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Windows 8 App Store Screenshots
syngularyx writes "The screenshots show Microsoft's new application store for Windows. The store appears to be running in Windows 7, hinting that the software giant may also be planning to offer its app store for legacy versions of Windows. Cnbeta posted the screenshots on Monday, however WinRumors is unable to confirm their authenticity at this time. The screenshots appear to show a number of Microsoft's own software, including third party software from Opera and Mozilla."
Personally if I could I would mod you down for not having the courage to post that as a real user. All AC's making meta complaints should be automatically modded down to oblivion, no matter how worthy the cause.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I wonder if they're going to try and kill Steam with this store.
Pimp the horrible "Games for Windows" service and use their monopoly to hurt Valve.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
This is a big deal? Whoopty freaking do.
This is just Microsoft once again showing up late to the party.
Yeah but the recent kerfuffle over the 'App Store' name with Apple means this site can serve a bunch of ads as people posture about it.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
It is a good thing in one sense -- getting Joe Sixpack to only download stuff from one central store or repository. This way, he might put down his Bud Light and not follow directions to manually install some "pr0n codec" from some sleazy site he is browsing because it doesn't show up as a link to MS's Application Market, or whatever it will be named.
Of course, the dancing bunnies security hole remains, but having it become the exception and not the rule that software is downloaded manually and installed (versus going to a repo/store) will help to mitigate that infection vector.
I'm pretty sure it's real. It makes a ton of sense to have an App Store. If you think about it Linux has had an "app store" for the PC long before Apple with repos that you could pull many applications, the concept has even been guified to some extent over the years...
I was expecting Windows to have an App Store about a half a year to a year after the iPhone App Store. I really wonder why there has been such a huge delay in implementing this concept.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
In related news, WinRumors reports that even they couldn't find anyone who cares anymore.
iRumors reports that dull is the new shiny.
AndRumors reports that root is the end of all evils.
cheers,
Jump onto the bandwagon a few years late, as usual. No doubt that it will get well stocked, much faster than any other desktop platform.
I didn't know if this was for the computer OS or the phone, since they are both at version 7 now, and presumably will progress to version 8. At lease until I clicked on the link.
Of course I was then confused about how a screen shot of the current OS means that there will be support for legacy OS's since the last time I checked, Win8 was not released.
Frankly I closed the tab I opened up TFA in, as it appears that they don't even know where the image came from. At least that's what I got out of looking at it for all of 3 seconds.
I don't know what it is with MS design but they just love mixing GUI metaphors on screens. Trees, icons, buttons, text.
The worst part is that this is supposed to be a marketplace.
Lose the cruft, just show me the apps in boxes, I click on them to buy them. Give me some filtering at the top or bottom and that's it! Done! I want to spend as little time fucking around in some virtual space to get programs I want.
Hell, just make the app store look like ThePirateBay: Oh look, the name of the thing I want *click* *buy*
Microsoft continues a long tradition of not "getting it"
I don't want pretty, I don't want cute, I want FUNCTIONAL! I want EASE OF USE! I want TO SPEND AS LITTLE TIME AS POSSIBLE LOOKING FOR THINGS AND GET ON WITH MY LIFE!
But nooooooo they think I'm there for the Microsoft Experience *cue mirrorball and dance music*
ooh, ooh .. boogie wonderland
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Am I the only one who remembers the Windows Catalog in XP?
Furries make the internet go.
I already download most of my software from one place: The Pirate Bay.
Hyperbole: I use it liberally!
I could definitely see this as a new attack on the Redmond giant for anti-trust laws about abusing monopoly power, regardless if there is any evidence to the claim. The flip side of that coin is that there are already application stores for Windows, and have been for a while; Steam, GameTap, RealArcade, Direct2Drive, just to name a few. As long as Microsoft doesn't bundle/tie the app store with the next incarnation of Windows, they should be fine with regulators. Otherwise, we can expect to see the "Choose your browser" like stuff that comes with the EU version of Windows.
http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/11/windows-app-store/
(With all that investment in Microsoft Research, why does Microsoft copy others, particularly Apple, so much???)
"We need another browser in the app store shot to show that we're open now." ....ok
OK, I'll put a firefox logo in there.
"Hmm... perhaps not Firefox"
OK, I'll use Chrome logo.
"Hmm... let's not use Chrome"
Uhh... Safari?
"No. Hey, what about Opera? People will appreciate that."
You mean the browser with less market share than Netscape 4*?
*this may be untrue.
Windows8MyComputer
hinting that the software giant may also be planning to offer its app store for legacy versions of Windows.
Here's a dilemma for MS... given a guy with a warez version of windows, do you let them app store it or not... Justification for no, is you just wanna make life more difficult for unlicensed windows installs. Justification of yes, is here's a guy who wants to give you a fat stack of bills for a bunch of 1s and 0s, so take it while you can get it....
I've, uh, heard from friends, that apple accepts money in the itunes music store from OSX pirates. But MS has a cultural love of making users jump thru windoze activation foolishness.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Seriously, Ubuntu has had an 'app store' for ages. Was a brilliant idea. Now apple's getting into the game, and Microsoft might step in.
Why now? Seriously? Given how popular 'one stop get everything' services are... why hasn't someone had this idea a few years earlier?
2011 the year of the app store.
I'm sure most /.'ers have encountered people like this. You don't have to be a burned out IT vet. There will always be the clueless (but with good intentions) Aunt Tillie type, the "OMGLALA" teen/tween type installing every animated emoticon program available, but the archetype that most people encounter that is one of the hardest to deal with is the Joe Sixpack one -- the person who has no interest in keeping his stuff secure ("because that is what my geek friends and Geek Squad are for"), and has an ego about it, so cannot be trained to perform even minimum computer sanitation duties.
APT was released in 1999. It can even update a machine without human interaction once started, lets see this app store do that.
windows 7 does have an app store, but they just don't call it an app store. It's called the 'marketplace'.
I thought that was on the phone though. We are talking desktop here. It's really a different thing, in part because it's not the only channel to get software as it is on the device, but more a matter of convenience for users.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The Borg, Star Trek and the vision contained within are just as relevent as they ever were.
Bill Gates is still the "figurehead" of M$ and always will be, long after death.
And last, but not least, we all WANT it really, so I think we've left it there as a reminder of things to come - Star Trek-type travels, and possibly even the ultimate evolution of biotech and networking - the Borg.
This tagline was transcoded to result in at least one smirk. If you experience failure to smirk, please consult your Gen
Pimp the horrible "Games for Windows" service and use their monopoly to hurt Valve.
No-one in their right mind would use GFW if they could use Steam, so unless Microsoft can convince all the PC game publishers to stop selling on Steam it's not going to happen. Since, from what I've read, game developers are trying to avoid GFW because it's a steaming heap of crap that a lot of their customers hate, I don't see that happening any time soon.
I was really impressed when I ran GTA4 from Steam recently and GFW, which serves no purpose in the game at all that I can determine, announced that it had to do an update, which required downloading a load of crap then exiting and restarting GTA4, which now crashes in some GFW DLL when I try to start it. After that delightful experience I'll never touch another GFW-infected game again (fortunately GTA4 also sucks so I don't really care that Microsoft terminally broke it).
The big deal is that Windows might finally have centralized package management, including updates, for all software rather than just core Windows stuff.
the Borg reference is just not relevant or current these days.
Seems to me that after buying ISO and the rent-seeking patent trolling they've been up to lately, it's just as relevant as ever.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
I wish I could filter away all the idiots using ESRs vocabulary. Fuck 'Aunt Tillie' and fuck you.
-- Linux user #369862
too late
much like the Borg at the end of Star Trek: Voyager's run, Microsoft has become a giant impotent joke, but you really still don't want to get on their bad side.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
I will give kudos to Microsoft for trying to fix what I consider a big hole in their OS with an app store. I just hope that the app store also includes an update manager for all applications and drivers downloaded using the service. One of my pet peeves with Windows is the lack of a central "updates everything" manager like with Linux or BSD. Having every application doing its own update management is not just a stupid wast of system resources but leads to some major security issues (no md5 checksums etc). The other issue with Windows is your average user "is not a security expert and never wants to be one they just want to use the computer". Lets be realistic, do you want a heart surgeon worrying about a virus on his laptop or the bypass he is about to perform on you and why should he be worrying he is a heart surgeon ffs. So if Microsoft offers end users a central and secure way to install applications (and drivers) and have all updates managed through a single service Im all for it. After having to help my parents (both medical professionals) deal with the ups and downs that is Windows 7 trust me an app store will save me hours of time on Skype explaining how to install or upgrade an application (last weekend I spent 30 min explaining how to remove firefox 3 after it stopped working and install firefox 4.0).
Pimp the horrible "Games for Windows" service and use their monopoly to hurt Valve.
Microsoft have been doing online stores for years. Windows 98 had Windows Catalog, while Windows Marketplace for the desktop Windows dates back to 2004. In late 2009 they introduced Games on Demand, which later morphed into Games for Windows Marketplace.
Has Microsoft's monopoly managed to hurt Steam in that time? No, and I don't think that this latest attempt will do so either. This is mainly because they just don't get the third party developer support for their online stores. They certainly don't do the specials that Steam do (although I have noticed that Steams specials don't seem as good recently).
We'll just reserve judgement on that unti we learn the kernel version number. If it's NT6.2 then referring to win7 as "legacy" is just marketing or wishful thinking.
Caveat Utilitor
So I've got my shiny new app store on my shiny new Windows 8 machine. And I'm going to use said app store to purchase Windows 7?
It's FAKE. It's a HOAX.. Look at the apps in the app store list:
* Angry Birds: Not by "clickgamer" it's by Rovio.
* Windows 7 Ultimate? As an app you can download from Windows 8?
* "App Store" is trademarked by Apple.
* Title bar text isn't centered like in other Win8 leaks.
FAKE. move along, nothing to see here....
New webcomic updated on Sundays: HERE
Bing the lame version of Google (seach , maps, everything)
Zune the lame version of iPod
Media Centre the lame version of iTunes
Windows 7 phone the lame version of iPhone (lame because OS can't scale even to iPad size)
The only real question is how lame will the Microsoft App Store be?
Will MS App Store be as lame as Ultimate edition Extras?
or as lame as Windows Catalog in XP,
or as lame as the get help with this eror link, which always says there is no help for the error?
I want nothing like this on my system
I'm pretty sure that this is a fake. The idea is horrible, the implementation is clunky, and the use of Angry Birds in the screenshot to promote the store is childish at best. Ugly, unintuitive, and just pure garbage. Also, I'm sure that Opera wouldn't be one of the firsts to get to try this out. Junk.
Sig: I stole this sig.
It's no more package management than Mac App Store is. It's really just a way to centralize installs and updates - the real complexity in Linux/BSD package managers is dealing with dependencies.
I dunno, the screenshot actually looks very plain-looking and functional to me. Much more so than, say, iTunes - and how many people use that crap to shop for music?
That's what Ubuntu is for, a great fix for their completely trashed infected Windows machine that they love because 'my machine is really fast now' and also means that they can't install the shite that got it infected in the first place!
"Because we are not employing at entry level, offshoring will kill our industry stone dead."
It is a good thing in one sense -- getting Joe Sixpack to only download stuff from one central store or repository. This way, he might put down his Bud Light and not follow directions to manually install some "pr0n codec" from some sleazy site he is browsing because it doesn't show up as a link to MS's Application Market, or whatever it will be named.
Of course, the dancing bunnies security hole remains, but having it become the exception and not the rule that software is downloaded manually and installed (versus going to a repo/store) will help to mitigate that infection vector.
Anyone who drink a Bud Lite without being held down, blackmailed, or forced in some way, will do anything that a marketing machine tells them to.
Ever taste that stuff?
as pointed out this is fake if for no other reason then it actually says "app store" in the menu.
"App Store" is trademarked by Apple; MS would not be so stupid to actually use that term.
That's what Ubuntu is for, a great fix for their completely trashed infected Windows machine that they love because 'my machine is really fast now' and also means that they can't install the shite that got it infected in the first place!
Yeah, that's how I fixed my mothers Windows Box. I installed Ubuntu. She just uses the browser, she's good with it.
Given that Apple isn't worried about it's cash flow anytime soon, it makes me wonder if CD Keys are really worth the hassle.
Other vendors don't have such an expensive dongle to make money with.
While I don't mind as such that they're doing it when are they going to do something before someone else rather than after?
That's what Ubuntu is for, a great fix for their completely trashed infected Windows machine that they love because 'my machine is really fast now' and also means that they can't install the shite that got it infected in the first place!
That's fine until they ask you to install Microsoft Office, all their old games, etc.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Leave it to Micro$loth to skimp on R&D and just put on the hitch and follow Apple and it's App Store(s) again...
MacOSX, because making *NIX better is a lot better than waiting for Micro$loth to fix Windows
 1. The app store will randomly break from a Windows update for no apparent reason and suddenly when you try to buy apps, it'll start downloading and then you'll get "Unknown error 0x8004008 has occurred" with a "more info" hyperlink that leads to a 404 page on Microsoft's site. Running a repair or system restore will not fix it, and system file checker will tell you nothing is wrong. You'll then reinstall Windows.
 2. Once you reinstall Windows, you'll be able to download apps from the Windows App Store, but once the app is downloaded, it will launch the third party software vendor's own custom installation program which will stick junk all over your hard disk, trigger UAC prompts, and when you launch the app, another random app on your machine will try to repair itself.
 3. When you try and uninstall the app, you won't be able to do it from the app store, you'll have to go to "Programs and Features" and uninstall it from there, where you will get an error saying that the install log could not be found and you're unable to uninstall the app.
 I dare you to tell me I'm wrong.
There are plenty of good, and a few not so good (e.g., the whole Longhorn/Vista fiasco), reasons Microsoft doesn't have an app store yet. And I got so tired of all the BS in the system that I wrote a blog entry about it. Of course, you are welcome to consider my comments BS as well :-)
http://hal2020.com/2011/04/25/why-havent-we-seen-a-microsoft-windows-application-store/