The Windows Crapware Ecosystem

An interesting analysis from a MicroISV throws light on one of the problems that Windows suffers from not controlling its ecosystem. THIS is why Apple has done so well with its app-stores.

A Post-App World

Mobile apps. "must die" and be replaced by ... something more like web-pages?

It's an interesting idea. The problem with apps. is the "download, install and manage" part of things. As the number of apps. proliferates it becomes unmanageable.

What you want is the functionality of the app. popping up where it's appropriate (and wanted). In a sense, I guess the apps will have to be attached to things in your locality rather than a traditional web-address. Places like "in front of me" or "belonging to the institution I just entered", "by my left hand" etc. 

All Platforms Are Potential Markets

People still don't get it.

Every site / platform you own is a potential market.

Why doesn't Blogger have a template market built into the dashboard? Where I can click a button and fire-off a 99 Designs style competition for a unique template. Why can't I hire writers for my commercial blog venture? Or get matched with potential co-authors of a group blog?

Or find a PR agency? When blogs are essential for PR / marketing, why isn't a blogging platform also helping with that stuff?

Update :

Or, hey, Google knows how much money you make on AdSense? Can't they calculate your taxes for that and sell that number to your accountant?

(BTW : this thought triggered by Venkatesh Rao's post here)

ZDNet predicts a massacre of traditional Mac developers when the app-store comes online.

Update : this is good too :

Thinking about this, I’m predicting my own behaviour with the Mac App Store. I’ll probably start trying out all sorts of free and low-cost “apps” if they look like they can provide me with instant gratification. (Especially if I can use an external hard drive to store them.) And I’ll probably buy a few “apps” that I can justify, in terms of effort and cost. But I might give up quickly on these if my initial experience isn’t optimal (if the apps in question aren’t worth the cost or effort). And I’ll try different things associated with these apps I do enjoy.

Amazon cleverly create their own Android AppStore.

This is a smart and interesting move. There's no reason you need to own the operating system to own the appstore. And Amazon as innovative online retailer with size and technical has a good profile to do this.

There will, of course, be a tension between Amazon the curator / publisher and Amazon the network-market enabler. Will they censor content they don't like? Would they exclude a wikileaks app?

It also raises the fascinating question (at least to me), if Android, why not Windows? Is any company bold enough or foolhardy to build an app-store and take the role of curator / gatekeeper of the Windows eco-system rather than wait for Microsoft to lumber up and do it badly in about three or four years?

Some people have kind of been in this game for a while : Tucows, Download etc.

Imagine what some visionary leadership and chutzpah could do with one of these companies at this moment.

Well now, what was I saying about app-stores for PCs?

Apple did it.

Here's a question. Why shouldn't Ubuntu's Synaptic package manager / package store count the number of people who are using each package? Or allow people to vote for packages that they find good / useful?

There is, apparently, going to be an app-store in Windows 8.

Interesting, ZDNet has an article about Debian / Ubuntu package management.

There are some interesting comments about why this wouldn't work in the Windows ecosystem. They're good arguments, but I think Apple just proved that a closely vetted app-store *does* work.

So, sure, an official M$ app-store wouldn't be the only place you could get Windows apps. Maybe Microsoft would only certify a handful of them given that there's an implied approval. Maybe M$ would have to be able to see the source-code and compile it themselves as part of their approval process. Nevertheless I think the app-store model would be incredibly valuable to Microsoft.

Question : Why the hell don't Microsoft have an app-store?

I don't mean why they haven't built an entirely new distribution network for some projected new Windows mobile phone operating system. I mean, why didn't Windows 7 Desktop launch with a complete "give us your credit card number and we automatically install, manage, upgrade everything for you automatically" sort of thing?

I had managed applications from a central repository of packages on my Debian system in 2001. I have it seamlessly on Ubuntu (and have had for a good while). When Apple came along and showed the world that owning an app-store was a great business to be in, all the other mobile providers rushed in and started building their own.

What M$ could have done, is set a few engineers building something similar, for integration with Windows 7. I don't mean a website, I mean something more like win-get (or Debian's apt-get).

I'm installing software on my wife's new Windows 7 laptop today, and I'm amazed, now I come to think about it, that there's no "buy apps" option under the Windows Start button, right next to the list of already installed applications. Why is there no search-box built into Windows to let me find Microsoft-approved 3rd party applications to buy?

Think what a feature this could have been for Windows 7. How it would have driven corporates to upgrade (too expensive to pay our own IT people to install software, better to pay for the new Windows and let Microsoft sort it out.) How it would have energized the MicroISVs and lone developers to continue to invest their energy in Windows (rather than start dabbling on Android and iOS). How it would have given M$ a cut of all the software sold in the Windows eco-system.

The more I think about it, the more this seems like it would have been a good idea, and the more the absence of an app-store in Windows 7 seems like an extraordinary oversight. Was one planned but not finished in time? Was Microsoft too scared of potential legal implications to do with competition? Did they just slip up?

Cory Doctorow gives the definitive verdict on the iPad.

The way you improve your iPad isn't to figure out how it works and making it better. The way you improve the iPad is to buy iApps. Buying an iPad for your kids isn't a means of jump-starting the realization that the world is yours to take apart and reassemble; it's a way of telling your offspring that even changing the batteries is something you have to leave to the professionals.

Blindingly obvious truth that needs to be spelled out :

Steve Jobs is very clever. If Apple had implemented Flash on the iPhone, it would have quickly become the cross-platform standard, and Adobe would have owned the whole mobile-app. market.

Possibly we'd have been talking about an Adobe App. Store.

Your Company? There's an app. for that.

This is an interesting place : Apple's AppStore now gets rivals from Android Market and RIM's Blackberry Storefront

Presumably the manufacturers will want exclusive control over selling to "their" phone platform. But for their device-swarm-market they'd like to be able to sell apps. for other phones. Who'll break this open?

Update : Who's gonna do this for ordinary PC ie. netbook software?

Bill de hÓra on Apple's AppStore.

The appstore is easily the most interesting part of the iPhone, much more than 3G. The appstore imvho means three things. First the carrier deck constraint is shifted away from the operator or default homepages to getting placed on the appstore's core views (like hot, top 25 and new). Second, and this what is drives the first, "embed date stress" is relaxed somewhat. In the mobile handset biz, phone embed dates are king - missing the date is bad because nobody, statistically speaking, downloads applications - whereas the appstore is easy to use. The appstore allows you to have a hit well after the handset launch. Third, "OTA" (over the air) updates will become the normal way of doing things instead of a feature - bad bug? - requirements 180? - protocol upgrade? Push out a new revision the way we do today with desktop applications and browser plugins. As much as Tim Bray doesn't like sharecropping and objective-c, this is a good for SMEs and innovators. I can imagine handset and opcos cloning the appstore model, right down as far as supporting technology, eg Android supporting an OSGi-a-like, and enhanced developer programs to drive applications. (None of this is good for IMS btw).