage, USB video, USB HID) or B. come
> with a driver for Doors XIB on a disc.
Nope. Not ANY.
It's pretty dang close but it's not perfect.
Of course the kicker is that some devices also require application level
support in order to be useful.
No. You can't just buy the latest version of Monopoly-ware and expect every
single thing out there to magically work because everyone is supposed to
pander to Monopoly-ware.
The driver disk with the product might not help.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
You can't just buy the latest version of Monopoly-ware and expect every single thing out there to magically work
But I can buy a device and have a reasonable expectation that it will work on the specific versions of Monopoly-ware listed on the product's box. My gripe is that Monopoly-ware is listed and no Linux distribution is.
I like some of the stuff here. And I'm a traditional Windows hater. There's just a bit of me that reads these slides (you are reading them right, not just responding to the ultra condensed summary?) and thinks "finally, someone inside Microsoft gets it". For instance, some of the things that jumped out at me were:
- Power savings and boot time improvements. We all know how long it takes Windows to boot, and are annoyed sometimes by how long it takes to shut down sometimes. It's interesting to actually see a high level marketing type slide actually talking about aperiodic timer ticks in the kernel. And with millions of PCs around the world, saving some of that idle power will add up. Other operating systems have stuff like this, nothing wrong with Microsoft joining in. Sure it's not new and shiny, but Windows isn't aiming for the new and shiny market, Apple has that locked up. MS is aiming for the "let's get work done" market.
- I really like the idea of restoring to factory defaults without losing apps and personalized settings. Something Windows has needed for awhile. Too many high level users have taken it as gospel that you need to periodically reinstall from scratch to get best performance. So here again it seems like someone in Microsoft "gets it". What this feature ends up looking like when it gets out the door remains to be seen though. But it's a good direction.
Windows store is boring, even more boring then an Apple apps store. Yawn, nothing to comment about there.
This is all up in the air though. These are just ideas very dearly on in the planning stage. We're just getting a peeping tom view of what's happening inside from a partner's perspective. All of this will probably change along the way. A new fad will show up and the aim will be changed to try and catch that. After all when Windows 8 comes out, it will be on some computers for several years, maybe even for a decade. So the really tricky bit of design is trying to predict what a basic operating system will need in the future.
Microsoft's business model is based on revenue increasing each quarter in order to hold the share price up. Recently the shares having been dropping so MS have to gather in more revenue streams.
The proposed 'app store' is a way of adding revenue to MS, who will claim the total sales value as revenue, by taking it away from high street stores.
It's clear that the 'Windows Store' will be a software service Microsoft provides and hosts fully in the cloud.
By which they of course simply mean 'online' wtf is with the use of this term 'the cloud'. All of a sudden the internet is a cloud and anything hosted on a server is in the cloud and any server-side processing is now 'cloud computing', wtf do we need a retarded metaphor for?
All an app store is is a software repository that you pay for.
The internet in the usa is still not at the speed need to make a download only store to work well.
why?
Always trying to rip off Apple's ideas. The idea of a software repostitory for windows will fail, so will the promise about rapid boot up times,
http://archeleus.com/blog
It is very rare indeed to see an absolute monopoly. That is why the Sherman Act is not defined in those terms. However, I would still argue that the market for Commodity Windows is very close to an absolute monopoly.
Mac OS X is not an alternative to Commodity Windows because it is sold with bundled hardware. Different market.
Arguably Linux, BSD etc. are also not in the Commodity Windows market because they are not typically sold in of themselves. Support is sold instead. Again, different market.
So where are the direct competitors?
This leaked Microsoft presentation was for a uber-NDA meeting with HP. Well, the M$ guy needs to proofread his decks more carefully -- on slide 3 of the opening deck, it says "Focus on creating great Dell + Windows experiences."
"Ooops. Did I say Dell? I meant HP. Honestly I didn't give Dell an advantage by revealing all our plans before telling you nice folks at HP. And our team made these decks just for you because HP is so special to us. Don't think we just used Search and Replace a bunch of times to rehash the same deck to our top 50 OEMs. Nosir. By the way, when's the next flight to Tokyo?"
All that said, it's pure speculation that MS would make such draconian restrictions upon their application store.
It's already been stated outright that Windows Phone 7 will use the closed app-store model (where Microsoft approves all entries).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I don't like Microsoft any more than the next guy, but whats the big deal with the conspiracy theories over this? When linux distros have centralized updating and app installation, it's touted as a "Good Thing®" by the slashdot crowd, when MS plans to do it, it's a sign of the tyranny to come!?! Rationality is needed here people. MS has a much better track record of working with third-party app developers than Apple does, their mis-deeds lie in other categories... This sounds like a really good idea for average non tech-savvy windows users everywhere!
The education ministry in Japan recently sponsored/bought an English education program for 5th and 6th graders.
Macromedia.
No Mac version.
Linux version? What?
Most Boards of Education are just buying boatloads of netbooks for running the thing, netbooks that run, you guessed it, MSWindows. (Macs? Get serious. Cost too much. Nobody uses them. Linux? Huh? That's for college students. Longhaired college students who have social problems.)
Some elements of the networks were running on customized Red Hat or Fedora servers, but they are being replaced with MSWindows network servers. (Just wait 'til one of those internal servers gets backdoored.)
Effective monopoly.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
Steam has a nice "App Store".
-Eric
- apt-get install nifty-application
of course they need to integrate the : insert coin/cash
what it means to SW availability will be discussed in the Anti-Monopoly investigations of the future!
No news here.
For users who depend on Windows applications, Linux or MacOS may not count as "close substitute". Not everything runs under WINE. A lot of businesses that have been around for a while fall in that category.
For new startups you have a point: :-)
If you don't have 10 years of Windows-only custom applications to replace, choosing an alternative system will be much easier. In case of Open Source systems, "oligopoly" may be a formally correct definition. From the customer's point of view, I think the situation is even more favorable, because the classic definitions do not reflect how much Open Source licenses drive down license costs
C - the footgun of programming languages
I would be the "app store" will be more like Steam than Apple's store, and just contain MS product.
Nothing too exciting about that. Just adding easier online distribution for Office and Windows and junk. Not that big a deal as I see it.
They promissed an app store for Vista, and again for 7.
Now, providing an app store is easy, but may be quite futile. If you still have XP, take a look at the "Add/Remove Programs". Did you ever questioned why there is an "Add" in the name? It is because it is an app store. It is quite useless, tough, and there is the great chalenge, not on making it available, but on making it usefull.
Ubuntu can have an usefull app store because it distributes free software. Apple can have an app store for the iPhone and the iPad, because most software is new, and they can strongarm developers into a license they (Apple) can use; notice that there is no app store for OS-X. Now, no big software distributor will accept the terms of Microsoft's store. Even less it being a company that is competing with every software distributor (and if it still doesn't have a competing product, it is a matter of time until it does), and usualy doesn't play fair. That store won't get out of paper (again), or will be as usefull as the "Add/Remove Progems" of XP (ok, with a few extra Microsoft products in it, like Office, MSSQL, Sharepoint,etc).
Rethinking email
Oh Noesies! The angry dweebs went on a modding rampage! My precious Karma which I care so very much about has been stomped by raging Virgin nerds, powerhouses of the almighty Internet! Ahahahahaha, I love it.
Please Microsoft. Please remove the need for Drive Letters in Windows 8. Calling the boot drive C: and the DVD D: (or whatever) is just so obsolete. CMS, CP/M, DOS and OS/2 are long forgotten, we don't need backward capability with these any more.
I want to change out a motherboard, have to call M$; break the OS and have to reinstall, call M$. Now, we've got M$ doing an appstore, which will have it's own DRM and licensing control, and I'm POSITIVELY SURE they will add lots of features for big game developers on there for micropayments; heaven forbid it's effective. The logical conclusion of this is in windows 9 where you can watch all kinds of movies, play different video game,s do your office work, etc and there's a "safe" environment for Microsoft and crony's software and an "everyone elses crap in a half-disabled mode". But by then it won't matter because UEFI will be fully mature, linux will be on the desktop running freebie office apps, game developers will be making games for everyone that'll fit in a nice VM and apple will have moved into the PC market with old OS's because they can.
I've seen several windows machines destroyed by windows update, I don't update at home; I run several 3rd party lockdown apps that protect key parts of the OS and occasionally run a drive image check to make sure no key os files have changed size wierdly; this is FAR more effective than anything MS has shown me to date.
If said control panel widget allows one to add new repositories to the system (for example : Add Valve's Steam and/or an hypothetical Google Apps repository), that's not evil, that's exactly like the situation with modern distribution, and that's exactly what security-savy users have been asking to improve Windows against clueless users who'll completely overload their machines with spywares and viruses, only to have that funny lolcat-themed screen saver.
If the Microsoft Store is the single only source of installation, and only Steve (Ballmer) approved software is ever allowed to reach Win8 users, that would be Evil, Apple-style Evil (only with less shiny polish on it).
I would really hope that Microsoft take the first route (which is, for example, mostly the solution on smart phones such as the Palm Pre).
But knowing the beast, they'll probably manage to lean toward the second implementation.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1687452&cid=32587238
APK
P.S.=> Hate doing this, but... just a REMINDER! apk