I work for a company that develops audio software. The market itself isn’t that huge so our products triggered even on Windows 7. Once we got the first reports,

I work for a company that develops audio software. The market itself isn’t that huge so our products triggered even on Windows 7. Once we got the first reports, we’ve bought a code sign certificate. But still... if your software isn’t common... you’ll trigger the SmartScreen. Even if your app managed to pass SametScreen, you’ll soon discover that many users got Anti-Viruses that with the same assumption about non-common app is bad. I’ve ended up contacting a lot of Anti-Virus companies and I whitelist our installers also on their end. While the process itself is much simpler than notarizing with Apple. On Windows you need to contact much more parties to make your app “just work” for the non-tech-savvy user.