back to article Microsoft: We plan to CLEAN UP this here Windows Store town

Microsoft has promised to crack down on rogue apps in its Windows Store following criticisms that the marketplace is littered with "scam" software. Windows Store – which debuted with Windows 8 – is littered with misleading apps. Typical problems include knock-off "unofficial" packages of free apps such as the VLC media player …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I've said this quite a few times on here, but of course all the shrills and fanbois start screaming about it.

    1. Bob Vistakin
      Holmes

      Correct.

    2. JeffyPoooh
      Pint

      So, exactly the same as BlackBerry's AppWorld_of_disappointment then...

      95% rubbish.

      Apple's App Store is *far and away* better, at only about 87% rubbish.

      Hey: I had to reinstall Win 7 the other night. It's *way* more fun if you do this errand after several glasses of red wine. I don;t understand why IT folks aren't drunk all the time. Or, perhaps they are.

      1. VinceH

        Re: So, exactly the same as BlackBerry's AppWorld_of_disappointment then...

        "I don;t understand why IT folks aren't drunk all the time. Or, perhaps they are."

        *hic*

        That is all.

    3. RyokuMas
      Boffin

      Hello pot, this is kettle...

      ... and similarly, as soon as an article mentions Microsoft, all those who just can't let their grudge go come out to put the boot in again.

      If cleaning up the Windows Store is a herculean task, what of cleaning up other mobile stores, regardless of operating system? Especially when the requirements to get an app into a store are no more than paying $25, posting it, and getting through a few bare-bones checks...

      I'd love to see a clean-up - on all stores. I'd really love to see blatant clone apps and games included in this sweep, too. And it would be interesting to see just how many apps are left on each store after such a clean-up.

      1. Splodger

        Re: Hello pot, this is kettle...

        Um, WTF does Windows need an 'app store' anyway? Are people so brainwashed?

        All traces and links to the 'app store' was one of the first things that was scrubbed from my Win 8 box (hence still Win 8.0), right after installing classic shell.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Hello pot, this is kettle...

          >Um, WTF does Windows need an 'app store' anyway? Are people so brainwashed?

          Principally to make gatekeeper cash for Microsoft I would guess.

          "You want to sell Windows software? You come to me!", in your best Godfather voice.

          What Windows was always missing was a standardised management system for applications that everyone could get behind. It's one of the best aspects of using Linux I find and to be honest, I've never fully understood why such a thing doesn't exist in the Windows realm.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Hello pot, this is kettle...

            "What Windows was always missing was a standardised management system"

            There is one and is called "Windows Installer". Unluckily it is not made mandatory and too many still relies on crappy outdated installers that doesn't use it.

            Anyway, even under Linux there are several applications that aren't installed using the distro package manager - and not small ones...

            1. Adam 1

              Re: Hello pot, this is kettle...

              > There is one and is called "Windows Installer"

              Windows installer is not the best by any stretch, but that is largely irrelevant to this discussion because we are taking about repositories not installers. An installer is not fundamentally much more than a way to check for prerequisites, stop services and to copy a few files around.

              An uninstaller is just another application which in theory reverses the process*

              There are some important features of an app store not covered by windows installer.

              - locating an application for a given purpose.

              - visibility of user ratings and popularity

              - being sure of the legitimacy of the download link

              - buying it.

              - knowing about and receiving updates, service packs or hot fixes.

              As it stands in the windows world, you get each vendor coming up with their own half baked update mechanisms. Half the time they don't work (HP/Intel), and the others are a mixture of annoying popups every few days (Java), trying to sneak other software in during a supposed update (anything Apple). There are a couple of not to bad ones (notepad++) but they are few and far between. It just doesn't make a lot of sense to compare a store with an installation mechanism.

              *unless you are Symantec where it is purely cosmetic.

              1. Anonymous Coward
                Anonymous Coward

                Re: Hello pot, this is kettle...

                No - it was talking about a "standardized management system" - and that's what Windows Installer is. You can manage installed applications, remove it, update, publish and remotely install it (via AD - you can do it with third party installers as well). Microsoft could easily build a repository atop Windows Installer - after all it already does it for its own software - just all the applications would need to be deployed using .msi files, something many application developer still refuses to do (the largely used Inno Setup doesn't create .msi installer, and some others). I'm sure the day MS does so, you all will complain to be forced to use an .msi compatible setup generator. And that day, you will have to pay Microsoft 30% of your sales. And I guess many large vendors, those selling their apps for far more than 0.99, prefer to deploy without the "repository tax". Or are you ready to pay apps more for the tax? Remember a lot of expensive software is run on Windows.

                As said, Microsoft in Windows had a very different business model which predates the Internet. It didn't ask 30% on each application sold (thanks heavens) so it never had a reason to publish competitors application. Open source software has not in application sold and installed a revenue source, thereby for free one a repository makes sense. And as said, commercial Linux applications don't go through the repositories exactly for the same reason (revenues...), thereby even under Linux you have applications you need to update and patch yourself, unless you never use commercial applications.

                I do not find repositories or stores very useful. Ratings are often useless, because you can't rare reviewer, nor know if they are legitimate or not - lots of crappy reviews around. Locating and buy applications is easy without them - how do you believe people found, bought and downloaded applications before? - as shown you can download crappy and dangerous apps from stores as well.

                I'm not saying a repository is useless, just is not the solution to all problems, and brings in its own ones, as being able to forbid application at will.... would you like if MS would put rules to forbid competiting products, for example forbidding Open/Libre Office, Postgres and Apache from the repository? Apple does it single handed, if any apps is not of its taste.

                I prefer by far to have full control on what I can install on my systems, even if this freedom makes things a little more complex.

        2. LordWilmore

          Re: Now, IBM can finally perfect its hi-tech stuff

          It comes in quote handy for windows phone

        3. jonathanb Silver badge

          Re: Hello pot, this is kettle...

          It means you can go to a single place to get all your updates, just like you have been able to for many years on linux and *BSD systems, rather than having half a dozen different update notifications pop up every time you reboot the computer, or have an update notification pop up when you load the software and would prefer to actually use it rather than update it.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Hello pot, this is kettle...

            Sorry, but I have several applications running on Linux which are not updated from their repositories. Oracle, for example, or Polarion. Or our Napatech NICs drivers and software. Many commercial applications under Linux *are not* managed or updated through the repositories.

            Sure, it you just use the software from the repositories, then all updates are from them. Even if you use only MS applications you can get all updates from Windows Update or WSUS...

            You may miss MS is not an open source company and has competitors. It's not its interest to deliver applications which are not its own. Does Apple update non-Apple applications which are not the free ones from its BSD port, but the commercial ones running on OSX?

            Different business models, you can't expect they follow the same rules.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Hello pot, this is kettle...

              > Sorry, but I have several applications running on Linux which are not updated from their repositories. Oracle, for example, or Polarion. Or our Napatech NICs drivers and software. Many commercial applications under Linux *are not* managed or updated through the repositories.

              True but that is not the fault of the distribution, it is the fault of those suppliers. Windows has an "installer" but it provides no standard framework for update or dependency resolution. How many times have people installed and application to be told that some version of the .Net framework must be installed first? Why can't it happen automatically which would serve for the vast majority of people?

              So instead we get a plethora of installer packages each of which have to provide their own custom approach, more to the point, *they cannot interact with each other*.

              1. Anonymous Coward
                Anonymous Coward

                Re: Hello pot, this is kettle...

                "Windows has an "installer" but it provides no standard framework for update or dependency resolution"

                It does have a standard framework for updates (never used WSUS?) and like Linux packages, it's up to the package (installer) developer to take care of dependencies - did you ever write a Linux package? For example what do you believe the declaration "Depends on" in a .deb control file means? You can easily write packages with missing dependencies, and I've seen a few.

                Good Windows installers will take care of dependencies as well, and usually a Windows application has far less dependencies than a Linux one. Anyway Windows Installer does a good job in tracking what is installed where and when, and how to uninstall it.

                1. Anonymous Coward
                  Anonymous Coward

                  Re: Hello pot, this is kettle...

                  > It does have a standard framework for updates (never used WSUS?)

                  These are for Windows core principally.

                  As far as I'm aware, there is no standard facility for applications.

                  Is there a way for an application to have a dependency on a particular version of Pythin without having to enclose it specifically and install it by hand? What if two applications have the same Python requirements? Do you get two copies of Python or does it all fall flat on its face?

                  > did you ever write a Linux package?

                  Erm, yes.

                  > You can easily write packages with missing dependencies, and I've seen a few.

                  If by missing, I assume that you mean not installed. If that is the case most installer front-ends will resolve them automatically. If you mean unresolvable, then you can still install it by hand which is no worse than the situation without package management. TBH, I can't remember the last time I had a situation like this. The most common situation is where a distribution does not support a required dependency version. I agree that this is a serious issue.

                  > Good Windows installers will take care of dependencies as well, and usually a Windows application has far less dependencies than a Linux one.

                  Yes. It is a shame that this has to be so. A key point about this though is that applications cannot share dependencies. In addition, as I mentioned previously, one of the key aspects that often doesn't work at all is dependencies on .Net frameworks which, as core Microsoft technologies, should never require manual installation. Sure, some installations may necessitate it (such as machines behind a firewall or not connected to the Internet) but this is not the case for the vast majority of situations.

          2. Adam 1

            Re: Hello pot, this is kettle...

            >It means you can go to a single place to get all your updates,

            Is that like how you can upgrade from windows 8 to 8.1 by going to the store and pressing download, and how you don't need to go to windows update to download all the windows 8 patches first? Oh wait...

        4. Suricou Raven

          Re: Hello pot, this is kettle...

          Windows RT, on the ARM-chip surface tablets, only runs software from the official Microsoft store. Enforced by requiring signed code.

          They are just doing the sensible thing: They see the massive success of Apple's business model of profiting from after-sale services in the consumer space. They want in. The problem here is that they are latecomers to this party, and that puts them at a serious disadvantage which they tried to address by lowering acceptance standards in order to quickly increase the selection on offer.

        5. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Hello pot, this is kettle...

          Um, WTF does Windows need an 'app store' anyway? Are people so brainwashed?

          Windows needs an app store purely for the fact that Apple have one. Here I am on my Windows 7 rig I click on start and I have the option for All 'Programs'..

          Windows 7 was released in 2009 though and Apple had only released their App Store a year prior to that, but by January 2011 the App Store had hit 9.9 billion downloads and suddenly in the September of that year we get treated to the beta release of Windows 8, but where are my programs? They've suddenly been replaced by Apps....

          Microsoft clearly wanted to try and appeal to the younger hipper crowd like Apple as they could see the revenue streams it opened up for them. Unfortunately if you're going to take ideas from them then either do them properly or don't do them at all.

          The fact that they have 2 different sets of coding languages for Windows Phone and Windows RT was a fail from the off and their entire coding ethos is just stupid. There is no benefit for me to learn one of their new coding languages as they seem to have the same shelf life as raw fish

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Hello pot, this is kettle...

        But MS employing people like you to write these posts makes people dislike MS even more, as they add no value, unless it be annoyance value.

        1. RyokuMas
          FAIL

          Re: Hello pot, this is kettle...

          Ah, the age old accusation of "shill" coming to the fore once again, despite my stating that I'd like to see all app stores cleared up. Favourite cry of those who are so caught up with their fifteen-plus year old grudge that they have become like Pavlov's dog, but instead of hearing a bell, and starting drooling, they read the word "Microsoft" and start ranting.

          Such people end up only giving their own chosen community a bad reputation - look what happened to Eadon.

          However, I have to admit that I mistyped on my original post: my intention was to focus solely on mobile. When it comes to the Windows store, I agree with Splodger - what the hell is the point?

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Hello pot, this is kettle...

        who just can't let their grudge go come out to put the boot in again

        Well, yes, because a company that seeks to employ the best can do MUCH, MUCH better - but doesn't.

        If cleaning up the Windows Store is a herculean task, what of cleaning up other mobile stores, regardless of operating system? Especially when the requirements to get an app into a store are no more than paying $25, posting it, and getting through a few bare-bones checks...

        It's a lot better if you start with decent fundamentals, which is why Apple has less of a problem right now (I wouldn't mind knowing how much they have to reject from people trying it anyway). Getting a decent standard of security has NEVER been something that MS could get right, and that simply works its way into the app store too. Quality just doesn't seem to be a priority, which is why you have eternal patching for anything they release. I fully expect the same to happen to their App store as happened to their OS over years: a lot of talk and minimal actual change.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I've said this quite a few times on here

      Which one of the Anonymous Cowards are you again? Are you me?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: I've said this quite a few times on here

        "Which one of the Anonymous Cowards are you again? Are you me?"

        No it was the other one, or was it me...

      2. Pookietoo

        Re: I've said this quite a few times on here

        It's the one that doesn't know how to spell shill.

  2. JimmyPage Silver badge
    FAIL

    Is MS staffed by muppets ?

    on what planet would spaffing $100 a pop generate decent apps that people WANT.

    Why didn't they give Nationwide [UK building society] £10,000 to develop a windows version of their mobile banking app (which they have no plans to develop any time soon. I have that in writing from their IT director).

    Or anyone of the commercial apps that *companies* aren't offering on WP ?

    1. Thought About IT

      Re: Is MS staffed by muppets ?

      Not trying to promote Barclays, but they wrote a mobile banking app for WP which is very good. Try waving that at Nationwide's IT director.

      1. Vince

        Re: Is MS staffed by muppets ?

        Indeed - I'm actually quite impressed with Barclays approach to mobile technology - it's not perfect, but they're certainly one of the first out of the gate it seems.

        Glad I had already moved to them from the utterly laughable Santander.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Is MS staffed by muppets ?

        RBS mobile app is quite reasonable too. Unsurprisingly there's a NatWest one too.

        Quick look suggests Halifax, Bank of Scotland, Lloyds, TSB, First Direct all have winphone apps.

        Though Nationwide being a building society may have something to do with it. One expects them to be a bit more cautious with the spending.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Trying to get app COUNT up

      They know they look bad in comparison to the number of apps available on the App Store or Google Play. Sure, sure, we all know that number of apps doesn't matter, it is quality apps that do, but people use number of an apps as a proxy for the amount of developer focus.

      So pay people off to get a bunch of crap Windows apps available and make the count look better by comparison to try to win new users to the platform, but now they have to go delete a lot of them because they're pissing off existing users. Oops!

      1. Tom 35

        Re: Trying to get app COUNT up

        Look at the RT app store.

        Half of the "TOP" apps in most categories have less then 10 reviews. Most of them are bad reviews.

  3. Chas

    Gee, d'ya think?

    Cleaning up the Windows Store is akin to the Fifth Labour of Hercules.

    =:~)

    1. present_arms

      Re: Gee, d'ya think?

      "Cleaning up the Windows Store is akin to the Fifth Labour of Hercules."

      If only it was that easy.

      1. SVV

        Re: Gee, d'ya think?

        Install Cygwin

        cd /

        rm -rf *

        That should clean it up pretty well.

        1. Captain DaFt

          Re: Gee, d'ya think?

          And here I was looking at the geological survey maps to see if there was a river that could be diverted through Redmond! :)

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Gee, d'ya think?

          You can't delete a directory tree under Windows without rm? Poor lad...

  4. Ken Darling

    History repeats itself...

    Windows attracts malware like sh*t attracts Apple fanbois. It's always been that way, and always will be. When will Microsoft learn?

    >>Sigh<<

    1. RyokuMas
      Facepalm

      Re: History repeats itself...

      Distinct difference between malware and scamware, and I think you'll find that the former of these not currently a Windows Phone problem - at least, not for now.

      Of course, if WP starts gaining decent traction, I'd be willing to bet good money that someone will find a hack and we'll start seeing stuff a lot worse than fake apps for a price.

      1. Ken Darling

        Re: History repeats itself...

        "Of course, if WP starts gaining decent traction, I'd be willing to bet good money that someone will find a hack and we'll start seeing stuff a lot worse than fake apps for a price."

        Regardless of whether it gains good traction we'll see stuff a lot worse. After all, you only need to write that scam program once and it will run on all three flavours of Windows 8.1.

        Write once, run (amok) everywhere.

        Great thinking, Microsoft.

        1. RyokuMas

          Re: History repeats itself...

          "Regardless of whether it gains good traction we'll see stuff a lot worse. After all, you only need to write that scam program once and it will run on all three flavours of Windows 8.1."

          But why bother? Very few people like Windows 8, and - as so many are so quick to point out - Windows Phone's market share is currently pretty damn small.

          And then you have to go through all the mucking about getting your scam program through certification on the various stores, where it may get spotted for what it is, if you've been a bit too ambitious.

          Might as well write it for Android instead. Bigger market share, easier to get programs onto devices... or if you must target desktop, go down the traditional application and attack vectors route.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Would there be any apps left?

    I means it's pretty barren already.

  6. James O'Shea

    why

    "Apps that rely on iTunes' brand recognition are particularly pernicious. For example, there's an app that costs $8.99 called iTunes Player App that “helps user to know how to use [sic] and download iTunes”."

    Why on God's green Earth does someone, anyone, actually want to run _iTunes_ on a _Windows device_? I don't want to bloody run iTunes on a Mac!

    Anyone who runs iTunes on non-Apple hardware deserves what he gets... and the time is rapidly approaching where anyone who runs iTunes, period, deserves what he gets. (Yes, I've seen the iTunes 12 beta. No, I'm not impressed. Horrified, now...)

    1. Arctic fox
      Unhappy

      @James O'Shea "..... Why on God's green earth......

      God help me yes. iTunes? Made that mistake a long time ago - once bitten and twice shy and all that.

      1. Vector

        Re: Why on God's green earth......

        Never had to deal with iTunes, but I did at one time have to put up with Quicktime on Windows.

        That's a nightmare I'm glad is over.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Why on God's green earth......

          I did at one time have to put up with Quicktime on Windows

          IMHO it sucks equally bad on OSX. You're better off using VLC or MPlayer - on any platform.

    2. Adam 1

      Re: why

      > Why on God's green Earth does someone, anyone, actually want to run _iTunes_ on a _Windows device_?

      Apple must think that their customers are too stupid to get music and video onto their iThings using copy paste like the rest of the world.

  7. Maty

    iTunes

    '... helps [the] user to know how to use and download iTunes”

    Actually, if done properly, this would not be a bad app.

    Maybe iTunes has improved its interface since I scrubbed it from my computer a few years back. But I remember the iTunes interface on the PC as a counter-intuitive POS which made it as hard as possible to do even the simplest functions, presumably in the hope you'd end up buying something out of sheer frustration.

  8. MrColdWaterOfRealityMan

    Penny wise. Pound foolish.

    Had Microsoft wanted to get apps into the Window store, they would have designed their languages so that all Microsoft apps written in any language could be converted quickly, easily and automatically to any other Microsoft platform. Known, trusted applications could have been moved from vb6, winforms, asp.net and so on to Windows apps. Had this been done, Microsoft could have had thousands of such apps in its Windows store in days.

    Instead, the brain dead managers of Microsoft said to all Windows developers, "Too bad about your investment in time, money. Not our problem, though. Recode."

    By making migration difficult and expensive, Microsoft is no paying the price for their own shortsighted stupidity. The "managers" at Microsoft elected a strategy of short term gain, rather than long term coherent vision which would have been more profitable in the long run.

    1. Hargrove

      Re: Penny wise. Pound foolish.

      Well articulated.

      A point to ponder. Under another thread, one of the commenters referred to Hanlon's razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." However, there is still the question of greed. From the introduction of the "Hardware Abstraction Layer" (around 2000, I think?) I have harbored suspicions that the desire to achieve and hold a monopoly position has driven Microsoft's design far more than any technical consideration.

      Grandpa Hargrove would say, "In the limit it doesn't matter whether you are the victim of a fool or a knave--the damage you suffer will be indistinguishable."

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Penny wise. Pound foolish.

        HAL was introduced with Windows NT much earlier than 2000. And it is there to abstract the physical hardware (CPU, etc.) from the kernel OS so it could run on different CPUs (back then it run on x86, MIPS and Alpha) without kernel code changes here and there. It also allowed to support easily single-processor or multi-processor machine in the old days.

        I guess you never understood what HAL is in Windows. Your malice looks to be explained by ignorance.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Penny wise. Pound foolish.

      Funny. One day people like you blame the Windows Win32 API to be old, bad, bloated, unsecure, etc. etc. When MS says - "that's a new subsystem and API designed to be simpler, more secure, etc. etc." you complain because it is not compatible...

      Also, what the hell asp.net has to do with client applications? That's a web server technology. I wonder what your knowledge of Windows development is... VB6 was dead in 2003 time to move on eleven years after...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Penny wise. Pound foolish.

        "Funny. One day people like you blame the Windows Win32 API to be old, bad, bloated, unsecure, etc. etc. When MS says - "that's a new subsystem and API designed to be simpler, more secure, etc. etc." you complain because it is not compatible..."

        Typical Microsoft thinking: there's a problem with something, instead of try to fix the problem we'll invent a whole new layer or programming language or environment or whatever with its own new flaws and make everybody learn it.

        Compare and contrast to Apple, who made the iPhone secure by sandboxing all 3rd party apps, i.e., in such a way that's completely transparent to developers and users. Great solution for everybody involved.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Penny wise. Pound foolish.

          Excuse me, the iPhone was developed from scratch and thereby Apple could start anew with iOS - it doesn't look to me the iPhone can run MacOS and OSX applications...

          Same when Carbon was put in the bin and developers were forced to move to Cocoa and use Objective-C instead of C++, if we like to talk about new languages, and even Objective-C is going to be replaced.

          WinRT subsystem works exactly like the iOS one. Each application is sandboxed, but that means it can't use the old API (and the UI anyway is different enough to require from scratch). You use the same tools - C++, .NET, HTML/JavaScript - just you need to target a different environment, exactly how iOS is not OSX. Nor Android is Linux...

          You can't change the Win32 API to become a sandboxed one and maintain compatibility with the huge number of applications around. It gets fixed, but not turning it in something it can't be.

          If there is a mistake Microsoft did with WinRT and Windows Phone development was to tie them to Windows 8 (you can't develop in Windows 7 if you need the emulator, it won't work, nor does WinRT), and its own development tools because competitors may not be able to deploy some code they need, or call APIs MS reserved to itself, copying from Apple's playbook.

          That put off many developers.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Penny wise. Pound foolish.

            >>Excuse me, the iPhone was developed from scratch and thereby Apple could start anew with iOS - it doesn't look to me the iPhone can run MacOS and OSX applications...

            Yes and no. Only the "topmost" UI libraries are different. Everything else is the same. Apple changed the OS to sandbox apps. Even if you're using the standard POSIX functions and not Apple's APIs, your app is still sandboxed. You can't call fopen on other apps' files, etc.

            >>Same when Carbon was put in the bin and developers were forced to move to Cocoa and use Objective-C instead of C++, if we like to talk about new languages, and even Objective-C is going to be replaced.

            Obj-C is a superset of C++. Basically just a calling convention. But yes, they did change their APIs back in ~2000, 14 years ago. Since then they were able to add sandboxing etc. without changing APIs. (And Swift is an optional thing, nobody will have to rewrite their code or switch away from Obj-C/C++ if they don't want to.)

            >>You can't change the Win32 API to become a sandboxed one and maintain compatibility with the huge number of applications around. It gets fixed, but not turning it in something it can't be.

            Disagree. Why can't the OS and/or Win32 APIs be changed to allow sandboxing? What prevents it? As I said above, Apple made changes to the OS so that apps are sandboxed regardless of what API set is used.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Penny wise. Pound foolish.

      "By making migration difficult and expensive, Microsoft is no paying the price for their own shortsighted stupidity. The "managers" at Microsoft elected a strategy of short term gain, rather than long term coherent vision which would have been more profitable in the long run."

      Nah, I'm sure it wasn't that calculated of a decision. I'm sure it was just hubris. Microsoft has had such a long run of market domination and they have so much money in the bank that they just assume they can push whatever crap they want out into the market and everybody will basically be forced to use it.

      I'm sure their thinking went like this: if "only" 10% of users started using Metro apps, that means an automatic market of hundreds of millions of users. All developers are going to rush to be the first to deliver Metro apps to capitalize on that new market. It will be a virtuous circle with developers rushing to support Metro, users rushing to buy/use this new software, etc. There will be a gold rush and everybody will get rich immediately, including Microsoft with their 30% cut and everybody rushing to upgrade to Win8 so they can use all this great new stuff.

      Easy story for the strategic visionaries in mid-level management to sell, hard to deliver when Metro ends up being a load of crap that everybody does their best to avoid, then it turns into a vicious circle of developers not wanting to make apps for an environment that everybody hates, everybody continuing to not use that environment due to lack of apps, etc.

      You'd think Microsoft would slowly start to learn its new lesson, i.e., they have to make something that's desirable to customers to get any sales these days. Their strategy of "let's just kinda make whatever and rely on momentum and marketing dollars to sell it" is leading to a long string of failures.

  9. Mikel

    A challenge

    Clearing out tumbleweeds.

  10. chivo243 Silver badge

    lemmings

    app store.... oh gee, we need to get with it... we will lose millions... but we can say we have an app storish kind of facade.

  11. Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

    Refunds?

    So what about refunds? Google Market *used* to have some dubious apps (and I'm sure Google Play at least has a few still.) But, they have a "no questions asked" 15 minute refund. That's not long, but it's long enough so if you paid $8.99 for an app that says "itunes? Here's the download link for Windows", you can give it a quick 1-star rating and return it. Sounds like Microsoft is not even doing this!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Refunds?

      It may shock some people, but I even had refunds from the Apple app store. Here too it is essential that you get in touch with them right away if you have a problem.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Microsoft should just give up on mobile and its app store

    Ballmer was an idiot and thus you have lost the war.

    Carry on at your own peril. You'll continue to bleed money.

    All you can do to earn money from apps is this: sell Office for iOS and Android.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Microsoft should just give up on mobile and its app store

      Ballmer was an idiot and thus you have lost the war.

      Carry on at your own peril. You'll continue to bleed money.

      The problem is that they have built up quite a bit of money during their monopoly days. It may be that that Titanic is sinking, but that amount of cash provides quite a bit of residual buoyancy.

  13. Hans 1
    Windows

    Definition of Windows Apps

    >bundle bloatware with their installers or attempt to charge money for software that was elsewhere offered for free

    That is the very definition of software designed for Windows x (where x is a Windows version). I do not understand what the problem is .... Besides, if you fight these guyz, why should Oracle, Adobe, Microsoft etc get away with it?

  14. Dan 55 Silver badge
    Happy

    Arf

    "Whenever a big company creates an open platform for developers..."

  15. king of foo

    responsibility

    If I own a, um... fish mongers... and I sell you a dodgy, um, trout and it gives you the shits I can't turn around and blame the fisherman. I have a duty of care that makes me responsible for the quality of the products sold through my store. I make a profit, therefore I am liable.

    I see no difference in these app markets. Failing to check for the third eye with the ecoli in it is my bad... and it's in my interests to check, lest customers think me negligent/incompetent/untrustworthy.

    1. Nick Ryan Silver badge

      Re: responsibility

      Completely agree. However the software industry has grown up with a licence that effectively reads "We, the company providing this software, generously, out of the bottom of our bank account, are lending you a copy of this software exclusively on our terms. It may not do what you want it to do, it may not do what we say it does, it may not work very well at all, in fact it probably doesn't work at all but this is your problem and not ours. Now pay up bitches.".

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