4 ms·

yeah it's like increased performance is enough to tip things over, ignoring all the other factors

by uticus 3y ago

PaulHoule 3y ago
So far it hasn't been increased performance. Microsoft seems motivated by the dream of making Windows incompatible with Microsoft Windows applications https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/03/windows-10-s-microsoft-faster-pc-comparison https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/03/windows-1... forcing people to "drink applications through a straw" from the slim pickings on the Windows store. Why? I think platforms always want to have what some other platform has. Microsoft is envious of Apple's App Store, YouTube wants to be TikTok, Instagram wants to be Twitter, pursuing this vainglorious dream at best dies with a whimper, at worst it is just plain death. (Now it it a business school case study: Why does Microsoft fail when third parties succeed? How is it you can download games from Steam with the greatest of ease whereas the Windows store is a struggle? How is it Dropbox works and OneDrive doesn't?) A distant second motive is better battery life. A third seems to be "acceleration for acceleration's sake". I remember reading some articles six months ago about an acceleration framework Microsoft was pushing that would give some effects for video conferencing... But I can't find it now because it vanished without a trace. Nobody cares.
- close04 3y ago
  > Why does Microsoft fail when third parties succeed? How is it you can download games from Steam with the greatest of ease whereas the Windows store is a struggle? I'm an Xbox Pass user on PC and I didn't notice any outstanding issues trying to install games from the store, or more often from the Xbox app. My bigger issue is that consistently games from the MS store feel subjectively slower than ones from GOG for example, like longer load times. But that might be related to DRM or maybe UWP. Whenever I have a choice I'll end up playing the GOG version over the MS or any other store. The difference in experience could be related to my individual setup or personal preference. One other big question for me is how many tech giants want to be the market leader is so many fields. Eventually they will tip the scale into regulation that mandates such companies to be broken up. For MS the store is probably an afterthought so leading in that segment is irrelevant.
  - PaulHoule 3y ago
    I oughta give it another try because I have some XBOX games that allegedly work on my PC.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  Regarding the store, mostly because it is the only way to reduce malware attacks from non-technical users, although this is debatable in Windows, as Win32 store apps have anyway full priviledges unlike UWP ones. At least for the time being, as the UWP sandbox model is in the process of being extended to Win32, in upcoming Windows 11 versions, and there is already some support on Windows 11 latest. The other factor is basically money, Windows is no longer a profit center, Azure and XBox have replaced it alongside Office, thus the store is the only way to still make some money out of Windows in a world where everyone doesn't want to pay for Windows updates.
  - adfsgoinionio 3y ago
    I have never understood why free package managers work so well while every commercial store is a disorganized mess full of junk that rarely has what I'm looking for. I can in practice set up a Linux system in ten minutes without worrying about malware at all. I cannot do that on Windows. What gives?
    - rsynnott 3y ago
      What ends up in those package managers is usually _heavily_ curated. Like, people complain about Apple app store review, but it is as nothing next to the fury of a Debian maintainer :) (Obviously you can add any repos you want, but the ones that come enabled by default on your distro are likely to be very heavily policed.)
    - PaulHoule 3y ago
      Commercial app stores face a problem where they have to be "fair" like social media moderation does, in fact they could get into horrible antitrust problems if they weren't. The trouble is that "fair" and "correct" are contradictory motivations. The process by which Ubuntu or Red Hat decide what packages are in there is not one where anybody can walk up and ask to have their package included and to be treated "fairly", which gives them a big advantage.
- wongarsu 3y ago
  > How is it you can download games from Steam with the greatest of ease whereas the Windows store is a struggle? How is it Dropbox works and OneDrive doesn't? From a technical standpoint, OneDrive and the Windows Store work fine for me. The worst problem for the Windows Store that there are few compelling reasons to use it, both from the perspective of the end user and the perspective of the software developer/publisher. And of course regarding games the case study really has to be titled "Why does every single Steam competitor fail". Multiple big name publishers tried to compete with Steam, all of them failed miserably (well, Epic Store is still around, but I think it's fair to already call it a failure).
  - PaulHoule 3y ago
    On top of the "no compelling reason" I've frequently had the configuration database for the Windows Store get corrupted and then be unable to install anything. When a big feature update rolled out I'd find the configuration database would be rebuilt and it would work again. I had a struggle with Microsoft support over this, I wanted some procedure to rebuild that database and fix it, they wanted me to create a whole new account on my Windows machine and I'm like "no way I'm going to spend hours reconfiguring all the applications that I use every day just so I can download one crapplet"
- rsynnott 3y ago
  > Microsoft is envious of Apple's App Store Which is weird, because as I understand it the App Store isn't a _particularly_ big deal on MacOS; most software is either distributed outside it, or both in it and outside it. I've very little App Store-installed software on my Mac (though a lot of the software I have is also available on the App Store).
  - PaulHoule 3y ago
    For phones. An “App Store” goes nowhere whenever people have an alternative. Microsoft and Intel seem so consumed for jealousy for phones that at times I’d worry that they will throw their existing platforms into the bonfire. It seems that The Innovator’s Dilemma has been thoroughly embraced by platform owners today.
  - pram 3y ago
    They mean the iOS store. Mac App Store is like a sideshow.

yeah it's like increased performance is enough to tip things over, ignoring all the other factors

by uticus 3y ago

yeah it's like increased performance is enough to tip things over, ignoring all the other factors

So far it hasn't been increased performance. Microsoft seems motivated by the dream of making Windows incompatible with Microsoft Windows applications https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/03/windows-10-s-microsoft-faster-pc-comparison https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/03/windows-1... forcing people to "drink applications through a straw" from the slim pickings on the Windows store. Why? I think platforms always want to have what some other platform has. Microsoft is envious of Apple's App Store, YouTube wants to be TikTok, Instagram wants to be Twitter, pursuing this vainglorious dream at best dies with a whimper, at worst it is just plain death. (Now it it a business school case study: Why does Microsoft fail when third parties succeed? How is it you can download games from Steam with the greatest of ease whereas the Windows store is a struggle? How is it Dropbox works and OneDrive doesn't?) A distant second motive is better battery life. A third seems to be "acceleration for acceleration's sake". I remember reading some articles six months ago about an acceleration framework Microsoft was pushing that would give some effects for video conferencing... But I can't find it now because it vanished without a trace. Nobody cares.

close04 3y ago
> Why does Microsoft fail when third parties succeed? How is it you can download games from Steam with the greatest of ease whereas the Windows store is a struggle? I'm an Xbox Pass user on PC and I didn't notice any outstanding issues trying to install games from the store, or more often from the Xbox app. My bigger issue is that consistently games from the MS store feel subjectively slower than ones from GOG for example, like longer load times. But that might be related to DRM or maybe UWP. Whenever I have a choice I'll end up playing the GOG version over the MS or any other store. The difference in experience could be related to my individual setup or personal preference. One other big question for me is how many tech giants want to be the market leader is so many fields. Eventually they will tip the scale into regulation that mandates such companies to be broken up. For MS the store is probably an afterthought so leading in that segment is irrelevant.
- PaulHoule 3y ago
  I oughta give it another try because I have some XBOX games that allegedly work on my PC.
pjmlp 3y ago
Regarding the store, mostly because it is the only way to reduce malware attacks from non-technical users, although this is debatable in Windows, as Win32 store apps have anyway full priviledges unlike UWP ones. At least for the time being, as the UWP sandbox model is in the process of being extended to Win32, in upcoming Windows 11 versions, and there is already some support on Windows 11 latest. The other factor is basically money, Windows is no longer a profit center, Azure and XBox have replaced it alongside Office, thus the store is the only way to still make some money out of Windows in a world where everyone doesn't want to pay for Windows updates.
- adfsgoinionio 3y ago
  I have never understood why free package managers work so well while every commercial store is a disorganized mess full of junk that rarely has what I'm looking for. I can in practice set up a Linux system in ten minutes without worrying about malware at all. I cannot do that on Windows. What gives?
  - rsynnott 3y ago
    What ends up in those package managers is usually _heavily_ curated. Like, people complain about Apple app store review, but it is as nothing next to the fury of a Debian maintainer :) (Obviously you can add any repos you want, but the ones that come enabled by default on your distro are likely to be very heavily policed.)
  - PaulHoule 3y ago
    Commercial app stores face a problem where they have to be "fair" like social media moderation does, in fact they could get into horrible antitrust problems if they weren't. The trouble is that "fair" and "correct" are contradictory motivations. The process by which Ubuntu or Red Hat decide what packages are in there is not one where anybody can walk up and ask to have their package included and to be treated "fairly", which gives them a big advantage.
wongarsu 3y ago
> How is it you can download games from Steam with the greatest of ease whereas the Windows store is a struggle? How is it Dropbox works and OneDrive doesn't? From a technical standpoint, OneDrive and the Windows Store work fine for me. The worst problem for the Windows Store that there are few compelling reasons to use it, both from the perspective of the end user and the perspective of the software developer/publisher. And of course regarding games the case study really has to be titled "Why does every single Steam competitor fail". Multiple big name publishers tried to compete with Steam, all of them failed miserably (well, Epic Store is still around, but I think it's fair to already call it a failure).
- PaulHoule 3y ago
  On top of the "no compelling reason" I've frequently had the configuration database for the Windows Store get corrupted and then be unable to install anything. When a big feature update rolled out I'd find the configuration database would be rebuilt and it would work again. I had a struggle with Microsoft support over this, I wanted some procedure to rebuild that database and fix it, they wanted me to create a whole new account on my Windows machine and I'm like "no way I'm going to spend hours reconfiguring all the applications that I use every day just so I can download one crapplet"
rsynnott 3y ago
> Microsoft is envious of Apple's App Store Which is weird, because as I understand it the App Store isn't a _particularly_ big deal on MacOS; most software is either distributed outside it, or both in it and outside it. I've very little App Store-installed software on my Mac (though a lot of the software I have is also available on the App Store).
- PaulHoule 3y ago
  For phones. An “App Store” goes nowhere whenever people have an alternative. Microsoft and Intel seem so consumed for jealousy for phones that at times I’d worry that they will throw their existing platforms into the bonfire. It seems that The Innovator’s Dilemma has been thoroughly embraced by platform owners today.
- pram 3y ago
  They mean the iOS store. Mac App Store is like a sideshow.