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Microsoft's Windows 8 App Store Is Full of Scamware
Deathspawner writes Windows 8 brought a lot to the table, with one of its most major features being its app store. However, it's not a feature that Microsoft seems too intent on keeping clean. As it is today, the store is completely littered with misleading apps and outright scamware. The unfortunate thing is that to find any of it, all you have to do is simply open the store and peruse the main sections. Not so surprisingly, no Microsoft software seems to be affected by this, but many open-source apps can be found at the store from unofficial sources that have a cost, or will lead the user to download a third-party installer. It's only a matter of time before malware sneaks its way in, if it's not there already.
Sadly now the table is cluttered with crap nobody needs. Could someone bus the table, please? I got work to do.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
This is a pretty bad example of clickbait. The linked bog basically says "There is junkware. Microsoft's Trademarks are protected but others, like iTunes and Firefox, get scammed by repackagers, same as any search engine.
Lacking evidence to the contrary, it seems Microsoft actively approves this state of things. They have a human performing certification and content compliance, which involves actually installing and verifying these applications:
"Content compliance: Our certification testers install and review your app to test it for content compliance. The amount of time this takes varies depending on how complex your app is, how much visual content it has, and how many apps have been submitted recently."
With that statement, they must be 100% complicit in these scams, because it makes them money when someone bites, and because it keeps the number of apps in the app store up.
They wanted so badly to be Apple, taking a cut of every software sale by being the only vendor for their own system.
What they neglected is that people don't want brainless "apps" for true multipurpose computers. So their brainless store got filled with brainless garbage to take advantage of the brainless users who'd use it.
but many open-source apps can be found at the store from unofficial sources that have a cost
FSF says it's perfectly fine to distribute free software for a fee, so long as the license is followed.
But platforms relying on a single app store have in the past made copyleft license compliance difficult or impossible. The GNU General Public License, for example, defines "source code" to include what GPLv3 calls "Installation Information" and GPLv2 calls "scripts used to control compilation and installation". When a platform requires all code to be digitally signed, a signing key is part of this "Information" or these "scripts". And the terms for obtaining a code signing certificate tend to forbid developers from sharing the private key with the public. This is why GPL software like VLC can't be on Apple's App Store, nor can ScummVM be on the Wii console.
I don't know about other users but I've had an ASUS Windows 8.1 desktop for almost a year now and have never downloaded or installed ANY apps from the Microsoft "store" and have only once clicked on the App Store tile itself once by mistake. I avoid their "store" like the plague on a desktop environment. I don't have the need or want to Skype or play Angry Birds on the desktop I guess...who uses the Microsoft App Store and for what purposes? I'm genuinely curious...
Not quite, Mr. Summary. There's nothing legally wrong with selling open-source apps if the license is followed. And ethically? Consider this:
Why would anybody find this useful? If there's a particularly obscure but useful open-source app that updates irregularly, or it's difficult or cumbersome to install, or maybe Grandma just doesn't want to mess around with MSI and EXE installers, then the new publisher would be adding value and providing a service in providing the open-source across the Store interface; reducing the fuss needed to get the software working, updated and safe.
There's nothing stopping the original developer / copyright holder / copyright assignment entity, or indeed any other legally allowed entity, from putting up the software on the Store for gratis (assuming the Store allows that) alongside New Publisher's paid for version, but if they haven't or don't want to that is their own problem. If the New Publisher has monitised the service they provide in packaging the OSS app, then bully for them.
This is all in a fantasy land where said 'good' publishers existed and actually worked to keep the software updated regularly, I know.
All this means is that companies like Apple and Mozilla happen not to have notified Microsoft of the infringement yet. So if you're worried about it, go tell Apple's legal department and Mozilla's.
Why should they have to? The store is supposed to be curated and given these examples, it's obvious it is not curated at all.
Apparently Microsoft is putting major service packs for Windows on the Windows Store now. For example, the upgrade from Windows 8 to Windows 8.1 is offered without charge through the Windows Store application. But if you waited until Windows 8.1 to buy your laptop, this upgrade was already done for you.
But you don't see the Android marketshare suffering do you?
Vonal Declosion
I think we have plenty of evidence to the contrary. Microsoft has, and does, willfully provide false information. They do this deliberately and indiscriminately, even to judges while under oath. Maybe you forgot about the claims to a judge that "If you remove Internet Explorer the Operating system stops functioning.". Even though a judge was smart enough to remove IE and show they were lying, nobody went to jail. So the trend continued.
Now what possible motivation would MS have for lying about approving apps? Easy, it's a numbers game. If Apple has half a billion applications how can MS fudge numbers to look relevant and not appear to be deliberate liars? Easy! Let people dump all kinds of crap into their app store so they can claim "look how many applications we have!' and "Look at our growth rate, thousands of new apps every day!". Both are technically true, though based on a lie about monitoring.
MS further can easily blow off the lie about approving content. Expect something along the lines of "Our people were not trained properly" with some bogus "we were hacked" charges sprinkled in for FUD and sympathy.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
I imagine that Microsoft didn't offer Windows 8.1 to Windows 8 users through the normal Windows Update mechanism because Windows 8.1 introduced additional hardware requirements. For example, unlike Windows 8, Windows 8.1 requires NX and SSE2 support in the CPU.
Does anybody actually buy apps for Metro?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Isn't this a trend with all app stores now? There's little incentive for any developer to create something only to have it cloned the next day, and have your original app downvoted by the army of the "competition", e.g., http://www.reddit.com/r/gamede.... I'm starting to think there are more "rogue" apps than legit ones.
Many apps use Adware anyway, which is just a backdoor waiting to happen. Do you trust the developer not to sell you to the highest bidder? The information you hold might be more valuable than you think.
Personally, I forgot about the "Smart" in "Smartphone" for a while now. It's not worth the trouble I'll be in, if I get attacked successfully. I know someone who used an online bank app, and had her account hacked into, because she installed an app from an untrusted source. I'm sure you guys know many cases like this. In my view, any app store is an untrusted source nowadays :)
There isn't much in the way of video production / compositing /3D modeling software for Android, now is there?
Let's also remember that the average consumer throttles their smartphone/PC/laptop about 1% of the time.
And Apple's model works for the "average consumer." How about people who are producing content rather than consuming it? Right now, they use desktop PC's and software that will never been in the MS walled garden.
Android OS has supported two ways to "sideload" software outside Google Play Store from day one. One is through "Unknown sources": if you download an Android application package (APK), you can open it in a file manager (or even just the Downloads app) and install it. Just about every Android device, except AT&T's first few months of Android phones, has a checkbox in Settings to allow "Unknown sources" installations. But even on those more restricted AT&T devices, one can still use Android Debug Bridge (ADB) to install any APK through a USB cable. Google in fact requires ADB to work as a condition of being allowed to bundle Google Play Store on a device (source: Android CDD).
Worse that pay-to-play software of dubious quality is the entire lack of support for major applications, and a complete lack of serious productivity and mainstream apps. Many of the apps are poor stepchildren of their Android and iOS counterparts if they even exist at all. A useful, app-style browser is woefully missing (for those who have convertible tablet/laptops, you can't have Chrome, IE or FF act as an app/finger centric if you use them in desktop mode.)
The iOS and Android app stores are full of shit, too, but at least there's some good stuff out there. For MS, all they have is the shit.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
The question runs deeper: Does anyone actually use Metro?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The biggest scam was getting the suckers to buy into this failed ecosystem in the first place!
My hope is that by then either Windows 10 is out or a replacement OS is available to escape the upgrade hell altogether.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I'm going to throw an assumption out there: very, very few people are doing this. Yes, you could - in theory - "dock" your phone/tablet and do productive things with it. But a really top-notch phone is going to cost you $600+ and a really low-end computer that can kick the shit out of it will cost $200. I think that anyone who can afford the monitor, keyboard, and high-end phone will probably not sweat the cheap cpu too much.
So in the end, while I'm sure there are people in the fringes doing productive things on their phones and tablets, for the vast majority they are toys. This is not meant to be a disparaging comment - I have a smartphone, I have tablets... but I don't do anything more productive on them than take short notes and check email. Mostly they are consumption devices.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I knew I hated hipsters. Everyone knows that you need Notepad++.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
A quad core phone has less IPC than a Pentium 4, a dead end CPU that is over a half a decade old. Take the absolute lowest Intel and AMD quads, the Atom and Jaguar respectively, and put it against the most expensive top 'o the line ARM quad and what happens? the ARM gets a curbstomping, in fact I wouldn't be surprised if the latest chips from Intel and AMD couldn't bitchslap the ARM with half their cores disabled, they are THAT mismatched.
Lets face it ARM only has 2 things going for it, 1.- its cheap, 2.- Anybody can make one so you can have some plant in China crank them out like flapjacks...did I mention they are cheap? To suggest an ARM with a keyboard and HDMI is in any way comparable to an actual PC is a bad joke, its good for content consumption and time wasters and that is about it.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
What could possibly be important enough to put up with Metro?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Take the absolute lowest Intel and AMD quads, the Atom and Jaguar respectively, and put it against the most expensive top 'o the line ARM quad and what happens? the ARM gets a curbstomping
Wrong, you can see the Atom chips getting smashed by the Exynos 5 chip.
And here in monte carlo and FFT benchmarks.
And here in h.264 encoding, zip compression and PHP compilation benchmarks.
Also here it's more of a mixed bag but the Atom gets thoroughly beaten and the Tegra4 and Jaguar trade the lead.
I understand running a business that depends on PCs is where your obvious bias comes from but the facts don't lie, this isn't to say that ARM is better than x86 but in some cases it is and it most certainly isn't the "curbstomping" you claim it to be.