Microsoft finally fixing and addressing the Windows Store most prominent problems.

[AlexGoesHigh]

OK, the title may be a bit clickbaity, but regardless this comes from Zac Bowden of Windows Central sources but I'm using Neowin for the post since its shorter and has all the info.

 

Summary

Microsoft is planning changes to the Windows store to address problems or rather policies that have persisted since its existence from almost 10 years ago in Windows 8.

 

First of all but less important. Microsoft is once aging changing the UI of the Store, this changes comes due to the upcoming Sun Valley UI refresh in Windows where Microsoft is overhauling most of the UI of the OS.

 

Second of all but most importantly Microsoft is going to change store policies, mainly three policies.

 

Quotes

Quote

Bowden points to three major policy changes: first, developers will be able to submit unpackaged Win32 apps to the store, meaning both EXE and MSI packages will be supported; second, those apps will be able to manage updates using their own cloud distribution network (CDN), meaning apps with built-in update systems no longer need to use Microsoft's update system; and finally, apps will be able to bypass Microsoft's commerce platform and use their own revenue streams without giving Microsoft a cut of their revenue.

...

According to the report, Microsoft will be taking the opportunity to bring many of its own apps to the Store since these changes are in place. Apps like Teams, Office, Edge, and Visual Studio are all said to be coming to the Store, signaling that Microsoft actually believes in the ecosystem.

 

In a nutshell any developer can distribute their apps on the Windows Store without conditions so apps like Steam, EGS, discord, OBS, notepad++, virtualbox, etc. All they have to do it seems is to upload to the store since its gonna act pretty much as a repository

 

My thoughts

Finally! they are finally allowing win32 programs without any sort of change or limitation, that's my though just finally the possibility that the windows store might actually be what it should be in the first place, right now its best use is to install game pass games, because even browsing for games is so crap Xbox made their own front in their app.

 

Sources

https://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-is-reportedly-reviving-the-microsoft-store-with-a-new-ui-and-policies/

[manikyath]

this means that they are taking whatever tools already existed in intune/MDM to deploy 'legacy applications' to clients... and allowing developers to use them in the public store as well.

 

maybe this also means they will invest in making said tool more refined, so that finally we can deploy crap trough intune/MDM without doing voodoo magic?

[jagdtigger]

35 minutes ago, manikyath said:

maybe this also means they will invest in making said tool more refined, so that finally we can deploy crap trough intune/MDM without doing voodoo magic?

I wouldnt get my hopes too high if i were you, this is MS we talking about....


/ON

What if instead of always working on new stuff they would work on making the current UI usable? Many times its just simple if i go through the old config stuff because the settings app is a steaming pile of crap.....

[samcool55]

Good, but the fact there's still no repair function for apps and games is really annoying.

I don't want to download 80GB every single month if I alt+tab FH4 too often...

[Ydfhlx]

Linux can get it working, android can get it working, mac OS can too... Finnaly Windows can do too. I am however worried that Microsoft will introduce fees for using it in the future, once people get used to it.

[JLO64]

10 minutes ago, Ydfhlx said:

Linux can get it working, android can get it working, mac OS can too... Finnaly Windows can do too. I am however worried that Microsoft will introduce fees for using it in the future, once people get used to it.

Fees on the consumer side or on the developer side? For the consumer side of things I don’t that’s going to be the case since every other App Store doesn’t do that. For the developer side of things... It would be in their best interest to not implement fees in order to stimulate growth, but this is Microsoft we’re talking about.

[Ydfhlx]

8 minutes ago, JLO64 said:

Fees on the consumer side or on the developer side? For the consumer side of things I don’t that’s going to be the case since every other App Store doesn’t do that. For the developer side of things... It would be in their best interest to not implement fees in order to stimulate growth, but this is Microsoft we’re talking about.

A fee from developers, for paid apps, just like it works in Google Play store or App Store. It might seem that devs would just switch back to direct downloads, but on Android you can download an app directly yet almost nobody does that.

[PeachGr]

I m using windows since 1999, and I have never used that store. I tried and failed. I can't find almost anything and most of what I found over the years, do not even work on PC. Compare to android or iOS stores, it's a tragedy

[Nowak]

And there it goes, the last vestiges of UWP.

[GoodBytes]

Please note to all that this is nothing more than rumor.

[RejZoR]

Windows Store is like GooglePlay. Flooded with megatons of copycat junk that's named the same or similar as legit apps. It's so incredibly annoying. The other is this UWP stuff. I bought Paint.NET on it to support the developer and because it's UWP, you can't put the frigging thing to SendTo folder so you could open images directly using right click because the whole thing is some weird locked down. You just can't. I need to manually open Paint.NET and drag image into it to edit. It's so stupid.

[pythonmegapixel]

Well done Microsoft. You've just invented the concept of a software repository. Because nobody had done that before, obviously. (Except Google, Apple and the developers of most Linux distributions, but those don't really count, do they?)

 

Seriously though - what is the advantage for developers in moving from the conventional method of distribution to using the Store? Because they still have far more control over their distribution the old way. I really hope it doesn't catch on, because it would be a huge step back in terms of user and developer freedom.

 

Are they going to let the 'legacy' apps run on 10S? Or will that still be locked down to the UWP stuff? If it will be allowed to run the legacy apps, I expect Microsoft will be pushing OEMs to ship far more devices in S mode.

[RejZoR]

49 minutes ago, pythonmegapixel said:

Well done Microsoft. You've just invented the concept of a software repository. Because nobody had done that before, obviously. (Except Google, Apple and the developers of most Linux distributions, but those don't really count, do they?)

 

Seriously though - what is the advantage for developers in moving from the conventional method of distribution to using the Store? Because they still have far more control over their distribution the old way. I really hope it doesn't catch on, because it would be a huge step back in terms of user and developer freedom.

 

Are they going to let the 'legacy' apps run on 10S? Or will that still be locked down to the UWP stuff? If it will be allowed to run the legacy apps, I expect Microsoft will be pushing OEMs to ship far more devices in S mode.

Biggest benefit is auto updating (for end user anyways). It's basically reason why I use it for MusicBee and Paint.NET. It's seamless which was annoying with Paint.NET which usually displayed there is an update when I launched it. Now it's always up to date by default. Similar with MusicBee. It just displayed and then you had to manually download everything. Now it's fully automatic and seamless.

[LAwLz]

3 hours ago, RejZoR said:

Biggest benefit is auto updating (for end user anyways). It's basically reason why I use it for MusicBee and Paint.NET. It's seamless which was annoying with Paint.NET which usually displayed there is an update when I launched it. Now it's always up to date by default. Similar with MusicBee. It just displayed and then you had to manually download everything. Now it's fully automatic and seamless.

I wonder if that will keep working with these unpackaged apps however.

For example I use qBittorrent and that requires downloading the installer, manually shut the program down, and then clicking next a bunch of times in order to update. I don't see that changing if the developer of qBittorrent just upload their unmodified exe to the store.

I assume the seamless update system relies on the program being packaged a specific way for the store.

 

 

This sounds like very promising rumors and I hope they are true, but I will not get my hopes up until we can test it for ourselves (if that happens).

[leadeater]

18 hours ago, AlexGoesHigh said:

Microsoft is planning changes to the Windows store to address problems

Well to go with the baity title...

 

So they are getting rid of it entirely? Because that's the fix for it 

[jagdtigger]

5 hours ago, leadeater said:

So they are getting rid of it entirely? Because that's the fix for it 

Yup, they already have linux inside windows might as well just use apt for updates.....

[RoseLuck462]

About damn time 

[Tieox]

The Windows store, and especially how it handles games folder directories works about as a well as a rehab centre inside a drug manufacturing facility staffed by nuns.

[DarthBaggins]

Do we know when the new UI will be tested - not sure if I read it correctly  - if this was a full OS UI change or just to the Store App itself?  If it's total, then that means I need to be on the look out for it to get in on testing it.

[Mark Kaine]

On 4/21/2021 at 9:00 AM, pythonmegapixel said:

- what is the advantage for developers in moving from the conventional method of distribution to using the Store? Because they still have far more control over their distribution the old way.

Well, Microsoft wants people to use the store and for developers the incentive is (the prospect of) more profits. 

 

People generally rather download stuff from a store than to "sideload", just look at android, ios... i don't see how this is going to be any different on windows *long-term*

 

 

On 4/21/2021 at 9:00 AM, pythonmegapixel said:

Are they going to let the 'legacy' apps run on 10S?

 

Probably not since it's a "locked down" OS?

 

On the other hand I wonder what the approval process is for these new apps, I wouldn't mind if someone would put working surround sound drivers for "legacy devices" on the store because currently the ones provided by Microsoft do not work whatsoever for millions of people (estimate)

 

 

On 4/21/2021 at 7:52 PM, Nacht said:

So when can i download steam from microsoft store ?

Soon.™

 

Although seriously I don't know if Steam would even want this, or what stopped them from doing that already.

 

 

[LAwLz]

On 4/21/2021 at 10:01 PM, DarthBaggins said:

Do we know when the new UI will be tested - not sure if I read it correctly  - if this was a full OS UI change or just to the Store App itself?  If it's total, then that means I need to be on the look out for it to get in on testing it.

It will be a full UI change in Windows, as well as the Store app. The changes will most likely be rather minor though. 

We barely know anything about it. We don't know what it will look like. We don't know when it will launch. We don't know when we will be able to test it.

This is pretty much all the info we got:

https://www.windowscentral.com/windows-10-sun-valley-features-everything-we-know

[starry]

I was excited until i read the article and realized that "fixing the biggest problems with windows store" doesnt mean deleting it entirely. A shame.

[Colty]

Cool, but they have a large list of things to fix. Easily allowing downloading windows store apps through something other than the Windows store is something I've been waiting years for. Sideloading isn't possible/isn't easily possible. I work in IT, Windows store is blocked at a lot of places because it has things like Facebook and NSFW apps, but a few things are necessary and we end up using another app as a work around instead of using the proper app. 

Secondly, I could not download the Master Chief Collection through the Windows store. I got gamepass for a $1, but couldn't use it. It gave an error every time I started the download, I tried everything except a complete reinstall. I gave up, still having an itch for Halo, I bought it on Steam, no issues there. 

[GoodBytes]

1 minute ago, Colty said:

Cool, but they have a large list of things to fix. Easily allowing downloading windows store apps through something other than the Windows store is something I've been waiting years for. Sideloading isn't possible/isn't easily possible. I work in IT, Windows store is blocked at a lot of places because it has things like Facebook and NSFW apps, but a few things are necessary and we end up using another app as a work around instead of using the proper app. 

Secondly, I could not download the Master Chief Collection through the Windows store. I got gamepass for a $1, but couldn't use it. It gave an error every time I started the download, I tried everything except a complete reinstall. I gave up, still having an itch for Halo, I bought it on Steam, no issues there. 

Installing Store apps outside of the app store works the same like installing anything under Windows.

Example: https://msixhero.net/get/ (Click on the gray button "Download MSIX and install on your own")

 

 

[Colty]

2 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

Installing Store apps outside of the app store works the same like installing anything under Windows.

Example: https://msixhero.net/get/ (Click on the gray button "Download MSIX and install on your own")

 

 

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/heif-image-extensions/9pmmsr1cgpwg

Here is an example, something that was (at the time) only available through a 3rd party app or the Windows Store. 3rd party app it was, but that's not ideal. This was multiple people trying to figure out if there was any better way to get HEIF files working, plenty of people far more skilled than me and everyone coming up empty besides trying to side-load and a random 3rd party app that took a while to verify.