The apps on the Windows store are not even remotely plausibly useful for anything else. Not only that but they are intentionally misleading. Netflix had to deal with Microsoft at least three times in order to get Microsoft remove fake Netflix apps. Many of these apps don't even have a valid website link or contact info. Some are just a video player wrapped around an HTTP server that has 10 or 20 video files.
Microsoft has zero quality controls and their store is full of shit, which is one of the reasons their platform failed so hard. They were literally paying people per app published regardless of the content of it. It turns out just advertising that you have a billion apps doesn't help if they're all just junk.
Did the MacOS App Store fail? I don't think so. Sure, it's not as popular as the iOS store but this is probably because most Mac apps are an order of magnitude more expensive than their iOS counterparts. Personally I don't mind paying a few bucks for an iOS app, but I think twice before hitting that buy button on a 50$ app.
It's certainly failed to reach its potential. A lot of very high quality, high profile apps have quit the App Store and actually found their sales and revenue increase, aside from not having to comply with onerous sandboxing restrictions any more.
The macOS app store didn't gain much traction but you're underestimating just how much of a cease pool the Windows app store is. Microsoft must have the resources to moderate that better. But based on my last test search of "Firefox" coming up with dozens of fake Firefox apps or "apps" that are "Firefox Guides" basically PDFs wrapped as an "app" etc... My only guess is Microsoft knows there's a truly abysmal number of legit apps so they just choose not to moderate it
The Mac App Store has some junk but I actually find it quite useful and do buy stuff on there because I know I'll be able to install it if/when I switch computers in the future. Same thing with Steam. I also expense most of my Mac App Store purchases, so that probably makes a difference.
It's not in Adobe's best interest to hand over that portion when they have proven demand for their product and a distribution system (Adobe Cloud) of their own.
For smaller devs the store should provide a better marketing and sales platform, and so be worth the 30% cut. Steam, as an example, seems to work out alright for most companies but not everyone.
I feel the same about the Kindle and Google Play stores, as well. iOS App Store seems to be the only one that has more "useful" apps to noise. That said, the iOS App Store is filled with crap as well, they just do a good job of curating a front page, and the category list pages.
Google Play Store is a lot better than it was in the past, but the problem I find now is due to the sheer number of android devices, you just don't get the consistency while running apps that you get on iOS App Store. I assume this is the same for Kindle since it is android-based and Windows Store since there is so much hardware out there.
> That said, the iOS App Store is filled with crap as well, they just do a good job of curating a front page, and the category list pages.
Very true. Once you delve into some of the category pages, or the search, you find many many pages of utter garbage. But the 'front page' experience is carefully curated to look like the cream of the crop.
Yep -- search for something like "fart button" and marvel at hundreds / thousands of apps for this, even for iOS. There are definitely some very high-quality iOS apps, but they have a ton of crap as well. Android is worse, and MS / Amazon are so bad that even finding the legitimate thing you want and know the name of is a hassle. Microsoft also compounds this by making installation a hassle and almost impossible to troubleshoot, so then you must try to find legit "fix windows store" programs and hope they're not just a timer with a progress bar asking you to pay $60 for the pro version.
I feel iOS is too curated and too Draconian in what they will accept.
I would much rather have to sift through garbage to find the app I want, then to have a company like apple tell me what I am allowed and not allowed to install on the device I paid them 100's or over a $1,000 to "own"
The Kindle app store is as bad as Microsoft's one is being painted here. It's crammed full of dubious apps, many of which are clearly only there to deceive people into thinking their the official app from a provider.
I'm not sure if its reasonable for Microsoft to differentiate (they might not be privy to any licence deals that have gone on), but the difference is the _only_ purpose of many of these apps is the streaming of pirated content - they have no legitimate use. They are often separate apps for the specific content offered (see, e.g., the screenshot in https://twitter.com/sudousrcode/status/899418294259765253)
An interesting aspect of this is "How can you tell if a streaming site/app is legitimate?"
There are so many weird, on demand, maybe you need a cable package, maybe it's just all you can eat, maybe it's just a 2 month free promo, services out there that it's really hard for the average person to know what is legitimate.
The shrinking release windows and ongoing push for day and date digital releases just makes it even harder.
Case in point: TubiTV just randomly showed up on my Roku recently - It's available on XBox and streams a bunch of different stuff. Should/do I need to verify that they've correctly licensed their movies before watching?
> do I need to verify that they've correctly licensed their movies before watching?
I don't think that's your responsibility. If it is brought to your attention that the app is infringing copyright, maybe it's your responsibility to stop using it.
But it's not your responsibility to verify that every service you use has the rights to all the content it uses. How could you possibly do that?
Copyright law would likely disagree, I believe the MPAA would also likely disagree and put to responsibility on the person consuming the content to only consume content from "Authorized" sources, and of course they have no responsibility to report who the authorized sources are.
I'm sure the MPAA would like to disagree, but what is your source on copyright law?
Copyright law prohibits those who have copy of something from making and distributing unauthorized copies. But if you receive one of these copies, I don't see what law that would break or why the receiver would be responsible.
So then if were to download a copy of a movie off bittorrent or some other place and I prevent uploading then you would say I am not in violation of Copyright law. You believe it is UPLOADING, not the DOWNLOADING that is illegal
Interesting position, Most of the lawsuits however have sued over DOWNLOADING and uploading, not just uploading or "distributing" infact in some cases it has been shown the copyright owners themselves were distributing the content to catch people "illegally downloading" the content.
That would also mean downloading from Usenet would be completely legal...
I would like to see some cases quoted here. It's been my long time understanding that bittorrent services come under fire precisely because of their distribution model. Catching users in the act of uploading copyrighted content is the signal to press charges. I was under the impression that even the honeypot torrents were seeking actively sharing IPs for this reason, and would ignore users with uploads disabled because they wouldn't have as strong of a court case. Maybe I'm wrong! I have not actually studied the cases.
I'm not a lawyer and I wouldn't bet on how the court case would go, considering that the MPAA will hire very expensive lawyers and you probably will not. Most likely, it won't get that far and you'll settle out of court to avoid the court costs, so you'll pay regardless of whether it was actually illegal.
However, yes, my understanding of copyright law is that it only limits those who currently own a copy from making and distributing more. The relevant US Law is actually very short, take a look at Section 106: https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#106
In the case of Windows Store, this is only hypothetical. The majority of junk apps have fake developer details, fake or nonworking sites, bad spelling, etc. Even if MS just made them look legit, it'd be an improvement.
Microsoft's success is closely related to piracy. Piracy helped Windows to become the majority. This is no different and IMO Microsoft intentionally don't fight against those apps very strongly to help their store to succeed.
Well for starters, you could pirate any version of windows for free and load it up on practically any hardware. Can't say the same about mac os unless you want to take the painful route of making a hackintosh
And they made a number of legitimate attempts to clamp down on that. First with CD keys, then with online activation, then Windows Genuine Advantage. Of course, they didn't succeed, because the phrase "successful DRM" is an oxymoron.
Their attempt to clamp down on that only really started with Windows XP, when they already had a near-monopoly. Earlier version technically had a CD Key, but I don't think those actually did anything as long as you passed the key along together with the CD.
Linux is designed to run on pretty much anything, OS/2 was pretty pirateabld and even given away for free at one point. I don't really see that pirating the OS made much difference especially since almost everyone got windows for free with their PC.
Windows came to dominate because of Office. You only pirate something you already want to use.
dunno about app store, but in my country responsibility lies on uploader, not on me as user streaming video or music content for my private non-commercial use, it makes sense since it's not in my ability to verify every service
Every app store is full of crap. App stores are a centralized service, so there is no way to avoid crap ending up in them because there's nowhere else for the crap to go!
Besides there are actually very few apps that are regularly useful to me on my limited-OS (non-desktop) devices and those are: Camera/Photos, SMS/Messaging, Web Browser, Phone Dialer, Contacts, Google Maps, Calculator, Email, KeePass and Clock/Calendar.
Beyond that, every other app under the sun could disappear and I wouldn't miss them.
If they instituted a $20 screening fee, that consisted of a manual review (by an actual person) before going live on the store, that would curb the vast majority of the bad acting apps. I've said similar of some content sites that charge for educational content, that have pirated materials.
It doesn't matter how many bad apps there are when nobody wants or sees or uses them. There's also a lot of precedence with domain names and the iOS App Store for a pay-to-participate fee not really preventing bad actors from paying to participate.
The Google Play Store ($5), iOS App Store ($100/yr), probably almost every big online service have experienced substantial term and law violations so it's obviously ineffective as a preventative measure.
It's $19 to get a Store account that lets you submit an app (1). Developing is free, but to submit the app you have to pay. I'd be curious to see how many people with accounts haven't submitted an app - I know I haven't, but mine was free via school.
I don't even use the maps apps. I never understood how they improve over maps.google.com. I guess there's turn by turn navigation but it never reads ahead and so it's really safer to memorize the route than to rely on that.
On Android at least, the Google maps app lets you download large map areas for offline use, including turn by turn directions. I use this for when I head up into the mountains to explore a new area where the cell service is spotty and it's really convenient. It's a nice complement to a topo map and it means you don't have to carry a separate GPS receiver.
It depends on where you are. The quality of the worldwide online maps by Google and Microsoft varies widely between countries.
I live in Montenegro. Over here, Google and Bing maps aren’t exceptionally good. Some third-party ones are much better. Personally, I own Garmin’s Navigon for windows phone. I’ve heard 4geo.me is also good.
There are topographical map apps that are handy, so that you can use your phone as a GPS unit in the outdoors. Obviously you don't want to rely on them entirely for navigation, but it's a nice supplement to the map and compass, and a lot cheaper than buying a dedicated GPS unit.
Other than that, Google maps does everything I want it to do, with the one exception that I can't pin arbitrary locations. I really want to be able to pin locations, the best I can do is send the location to someone else, but I can't just save it on my phone.
Noticed this yesterday when looking at the store on my xbox one. Tons of variations of "free movies" almost like Microsoft doesn't even bother to spot check whats submitted.
This is a problem with any app store to some extent, even Apple's.
The difference here is that Microsoft seems to be encouraging low quality apps to boost its "app count" numbers to make its store seem more attractive. Also, many legitimate services do not have an app for Windows so users get tricked into installing fake apps or end up resorting to privacy.
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[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 139 ms ] threadMicrosoft has zero quality controls and their store is full of shit, which is one of the reasons their platform failed so hard. They were literally paying people per app published regardless of the content of it. It turns out just advertising that you have a billion apps doesn't help if they're all just junk.
This and the fact that the application itself is quite terrible.
Edit: Also, for desktop apps the pricing model without paid upgrades is not viable. Compared to mobile, there are too few customers.
The biggest hurdle in the macOS App Store is the stiff sandboxing rules that make the more exotic and often useful utilities incompatible.
Nope. The really big hurdle is the 30% cut that Apple wants to take.
For smaller devs the store should provide a better marketing and sales platform, and so be worth the 30% cut. Steam, as an example, seems to work out alright for most companies but not everyone.
Google Play Store is a lot better than it was in the past, but the problem I find now is due to the sheer number of android devices, you just don't get the consistency while running apps that you get on iOS App Store. I assume this is the same for Kindle since it is android-based and Windows Store since there is so much hardware out there.
Very true. Once you delve into some of the category pages, or the search, you find many many pages of utter garbage. But the 'front page' experience is carefully curated to look like the cream of the crop.
I would much rather have to sift through garbage to find the app I want, then to have a company like apple tell me what I am allowed and not allowed to install on the device I paid them 100's or over a $1,000 to "own"
There are so many weird, on demand, maybe you need a cable package, maybe it's just all you can eat, maybe it's just a 2 month free promo, services out there that it's really hard for the average person to know what is legitimate.
The shrinking release windows and ongoing push for day and date digital releases just makes it even harder.
Case in point: TubiTV just randomly showed up on my Roku recently - It's available on XBox and streams a bunch of different stuff. Should/do I need to verify that they've correctly licensed their movies before watching?
I don't think that's your responsibility. If it is brought to your attention that the app is infringing copyright, maybe it's your responsibility to stop using it.
But it's not your responsibility to verify that every service you use has the rights to all the content it uses. How could you possibly do that?
Copyright law prohibits those who have copy of something from making and distributing unauthorized copies. But if you receive one of these copies, I don't see what law that would break or why the receiver would be responsible.
Interesting position, Most of the lawsuits however have sued over DOWNLOADING and uploading, not just uploading or "distributing" infact in some cases it has been shown the copyright owners themselves were distributing the content to catch people "illegally downloading" the content.
That would also mean downloading from Usenet would be completely legal...
I'd like to know more about these lawsuits.
However, yes, my understanding of copyright law is that it only limits those who currently own a copy from making and distributing more. The relevant US Law is actually very short, take a look at Section 106: https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#106
(Edit: 106 lists what it is against the law to do, as you can see from 501 which talks about punishment etc. https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html )
Windows came to dominate because of Office. You only pirate something you already want to use.
Do you think their store is succeeding? It seems like a giant failure to me.
Besides there are actually very few apps that are regularly useful to me on my limited-OS (non-desktop) devices and those are: Camera/Photos, SMS/Messaging, Web Browser, Phone Dialer, Contacts, Google Maps, Calculator, Email, KeePass and Clock/Calendar.
Beyond that, every other app under the sun could disappear and I wouldn't miss them.
If they instituted a $20 screening fee, that consisted of a manual review (by an actual person) before going live on the store, that would curb the vast majority of the bad acting apps. I've said similar of some content sites that charge for educational content, that have pirated materials.
1. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/publish/account...
I live in Montenegro. Over here, Google and Bing maps aren’t exceptionally good. Some third-party ones are much better. Personally, I own Garmin’s Navigon for windows phone. I’ve heard 4geo.me is also good.
Other than that, Google maps does everything I want it to do, with the one exception that I can't pin arbitrary locations. I really want to be able to pin locations, the best I can do is send the location to someone else, but I can't just save it on my phone.
The difference here is that Microsoft seems to be encouraging low quality apps to boost its "app count" numbers to make its store seem more attractive. Also, many legitimate services do not have an app for Windows so users get tricked into installing fake apps or end up resorting to privacy.