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Microsoft Dumps 1,500 Apps From Its Windows Store
redletterdave writes: Microsoft announced on its Windows blog Wednesday that it's removed more than 1,500 apps from its Windows Store in a bid to clean up the store and restore trust with Windows 8 and Windows Phone users. Microsoft's new certification process, in particular, asks for clear and accurate names that "reflect the functionality of the app," more accurate categories, and differentiated icons to ensure apps aren't confused with one another. Microsoft reached out to developers with apps that violated its policies; some agreed to make changes to their software, while those who were "less receptive" saw their apps removed from the Windows Store. That might be just the beginning.
Google needs to clean up misleading apps in their search and stop malware instead of profiting from it.
Look at the ads for Firefox.
http://i.imgur.com/piER06h.png
It's the same for other apps, like Skype etc.
This space for rent.
If you're going to have a walled garden, you might as well tend it!
Restore trust? Shouldn't it be *there* in the first place to restore it?
This is what you get when you let your vendor decide what you can and can't install, what you can and can't offer. Apple and their ilk started this cancer and everyone else has hopped onto the bandwagon.
!!!
So that leave like what, 5 apps in that app store now? Seems like that's a bit of a disservice to the developers who put their time and money into developing the apps. Why not put in a voting mechanism so that the apps are still there, but less popular instead of arbitrarily deleting them?
In related news, New York City has finally taken action on their pigeon overpopulation problem, trapping and removing a whopping 1500 pigeons from the city!
They won't fix it. They make a ton of money from those ads, make Windows slow down and look bad so they can push heavily locked down Chromebooks that techies seem to sing the praise of.
I completely fail to comprehend why most Slashdotters seem to push everyone towards DRM'ed iPads and Chromebooks that put Palladium to shame instead of more open Windows PCs.
I guess it's more about Microsoft hate and the desire to bring them down than software freedom.
Finally, they're taking this semi-seriously.
All it took for them to do this was a half dozen articles about how the entire store is infested with scams and fake apps. This is something they should have done a year and a half ago.
They're all dead, Jim!
> We took the feedback seriously and modified the Windows Store app certification requirements as a first step toward better ensuring that apps are named and described in a way that doesnÃ(TM)t misrepresent their purpose.
I'm glad to see the scamware get the boot, but the whole idea of "we changed the certification requirements" should scare everyone. Unless you're a large company with a highly sought after application, you're an idiot if you develop for platforms that don't have an open distribution model. Microsoft's platform is one instance where developers have some leverage and everyone needs to take a stand and tell Microsoft to go fuck themselves until they get their heads out of their asses stop trying to control application distribution.
Today they're kicking out the scammers. Tomorrow it'll be competitors.
This might not be a stellar opinion but its got to be said. for microsoft to jettison 1500 apps from a store few used and even fewer knew existed isnt poigniant unless you take into account that this has been microsofts strategy for 10 years in various segments. new product shows up, its identical to a product or products that have been around for 5 years, and it reluctantly disappears without much fanfare or spends a decade on XBox revenue life support. The zune was a dismal failure, and Azure only made an 11% gain because they tie the product into normal licensing for businesses, making it a mandatory item as part of discounts. Windows phone has had more stops and starts than a sixteen year old in a porsche. in 2014 it only had 3% of the marketshare for smartphones and its purchase of nokia was the kiss of death that made standard and poors downgrade their bond status to junk. the content restrictions on the appstore are virtually indistinguishable from the content restrictions of a protestant grandmother. The concept of a microsoft store in general is so hobbled its had to partner with another floating turd, best buy, to continue expansion beyond its 63 stores. Bing was the product of 3 years pounding away at yahoo until they purchased their search technology and relabeled it. After a huge marketing blitz, forcing it as a default in internet explorer, strapping it onto everything from phones to the xbox and even copying google results they still couldnt do better than an alexa rank of 23. Yahoo is alexa ranked at 4. IIS is a blood-stain that makes headlines only because its netcraft rating is artificially inflated with hosting providers that have been paid to use IIS for their static placeholder sites. Internet explorer, despite having 7 versions of development, ranks dead last in pc and mobile categories. Windows and Xbox and perpetual corporate licensing are all that keep microsoft in busines, and even Xbox isnt ranked #1 in gaming as that title goes to nintendo.
Financials and earnings reports sum this point up exactly. Microsoft has hemmoraged 21.8 billion dollars in net income and all it has to show for this is a lobbying division thats convinced a city in germany to switch to windows, and an operating system that, until valve pulls the trigger, will continue to exist solely because it shows up on the computer at the time of delivery and skyrim runs on it.
Good people go to bed earlier.
People actually use the Windows Store? Wow.
i lol'ed at the part in bold....
M$ is not the worst offender but there up there...'zune', .NET, etc...M$ is horrible at names
i'll probably never choose to use a M$ product for the rest of my life...but maybe this is a sign they are wising up?
Thank you Dave Raggett
ensure apps aren't confused = EA and others can bully out other apps that are competitors to there own apps.
look at how bad simcity was now just thing how bad it can be for new apps / games to be the same way and they use the app store lock in to push out other competitors with better games / apps that do the same thing / are the same type of game.
I guess there will be no more "Shazam" for the Windows Phone platform, then?
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
Open source isn't nearly as important as having open platforms. The big issue is about having a 3rd party dictate what you can and can't do with your device. I don't give a shit about auditing the applications I run or the idealistic concepts Stallman has, but I do care about getting to choose what can and can't be done with the electronics I buy.
Microsoft had a great, open platform in the 90s and it was a major contributing factor to their success. I will gladly cough up $200 for Windows if it means the hardware and software industries remain a free-for-all. Too many people are short sighted and don't understand the long term benefits of an open platform. Somehow Microsoft has become one of them.
Sorry, the Store has been a problem for me from the start. First I don't believe in Walled Gardens but you also can't sideload Metro apps. Couple that along with the fact that you can't delete store history in Windows 8 and you'll have a situation that just pisses people off. There are multiple support threads on this in the Microsoft forums and yet nothings been done to address these deficiencies. That's why you still see vendors creating desktop mode apps which still give them some control over the user experience including downloads and support.
Sorry Microsoft, get your heads out of your collective asses and listen to your customers.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
They had that many?
OK, cheap shot, but if you aanounce you're giving away cash to developers for every app they submit to the store, why were you surprised when you got deluged with crap? I wish I'd got in on the act myself and submitted my "Hello World" app which no doubt would have also sold loads to knowingly ironic hipsters, and it's title would have "reflected the functionality of the app" better than any app that has or would ever be produced.
So Microsoft started censoring what the user can and cannot run on their own hardware.
What these online stores for software need is proper quality control. Steam used to keep a pretty good standards for publishing games, but that has gone down the hill. Android never had any good quality control and iOS seems to be lacking as well.
For the three remaining apps.....
I don't care what they do, I will never buy anything that runs Windows 8. 8 is the deal breaker.
Jack of all trades,master of none
Quality Control may sound like a good idea....and Microsoft should apply it to their own products or maybe even their own app store, but allow competitor's software to run on their wares.
What's that like half their app store gone now?
Damn, people started complaining all over the web and MS actually did something about it. MS, finally, listening to their user base.
I re-installed windows 7 from scratch and setup my primary user as a standard user with uac enabled and secondary user as a administrator. My performance is hit and some applications don't behave nicely anymore including google chrome, probably caused by UAC. I even ran windows update as Administrator under standard user and in the end of the installation it gave me a damn error and could no longer run the updates even after restarting the machine, but fixed it by re-installing .net framework, then I had different freaking issues. Plus, the update installation took 30 minutes longer than it did when I was under the administrator user. Tired, I just went back to using Administrator and applications no longer run buggy and performance is back. Shit! I thought I could run it like linux. I did not get the su or sudo experience more like FU and SUCKO.
MS really needs to develop another OS but from scratch(get rid of all legacy) with security in mind instead of throwing ACL System on top of all that legacy crap. I'm sure people in time would adopt to the new OS at the same time windows 7/8 still being used. Something has to be done MS can't ride on 24 year old technology for long.
Wait, they actually had that many apps in there in the first place?
Most MS apps are crap anyway.
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." - Voltaire