Only enterprise and developers can bypass Windows Store for Metro apps | Hacker News Reader

Only enterprise and developers can bypass Windows Store for Metro apps

arstechnica.com

46 pointsanon138551 comments

Microsoft controlling what software you can run on Windows used to be the reductio ad absurdum I used to argue against the iOS model. Now Android is the only platform standing between us and a Right to Read world (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html).

If Microsoft were to shut down the other channels, that would be true. However, nothing stops you from making a traditional windows app. It just won't run with the Metro UI.

Which is barely a defense: Metro is the future of Windows applications and I doubt users will be very excited about their ability to install "traditional" apps.

I'm surprised that Microsoft beat Apple to locking down their desktop OS in the style of iOS, but in either case this is extremely disturbing.

It's too early to call the desktop-lockdown race between Microsoft and Apple. Microsoft may be locking down a broader class of apps with their Metro restrictions, but Apple already has their locked-down desktop store up and running.

What would Apple's incentive be to do that? Both Apple and Microsoft have too much to lose if a big budget software maker (ie anyone selling stuff over $50) left their platform. Microsoft will never risk driving Electronic Arts into Google's arms, Apple will never risk sacrificing OSX's image as the "platform for creative people" (which would indeed happen if they lost Photoshop and ProTools). The %30 cut of app sales is a blip on both companies' balance sheets.

Perhaps, but Apple has no "Metro" lockdown - in fact the apps you sell on their storefront for the Mac are the same you can sell and market on your own (for now).

Software publishing freedom exists with equal footing to the locked-down storefront on the Mac.

This is not the case in Windows8. Microsoft will trumpet everything Metro-UI in their new release, and in order to play their game, you need to play their game.

I think its a positive development, across the board. The ability to better combat malware (no plugins is part of this too) will generally make these platforms safer.

If you really must distribute an app that needs to go outside of these walls non-metro apps are perfectly fine. You can accomplish a lot of what Metro apps can do today outside of Metro (at least from a look and feel perspective). And as Apple has noted, there is the web too.

I personally like the fact that you now have a CHOICE of where you get your apps. A curated app store, the old wild west of native apps, or the web. Choice is good.

How are you spinning this to be about choice? You're conflating the app type with the distribution channel.

I agree that curated native app stores are generally great. Users get higher quality apps with great discoverability, developers get a great distribution channel, and let's not forget, the platform owner gets 30%.

It's hard to argue that this is about choice of where you get your apps, though.

If by "higher quality apps" you mean loads and loads of thinly disguised ad- and spyware, as well as generally useless crap, then yes, curated native app stores are "great".

I'd say the density of pure and utter crapware has never been higher than in the various app stores.

While a unified distribution method is generally a good idea for various reasons (see package managers), the whole app store concept runs completely contrary to those.

It's not about choice, it's about control.

It's not about security, it's about locking down the system.

It's not about convenience for the user, it's about completely undeserved profit for the platform owner.

It's not about helping the developers, it's about forcing them to play by someone else's (highly arbitrary) rules.

I'm frankly scared about this entire development. Call me paranoid all you want, but we're heading with full speed to some sort of digital 1984 if it goes on anything like this.

> If by "higher quality apps" you mean loads and loads of thinly disguised ad- and spyware, as well as generally useless crap, then yes, curated native app stores are "great". > I'd say the density of pure and utter crapware has never been higher than in the various app stores.

Compared to what? Download.com? Tucows? Every app put on the internet, ever? There are lots of useless and borderline malicious apps on the existing mobile app stores (and a handful of downright malicious apps), but I'm far from convinced that it's in any way worse than what we've had so far on the desktop. All the "browser toolbar" apps out there, by themselves, are enough to make app stores look good.

And having a unified place where you know you can get the official version of any app, along with any updates, and from where you can painlessly re-install all your apps when you get a new machine, cannot possibly be a bad thing.

What do developers get for that 30% cut? In Apple's case, they get access to a huge userbase who has already entered their credit card into the system and just need to press "buy"; they get access to payment processing, currency conversion, and storefront internationalization, close to world-wide, without lifting a finger. Is 30% "fair"? Probably not - it's probably a bit high for small developers, and larger developers may prefer to opt out and solve all those challenges for themselves, for much cheaper. (edit: for desktop Mac apps, they can. The fact that some developers choose to sell their Mac apps through the App Store suggests the 30% is worth it for those developers. It's important that those developers still have the choice to sell their desktop apps through other channels - so far, anyway).

Yes, it's ultimately about control, and about that 30% commission. I did say it's less choice, not more. But you can't say there are no benefits at all, to both users or developers.

Except that the ARM tablets will only run Metro apps.

Which means that if you have one of them then you have no choice at all.

Has that been stated or confirmed?

They've said that x86 apps will not work on ARM:

http://www.crn.com/news/applications-os/231601663/microsoft-...

OK. And Windows on ARM won't run Amiga apps either. You and I both know that's not really related to what the poster stated. The poster said that ARM will only run Metro apps. You can not run x86 apps and still run non-Metro apps. And you can run x86 apps, but not run non-Metro apps. It's a completely orthogonal statement.

I took it as saying there were two types of apps - Win32 x86 apps and Metro apps, and that ARM would only run one of them.

If he'd said "ARM will not run x86 apps, so you'll need to recompile" then that would have been different, but without any kind of assurance there it sounded very much like they were ruling out running any existing apps on ARM tablets.

Actually there is no good reason Microsoft didn't write an X86 virtual machine so that their tablets could run the old programs.

The instructions set is obviously different, but Android does that with Java (on an ARM processor too) and Microsoft has enough smart people who could make sure that the performance would be great.

> Actually there is no good reason Microsoft didn't write an X86 virtual machine so that their tablets could run the old programs.

There is. You'd be looking at something very much like Apple Rosetta. Now, the first Intel Macs were substantially faster than the PPC Macs that most people had at the time, but even then Rosetta felt painful. All current and near-future ARM chips will be slower than most current Intel chips; you'd expect it to be even more painful. Worse, for lightweight apps it would involve far more CPU usage, which would hurt battery life. People wouldn't _care_ that their Windows 8 tablet was getting two hours battery life while their friend's iPad was getting 10 because they were running a legacy app which was hogging the processor doing instruction translation; they'd just blame Microsoft.

The case of Java is a little different; both Dalvik and JVM are designed to be JIT compiled relatively efficiently to multiple common architectures. Architectures like x86 and PPC are generally _not_, and things like Rosetta suffer as a result.

"All apps for ARM are going to come through the Store, which means they’re going to be Metro Apps."

– Windows president Steven Sinofsky http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/2011/09/13/windows-8-on-arm/

Thanks. That is definitive.

Mary Jo Foley just came out and said the exact opposite now:

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsoft-desktop-apps-w...

Sinofsky is of course the person to listen to, but I'm concerned that wires aren't crossing correctly -- and I'm not sure from where.

Confusion is bad. It's a shame that Windows' highest cachet titles (pro creative software, big budget games, etc.) won't be Metro.

Why not? There's nothing that prohibits them from being Metro, right? If not, then why wouldn't developers of those apps eventually adopt Metro? If Metro provides the best customer experience and becomes associated with "high quality" apps, I bet they'll make the move to Metro.

(Note: I don't expect major vendors will adopt Metro the second Windows 8 ships, as they'll want to continue shipping titles with support for at least 7 for quite some time.)

Well, if you don't count Linux, the BSDs, webapps and even the venerable freedos (yes, somebody did clone DOS http://www.freedos.org/ and yes it runs the old DOS programs) I guess you are right.

and OSX.

OS X already has the app store, now it just needs the restrictive policy.

You might think it'll never come; well, people said the same things about Windows. In fact, they were far more outspokenly confident about Windows because Microsoft has historically been much less control-freakish than Apple.

Linux will only help as long as there is hardware open enough that you can install it. With tablets and smartphones and their closed drivers this will be a disappearing opportunity in the Post-PC world.

Just until the day when it moves to the hardware level, where your hardware will refuse to run certain processes unless they are digitally signed. Good times.

See also "Intel Trusted Execution Technology": http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intel-trusted-execu...

Things got quite close by now: mandatory driver signing in 64bit Windows Vista & 7. You need to select extra boot option to be able to load unsigned driver. Like the venerable ext2fsd: driver for ext2 & ext3 FS [1]. It won't work for Joe the Average User.

Terrorists win, game over.

[1] http://www.ext2fsd.com/

EDIT:

it's a clever move, limititing that requirement only to 64bit Windows. No need for one-time big switchover; the balance towards 64bit will shift gradually over time and before people raise enough opposition it may be too late for independet driver development.

We already know security based on centralized Certification Authorities did not work well for securing HTTPS.

Only allowing signed drivers to run in ring 0 by default makes a lot of sense though. The average user is way less likely to need ext2fsd and much more likely to install randommalwared.

For what it's worth, this wasn't to stop free software drivers, it was a stick to force IHVs to ship drivers that didn't suck, since they could no longer ship drivers that didn't pass WHQL testing.

The end result is a more stable system for consumers, but F/OSS got caught in the fallout.

If you as a F/OSS driver dev really want to avoid signatures, sign your driver using the test cert and run the following command in your installer:

    bcdedit -set testsigning on

This is the one feature that Trusted Execution Technology (TXT) does not provide. We really wanted to have something like that for a security type appliance, but it is impossible. The only thing TXT provides is the ability to prove to a third party that you are running an unmodified version of the software endorsed by them, so they can avoid sending their valuable content to a device controlled by you. It doesn't help you to ensure that the device will only boot software endorsed by you (or anybody), only to prove what software is running to somebody else.

But one should probably be lucky that that functionality is missing...

It seems odd to me, for years developers have been one of the few groups of people that could publish something and not have to pay the "gatekeepers" and actually have a shot at success. Finally after years of having to deal with the publishing, music and movie cartels; writers, bands and indie movie producers can reach the world without having permission to do so. However somehow we (software devs) have gotten into a position where we are beholden to 3 companies (Apple, Google & Microsoft) if we want widespread access to a mainstream audience. For that privilege we have to pay 30% for these companies to host a few megabytes of program files and they tell us that its breaking even. For 99 cent apps I can believe that, but I write applications for small businesses and those apps are worth way more than 99 cents. There is a big difference in 30% of 99$ vs 99 cents.

I don't know what the answer is, but I do know that its going to have the following effects (some good, some bad): 1. Software prices are going to go up for any app that is more serious than a fart app. 2. Web apps are going to become more mainstream for small businesses. Which means... 3. SaaS is going to become more mainstream, because I don't want to run a web service and not get a monthly payment for it.

Apple has done a number of good things for consumers in this industry, too bad they felt they had to screw developers over in the process.

This vindicates those that saw the Apple app store as a general industry trend away from open installations. I don't suppose there's any reason to expect they'll be any more successful here than Apple's been at filtering out all the garbage.

Let me get this straight, if I create an app using C++ / Metro interface / WinRT and compile it for x86, I still have to use the App Store to distribute it to PCs (not tablets / slates)?

Yup. Windows is locking itself down harder than OSX is.

For now, I think microsoft is trying to one up Apple but Apple probably won't sit still and do worse soon.

I think you may be surprised. Microsoft has done this before; they see something which is apparently working for a competitor, and run with what they think is a logical extension, without necessarily thinking it through that well. Windows Vista's very, very animated but ultimately not useful Expose-like thing (Flip3D) springs to mind.

Wow, what an incredibly large step towards censorship. Considering that Metro is arguably half of windows 8, I see windows 9 not even having a desktop mode in which case you will be able to run no app that hasn't passed the censorship filter.

It's a shame, I was really liking a lot of what windows 8 was bringing to the table too.

Great to see that HN thinks this is bad now the Microsoft does it. Back when Lion and its app-store was discussed not a single comment with a positive score opposed this.

Personally I am mostly negative to this idea no matter who does it, but I am also willing to give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt here. At least they haven't messed it up yet. Apple has already proven that they are willing to abuse that sort of power and I can't understand why anyone would trust them again.

Hopefully the walled gardens (all over) will prove to be a temporary thing, although I can't say I see any signs of that happening yet.

I would not object to this as much if the Windows store wasn't just filtered based on malware. But it's filtered on content as well.

Which means that if you want to write a Metro app that MS doesn't approve of, then you can't.

The rule of thumb seems to be this: if iOS does it then Metro will do it too.

You could also put it as: if consumers demonstrate an appetite for it on iOS, then Microsoft will give it to them too.

Naturally. That's the "Zune" strategy.

Or, in fact, Microsoft will go one step (and not necessarily a logical step) further. There doesn't seem to be any question of a situation where, say, UIKit replaces AppKit as the modern way to write MacOS applications, and UIKit applications must be distributed through the app store. Microsoft, however, is pushing Metro as the new big thing for desktop apps, not just tablet apps, and Metro apps will be app store only.

'distribution of traditional desktop applications will proceed as usual. “Open distribution: retail stores, web, private networks, individual sharing, and so on” will be allowed, Microsoft says. Metro apps, on the other hand, will be “Distributed through the Windows Store. Apps must pass certification so that users download and try apps with confidence in their safety and privacy. Side-loading is available for enterprises and developers.”'

Sounds like this only applies to Metro apps, which will probably fall just as flat as Windows Phone 7 did.

It is better to see Metro as a layer on top of the windows OS. It isn't really competing with desktop apps, but with web pages.

The average consumer has more tabs than windows on their taskbar. Windows is becoming irrelevant. Microsoft wants to coax people away from their web browser, and back into native apps. A closed app store is a good way of offering that in a secure, simple, and profitable way. Desktop apps never succeeded in all three of these things.

Well, I suppose this is all right if you want to have a no-malware curated garden, where the high priests tending the Great Machines tell you what software you can run, and what software is good for you.

I'll keep driving and turn down Linux Lane, thanks.

Users would prefer developers pay Microsoft, rather than pay geeksquad themselves.

Apple -> IOS -> App Store

Google -> Android -> Android Store

Microsoft -> Metro -> Windows Store

The computing world is clearly going all vertical, all the time, and I can't be alone in being fed up with it. I think this locked-down environment that Apple has persuaded everyone to be comfortable with is eventually going to break down. I can't see any compelling reason why anyone would build 3 versions of their service to support the mobile platforms, and deal with 3 gatekeepers, 3 ecosystems. It just spreads any single developer out too thinly to be feasible. We are definitely going to see HTML5 mobile websites really starting to gain a foothold, because it's the only way to escape the gatekeepers and build a unique brand.

See Twitter.com on an iPhone for a great example of how a lot of mobile web apps are going to look. Apple, Google, and Microsoft can collectively go suck an egg.

You have confirmation bias. For every one of you (and me) who are fed up with vertically-controlled distribution models, you have 10 people who literally could not use their computers because they can't figure out how to install/use their software (let's not even get into hardware maintenance or data backups).

Metro/iOS to the rescue... this will be a godsend for them, and Microsoft sees Apple laughing all the way to bank (and wants in on that action).

Well, at least Android allows competing app stores, most notably Amazon.

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