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Microsoft dropped the ball with lack of App Store. With all app store's drawbacks, that's the place where regular user can pay easily without thinking will some

Microsoft dropped the ball with lack of App Store. With all app store's drawbacks, that's the place where regular user can pay easily without thinking will someone steal his/her credit car number, the place where applications should be harmless, and the place where (and this is important) the user can compare prices between similar applications. Windows doesn't have the app store. And nobody (read: very, very small percentage) is willing to type the credit car number on some unknown site to pay for some utility. So shareware died, and shareware authors went to the dark side.

jenscow 12y ago
> the user can compare prices between similar applications While that's excellent for the consumer, it's not so good for the developer where the pricing ends up being a race to the bottom.
- apetrovic 12y ago
  That's market. You can say the same for various toothpaste brands lumped together on the shelf. Besides, it's true that the race to the bottom more or less ruined the phone market, but on Mac app store I see good (and popular) applications priced $50 or $100.
  - ddebernardy 12y ago
    It's not just market forces at work. It's also about awful marketing. If app devs (and the devs running the app stores, for that matter) knew a thing or three about marketing and sales, this race to the bottom wouldn't be occurring -- or at least not as fast.
ddebernardy 12y ago
Could they have done so, though? The idea of offering an App Store à la Apple has been in the air for ages, but it only saw the day a few years back. Imagine the outcry that would have occurred had MS decided to run an MS App Store while fighting off IE-related anti-trust issues in court.
mxfh 12y ago
Windows 8.x+ has an app store, but sometimes I think even Microsoft doesn't know it exists by all the crap and impostors it's listing in it. here are some common search terms: antivirus: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/search#q=antivirus&s=Store http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/search#q=antiviru... ccleaner: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/search#q=ccleaner&s=Store http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/search#q=ccleaner...
- tdkl 12y ago
  That app store is for Modern apps.
- cturhan 12y ago
  Windows store is not a real store which you can download regular windows apps. I think they only want to use it for metro apps and I think their functionality are far from native apps.
  - mxfh 12y ago
    You can get your desktop app listed in the store and point the customer to your own website for installation and purchase. It's obscure, but yes. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14944527/non-metro-app-for-windows-store http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14944527/non-metro-app-fo... http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsstore/archive/2012/06/08/listing-your-desktop-app-in-the-store.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsstore/archive/2012/06/08/list... http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dn374786(v=vs.85).aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dn37...
noonespecial 12y ago
The one who dropped the ball is CNet. They could have used their good name to establish a curated software marketplace and done subscription, app sales, freemium... anything at all other than giving their reputation a giant flush for a few bucks and earning themselves a 127.0.0.1 in the hosts file of computers I work on.
- jenscow 12y ago
  Back in the day, I probably would have made use of that - instead they made developers bid to have their products higher in the listings.
- nroets 12y ago
  No, if CNet had the vision to establish a marketplace, they would have fallen victim to "Embrace, extend and extinguish".
pjc50 12y ago
App stores are hardly a silver bullet. There's all sorts of quasi-spyware and cloneware in the Play store.
- iwwr 12y ago
  Explicit permissions for desktop apps like mobile apps have would be a nice thing however.
  - pjc50 12y ago
    UAC 2.0? I don't think there's any way to get there from here, as it were. Win32 apps running on the same desktop by the same user can't really be protected from one another. The only way is a migration to a new system; Metro, Android-on-the-desktop, or iOS-on-the-desktop.
syllogism 12y ago
When I finally left Windows for Linux on my desktop, this was why. The $0 app market on Windows was terrible. Even if it wasn't installing malware, everything was implicitly user hostile. I remember in the early 2000s, the form this took was every application eventually tried to steal your media file associations. The last straw was when I had to do a fresh install, and the Nero CD burning software was 200mb, because the CD burner had decided it also needed to be a media player.
- Anthony-G 12y ago
  Hah! I'd forgot about all those annoyances. Back then I had a modem and a crappy phone line with a maximum transfer speed of 25 kbits/second. I had to be really careful about what software I'd install from the Internet. In fact, most of the software that I installed came from CDs packaged with trustworthy computer magazines. Aside from the pre-yum dependecy hell, Red Hat Linux was a breath of fresh air.
huhtenberg 12y ago
> And nobody (read: very, very small percentage) is willing to type the credit car number on some unknown site to pay for some utility. So shareware died, and shareware authors went to the dark side. HAHAHA. Oh, jeez... /wipes a tear. You clearly have no idea how the shareware model actually works. Shareware is very very far from being dead. Yes, some of the devs take the lazy path of bundling crap, but it is an absolutely common knowledge in shareware circles that doing so will essentially kill your product, the goodwill and any hopes for any natural growth. It will also create problems with Google ranking and a headache with antivirus positives. With few exceptions only very desperate devs do that and typically only with throw away projects. There are, of course, companies whose entire business model is based on scamming and scaremongering people, and generally treating them like a gray mass of idiots that always click on Next. But this has very little to do with the validity of the shareware model, and much more with simple "get rich quick" appeal of the bundleware. The matter is not whether or not shareware model is dead. The matter here is that CNET traded its past reputation and ethics for the affiliate fees from the scamware vendors. Don't over-extrapolate, it just looks ... ridiculous.
- sireat 12y ago
  Serious question, is there shareware which is not dead today? Where are the shareware success stories? Where is PC-Write, PKZip or Commander Keen of 2015? I'd even settle for WinRAR of today.
  - huhtenberg 12y ago
    Shareware today is basically a trialware from smaller/indie developers. As such, there's a plenty if you look beyond the company facades. Just go to Softpedia, pull up a Windows app section and filter in Paid apps. The vast majority of what you see is shareware. NetBalancer, Syncovery, AX64, various PDF viewers, drive emulators for cloud storage services, etc. - all of these are made either by a single person or smaller teams. There are TONS of them; you just didn't realize it :) Then if you extend the definition to just "trialware" and include larger companies, then pretty much all commercial Windows software is now shareware. You try it and then you buy it. Kaspersky, Acronis, Norton bloatware. Microsoft Office is offered under this model. Heck, even Windows itself is.
GFischer 12y ago
Windows 8 DOES have an App Store. http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/apps-windows-store-tutorial http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/apps-windows-st... Edit: it was already pointed out by mxfh. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8878945 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8878945
ksk 12y ago
So, if I understand you correctly, you wanted Microsoft to bundle MORE things and not less? You could have been Microsoft's star supporter in the anti-trust trial.

jenscow 12y ago

> the user can compare prices between similar applications While that's excellent for the consumer, it's not so good for the developer where the pricing ends up being a race to the bottom.

apetrovic 12y ago
That's market. You can say the same for various toothpaste brands lumped together on the shelf. Besides, it's true that the race to the bottom more or less ruined the phone market, but on Mac app store I see good (and popular) applications priced $50 or $100.
- ddebernardy 12y ago
  It's not just market forces at work. It's also about awful marketing. If app devs (and the devs running the app stores, for that matter) knew a thing or three about marketing and sales, this race to the bottom wouldn't be occurring -- or at least not as fast.

ddebernardy 12y ago

Could they have done so, though? The idea of offering an App Store à la Apple has been in the air for ages, but it only saw the day a few years back. Imagine the outcry that would have occurred had MS decided to run an MS App Store while fighting off IE-related anti-trust issues in court.

mxfh 12y ago

Windows 8.x+ has an app store, but sometimes I think even Microsoft doesn't know it exists by all the crap and impostors it's listing in it. here are some common search terms: antivirus: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/search#q=antivirus&s=Store http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/search#q=antiviru... ccleaner: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/search#q=ccleaner&s=Store http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/search#q=ccleaner...

tdkl 12y ago
That app store is for Modern apps.
cturhan 12y ago
Windows store is not a real store which you can download regular windows apps. I think they only want to use it for metro apps and I think their functionality are far from native apps.
- mxfh 12y ago
  You can get your desktop app listed in the store and point the customer to your own website for installation and purchase. It's obscure, but yes. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14944527/non-metro-app-for-windows-store http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14944527/non-metro-app-fo... http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsstore/archive/2012/06/08/listing-your-desktop-app-in-the-store.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsstore/archive/2012/06/08/list... http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dn374786(v=vs.85).aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dn37...

noonespecial 12y ago

The one who dropped the ball is CNet. They could have used their good name to establish a curated software marketplace and done subscription, app sales, freemium... anything at all other than giving their reputation a giant flush for a few bucks and earning themselves a 127.0.0.1 in the hosts file of computers I work on.

jenscow 12y ago
Back in the day, I probably would have made use of that - instead they made developers bid to have their products higher in the listings.
nroets 12y ago
No, if CNet had the vision to establish a marketplace, they would have fallen victim to "Embrace, extend and extinguish".

pjc50 12y ago

App stores are hardly a silver bullet. There's all sorts of quasi-spyware and cloneware in the Play store.

iwwr 12y ago
Explicit permissions for desktop apps like mobile apps have would be a nice thing however.
- pjc50 12y ago
  UAC 2.0? I don't think there's any way to get there from here, as it were. Win32 apps running on the same desktop by the same user can't really be protected from one another. The only way is a migration to a new system; Metro, Android-on-the-desktop, or iOS-on-the-desktop.

syllogism 12y ago

When I finally left Windows for Linux on my desktop, this was why. The $0 app market on Windows was terrible. Even if it wasn't installing malware, everything was implicitly user hostile. I remember in the early 2000s, the form this took was every application eventually tried to steal your media file associations. The last straw was when I had to do a fresh install, and the Nero CD burning software was 200mb, because the CD burner had decided it also needed to be a media player.

Anthony-G 12y ago
Hah! I'd forgot about all those annoyances. Back then I had a modem and a crappy phone line with a maximum transfer speed of 25 kbits/second. I had to be really careful about what software I'd install from the Internet. In fact, most of the software that I installed came from CDs packaged with trustworthy computer magazines. Aside from the pre-yum dependecy hell, Red Hat Linux was a breath of fresh air.

huhtenberg 12y ago

> And nobody (read: very, very small percentage) is willing to type the credit car number on some unknown site to pay for some utility. So shareware died, and shareware authors went to the dark side. HAHAHA. Oh, jeez... /wipes a tear. You clearly have no idea how the shareware model actually works. Shareware is very very far from being dead. Yes, some of the devs take the lazy path of bundling crap, but it is an absolutely common knowledge in shareware circles that doing so will essentially kill your product, the goodwill and any hopes for any natural growth. It will also create problems with Google ranking and a headache with antivirus positives. With few exceptions only very desperate devs do that and typically only with throw away projects. There are, of course, companies whose entire business model is based on scamming and scaremongering people, and generally treating them like a gray mass of idiots that always click on Next. But this has very little to do with the validity of the shareware model, and much more with simple "get rich quick" appeal of the bundleware. The matter is not whether or not shareware model is dead. The matter here is that CNET traded its past reputation and ethics for the affiliate fees from the scamware vendors. Don't over-extrapolate, it just looks ... ridiculous.

sireat 12y ago
Serious question, is there shareware which is not dead today? Where are the shareware success stories? Where is PC-Write, PKZip or Commander Keen of 2015? I'd even settle for WinRAR of today.
- huhtenberg 12y ago
  Shareware today is basically a trialware from smaller/indie developers. As such, there's a plenty if you look beyond the company facades. Just go to Softpedia, pull up a Windows app section and filter in Paid apps. The vast majority of what you see is shareware. NetBalancer, Syncovery, AX64, various PDF viewers, drive emulators for cloud storage services, etc. - all of these are made either by a single person or smaller teams. There are TONS of them; you just didn't realize it :) Then if you extend the definition to just "trialware" and include larger companies, then pretty much all commercial Windows software is now shareware. You try it and then you buy it. Kaspersky, Acronis, Norton bloatware. Microsoft Office is offered under this model. Heck, even Windows itself is.

GFischer 12y ago

Windows 8 DOES have an App Store. http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/apps-windows-store-tutorial http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/apps-windows-st... Edit: it was already pointed out by mxfh. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8878945 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8878945

ksk 12y ago

So, if I understand you correctly, you wanted Microsoft to bundle MORE things and not less? You could have been Microsoft's star supporter in the anti-trust trial.