Microsoft developed, and strongly pushed, a walled garden app store in Windows 8. That app store has only gotten stronger in Windows 10, and now Microsoft is tr

Microsoft developed, and strongly pushed, a walled garden app store in Windows 8. That app store has only gotten stronger in Windows 10, and now Microsoft is trying to strongarm all Windows users onto Windows 10 despite concerns about data collection. There are basically three tiers of OS application openness in recent years: At the top, you have old Windows, GNU/Linux, and older versions of Mac OS. You can download and run programs all you want. Down a level, the OS by default stops you from installing anything you want, but there is a settings option to disable this feature. This is done for security, because you would much rather non-tech users be restricted to only installing from your curated appstore than from random downloads off the Internet. This is the modern OSX / Android model. At the bottom, we have iOS. You can only install and run programs through the system appstore, without option. Of all these platforms, iOS makes by far the most revenue per user for developers, and since with walled garden restricted appstores you rent seek a large portion of app sales, as the platform owner you also make the most money when developers make the most revenue - 30%. So you are Microsoft's board in a nice executive suite in Redmond. You look down the coast and see those Cupertino guys making tremendous amounts of effectively free money because they don't have to lift a finger - their army of third party developers are making software they get to profit off of. This revenue made Apple the most valuable company in the world for over a year. Your company is losing market share on every front. You want that money. Apple themselves are already moving OSX towards their iOS model, because of its profitability. Microsoft naturally will want to do so the same. They will be cautious, but it is the optimization of their revenue models if they can pull it off successfully - they just have to maintain "business" editions and contracts of their OS for companies currently using their computers because large corporate entities are much less likely to put up with usurping rent seeking app stores - so you just keep giving them versions with unlocked program installation, while the consumers can all be stuck using your store for everything without recourse, all the while you rake in wonderful 30% per sale. This is not even really speculation, because legally the Microsoft board must act in the interests of their shareholders. All it is is a question of when, when you can flip that switch and take that last island of user freedom, the moment when the loss of users to open platforms (which would, even today, be extremely tiny) poses no threat to the dramatic revenue you could extract from the platform taking that sweet sweet 30% of all software sales. Because the writing is on the wall, and the evidence is hundreds of billions of dollars in your face that this model creates an infinite money machine. You just have to properly soothe the leprechaun into letting you steal the pot of gold.