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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."

25 of 339 comments (clear)

  1. Just hilarious by Space+cowboy · · Score: 3, Funny

    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!
    1. Re:Just hilarious by binarylarry · · 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."

      --
      Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
    2. Re:Just hilarious by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      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.

    3. Re:Just hilarious by jedidiah · · 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.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    4. Re:Just hilarious by Mordok-DestroyerOfWo · · 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?

      --
      "Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" - Salvor Hardin
    5. Re:Just hilarious by rolfwind · · Score: 4, 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.

    6. Re:Just hilarious by seanonymous · · Score: 5, Funny

      Yes, but Apple's products are shiny.

    7. Re:Just hilarious by Dan+East · · 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.

      --
      Better known as 318230.
    8. Re:Just hilarious by LWATCDR · · 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...

      --
      See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
    9. Re:Just hilarious by MBGMorden · · 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.

      --
      "People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
    10. Re:Just hilarious by Admodieus · · Score: 4, Informative

      The difference here is that you can still install applications from outside the app store on Windows (and Android for that matter), where on iOS you can't. That's why everyone was worried about the next version of OS X moving to a more iOS-focused paradigm; Apple has final cut on everything.

      --
      "It's a reverse vampire...they....they crave the sun!"
    11. Re:Just hilarious by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF · · Score: 5, Informative

      Isn't that the EXACT same thing Apple is doing with their App Store?

      No. Apple does not refuse to carry apps from developers that have versions for other platforms. And even if they did, it would still be different because Apple is only one player in a competitive market. Don't like Apple's methods, but a Blackberry or an Android and you can still have a huge selection of apps. Apple doing this would be like Dell or Toshiba doing it. If you can't grasp the difference between a monopolist leveraging their monopoly into another market versus a non-monopolist bundling products, well you haven't been paying attention here or you willfully refuse to understand.

      All that said, it's pure speculation that MS would make such draconian restrictions upon their application store.

    12. Re:Just hilarious by spire3661 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Same thing, entirely different circumstances. Monopoly is not illegal, ABUSE of monopoly is. Appstore = 100% of iApp market, but not anywhere near a monopoly level of the smartphone app market as a whole. Microsoft censoring competing products in its store = abuse of monopoly, Apple censoring competing products in its store= fair market practice.

      --
      Good-bye
    13. Re:Just hilarious by AuMatar · · 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.

      --
      I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
    14. Re:Just hilarious by interkin3tic · · Score: 3, Funny

      Props to you and the other retards modding you insightful.

      Hmm, you got the same mod apparently for insulting GP and the mods. Didn't even explain why you thought GP was wrong. That does indeed indicate something is wrong with the mods today, buncha stupid-head dummies that they are.

    15. Re:Just hilarious by Keebler71 · · Score: 3, Funny
      --
      "It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
    16. Re:Just hilarious by Runaway1956 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Uhhh - the monopoly business doesn't bother me so much, as the unfair trade practices. There are many that MS has engaged in, but the single worst thing they ever did, was to demand exclusive contracts with vendors.

      Totally wrong. And, it should have been punished severely. Not only Linux, but other OS's would be light years ahead of where they are today, if the vendors had been permitted to build custom and/or "standard" machines with alternative OS's all along.

      Even today, it's a bit difficult to navigate Dell's site, to find the machine that you REALLY want, without Windows. That's just wrong, wrong, wrong. All of the possible configurations, and all the possible OS's should be easy to find with a simple search. Very simple search. "No OS Thinkpad" should take me right to the window where I can customize it - I shouldn't have to make multiple searches in the enterprise/business section.

      --
      "Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
  2. Waaay behind on the 8 ball. by BuckaBooBob · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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
  3. "rapid startup times" by QuietLagoon · · Score: 3, Insightful
    rapid startup times

    .
    Always a promise from Microsoft, never a reality in Windows.

  4. Don't care... by demonbug · · Score: 4, 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.

  5. Lock-in alert by girlintraining · · Score: 3, 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?

    --
    #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
    1. Re:Lock-in alert by NeutronCowboy · · 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.

      --
      Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
  6. Windows 8? by Megahard · · Score: 5, Funny

    I see a potential marketing problem.

    Windows 8 .. my app.
    Windows 8 my files.
    Windows 8 my CPU.
    Windows 8 all my money.

    --
    I eat only the real part of complex carbohydrates.
  7. Easy for MS to do this without much risk by dcavanaugh · · Score: 3, 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.

  8. But my Ubuntu app "store" is free... by scorp1us · · Score: 3, 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%.)

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