[jchw]

Why UWP? Who buys from Windows Store?

Not my parents. They started computers with buying software in boxes, but in the modern age almost all of their digital purchases are done on smartphones. Neither of them have any idea what Windows Store is. One of them uses Steam for games.

Not most power users I know, most of which bawk at UWP apps and the concept of a walled garden store on their desktop computer. Many power users are more likely to use Steam to buy apps despite it being gaming focused.

Anecdotally I see basically no group that would prefer Windows Store except out of ignorance or necessity. Buying on Windows Store means you don't get the Mac version if one exists. Admittedly, the same caveat applies in reverse to the more successful Mac App Store, but it's still something people have to consider.

Microsoft has been pushing Windows Store pretty hard for a long time. They came to my University back when I was in college, a bit after the Windows 8 launch. They talked numbers but only in terms of the whole Windows install base and not even Windows 8 adoption. Definitely no numbers on Windows Store.

To this day, I don't know if we've seen good stats on how much apps that were built and sold exclusively on Windows Store have fared. No doubt games have sold well - Microsoft can use its Xbox brand to deliver exclusives to Windows Store and not Steam - but I sincerely and absolutely doubt that success will translate to app developers.

[ocdtrekkie]

Windows Store apps are (relatively) sandboxed, and go through an approval process. For the average user, it is generally safe to let them know they can install anything they want off of it. This isn't true of most other places on the Internet, including some more poorly managed walled gardens. I've done a lot of support for senior citizens, and when they're looking for say, a card game, the Windows Store is fantastic.

I use probably about a dozen Windows Store apps with some regularity, though being in IT and dev, I obviously use a lot of apps outside of it as well. But while I rarely will install a traditional app from a no-name developer for fear it might do bad things to my system, I am pretty willing to try new UWP apps.

That's the key perk for someone just starting out/trying to make a living off small software offerings. The sandboxing offers a stand-in for trustworthiness. And of course, you don't have to stand up your own licensing servers, pay for bandwidth from downloads, etc.

[jchw]

Sandboxing is a useful property, but do Desktop Bridge apps even get sandboxing? If not it calls the whole thing into question. Android has an app store with mandatory sandboxing and you can't always trust it, even Apple with probably the most strict rules and review process have had some incidents.

I would like sandboxing in general, but as a feature of Windows Store it's definitely not enough to win me personally over.

I still remain unconvinced of the prominence of Windows Store and if I were to sell an app today I would guess mobile is the way to go followed by probably Steam or Mac App Store.

Sidenote: it feels like you're more likely to get annoying ad supported software from app stores too. Even the built-in solitaire is ad-ridden!

[ocdtrekkie]

Desktop bridge apps can request "full access" permission, which effectively evades sandboxing, but those apps are heavily scrutinized on review. In comparison, the Play Store has no manual approval process and an automated malware scanner that's industry-worst according to independent review. ;) Apple does a pretty good job though, and would be my general recommendation for mobile security.

Note that while Android and iOS both have numerous examples of malicious apps in their store, AFAIK, Windows Store does not (though there are definitely ad-ridden nightmares in there). I found their reviews annoyingly onerous for a literally 50-line UWP app with a single function when I tried to submit something.

The biggest benefit of their sandboxing though is not actually the security limitations of what they can access, but how it's installed, and more importantly, uninstalled. UWP apps are one-click remove, and do not leave any lingering garbage in the registry, as they have kind of like a "registry diff" inside their own folder.

Apps like iTunes which are notoriously messy for install and removal I prefer over UWP because it's much easier to purge them safely.

[giancarlostoro]

I still find it a shame that Microsoft didn't get to succeed with Windows Mobile. Now instead of "everyone having one phone" we have "everyone having two types of phones" essentially. I love what Apple does because it makes them profitable, even down to their app store. Any competitor that arises needs to mimic that to remain profitable, I would prefer something where the main things are proprietary but as long as the company's only focus is making a phone OS and not an advertisement platform.

I also find it a shame that Canonical instead of redoing the Desktop Environment for Ubuntu didn't invest that effort into just Ubuntu Mobile (or whatever it was called) and lastly, Mozilla almost had a reasonable thing, they really should of produced a Chromebook competitor first though. I yearn for a sane ChromeOS alternative that's fully open source and runs Firefox by default.

In a parallel universe Microsoft and Canonical team up to make a sane Android competitor that overtakes the market, and build the first Linux distro to be able to run Windows applications in a sane sandboxed environment.

[giancarlostoro]

The Netflix app is fantastic you can download stuff for offline viewing on any laptop with Windows 10. Now I can take all my shows with me on a laptop anywhere!

[pengo]

Buying from Windows Store requires me to have a Microsoft account, so I won't do it. I'm happy to pay for software, and I regularly do so, but directly from the vendor.