Can the Windows Store possibly be ready by Oct. 26? - alvaresbeelty

When legions of PC users dip into Windows 8 for the very first time in late October, they'll be greeted by a Start screen that runs only what Microsoft is vocation "Windows 8 apps"—touch-optimized programs designed for the new operating system's survive tile interface.

The covered Start screen can't be skipped, so for better or worse, Microsoft is foisting a brand new software ecosystem happening the PC-loving public. Predestined, any Windows 8 device gushing on an x86 C.P.U. will still glucinium able to course traditional software (now called "desktop applications"), but by pushing the new apps to the very front of everyone's Windows undergo, Microsoft is card-playing its forthcoming on the new tile-based port and its only congruous apps.

The only place to get the new apps are in Microsoft's own curated Windows Entrepot. So atomic number 3 the Windows Fund goes, thus goes Windows 8—and Microsoft itself.

But the clock is tick. Today is October. 1 and Windows 8 launches on Oct. 26. Microsoft has entered its domestic stretch. With less than a month remaining, will the Windows Store be ready for its big software orgasm-out political party? We picked the brains of more than a cardinal top analysts and developers to get a handle on a situation that's beginning to look quite heavy.

The Windows Store aside the numbers

Unoriginal wisdom says that a nonclassical software ecosystem needs a large number of apps to be successful. For linear perspective, consider that the Android and iOS platforms boast 675,000 and 700,000 apps severally. Given, only a tiny fraction of those apps are worth downloading, simply even taking that into consideration, the Windows Store looks to be in serious trouble.

According to WinAppUpdate.com, an app-counting site run by independent analyst Wes Henry Valentine Miller of Directions on Microsoft, the Windows Store didn't even crack the 2000-app threshold until September 21. Or, to put it other style, the entire Windows Store stocktaking currently comprises exactly 0.3 percent of the Google Play Store.

"Is the Windows Store lagging? To me, yes. I'd much rather see a so much higher number a month before launch," Alton Glenn Miller told PCWorld.

win_store_screen — When your app shopfront includes only 117 news and weather apps, and one of them International Relations and Security Network't CNN, you know you stimulate a bit of a problem.

The current dearth of apps gives the Windows Store an abandoned, neglected feel. While the Games section shows a pulse of life, the Social, Productivity, Shopping, and Food/Drink areas look especially barren. The low issue of apps is a catch-22 for Microsoft, says Fleece Enderle, the principal analyst of the Enderle Group.

"Developers don't require to develop for you until you hold enough users, patc users assume't want to use your [device] until in that location are enough of the keystone apps," Enderle says. "That is the carping weakness of the Windows Phone store, and the Windows 8 store is even younger than the Windows Phone storage. There's a content problem for the Windows Phone store, and I expect thither to be content problems with the Windows 8 store, as well."

These content problems could turn into an existential threat for ARM processor-based Windows RT tablets, which run only Windows 8 apps and can't utilize the software that's nowadays classified as desktop applications. The fewer Windows 8 apps that are available, the inferior sympathetic Windows RT tablets—much as Microsoft's own Airfoil RT—become.

"The virtually important affair Microsoft can do for the Windows 8 launch is to establish with 5000 high-quality apps," says Patrick Moorhead, principal analyst at Berth Insights & Strategy. "As the manufacture enlightened from the unsuccessful consumer tablet launches of the Motorola XOOM, HP Touchpad, and Blackberry PlayBook, the bi of quality apps at launch does thing."

Are the available apps whatever upstanding?

A deficiency of quantity can exist passably mitigated by an abundance of superior. Unfortunately, the quality level of the available Windows 8 apps is just as troubling as the Store's low inventory.

Simply put, a pot of must-have apps aren't available nevertheless. In fact, to the highest degree Windows 8 apps currently exposed are simple games or uninspiring programs with names comparable "Girl Farts" and "Lashkar-e-Taiba's Speak Beckinese!" The first sign of trouble appears in the Windows Store's Spotlight section: Are apps like "Periodic Table" and "Magnetic disk Falcon" actually the best and brightest Microsoft has to declare oneself unmatched month before launch?

Windows 8 Store social — The Windows Store boasts only 49 social apps, and to that degree doesn't include any administrative unit apps from the big-name social networks.

To represent sightly, Windows 8 ISN't all barren of top-tier offerings. Today you posterior click happening the Windows Store tile and see Wikipedia, Slacker Radio, eBay, StumbleUpon, Evernote, iHeart Radio, and the Kindle reader. Equally for gaming apps, you'll encounte Cut the Rope and Fruit Ninja. (Don't comprise fooled by the Torchlight app, though. It's a flashlight tool around, not the game.) Geeks bequeath also Be pleased to discovery Windows 8 apps from Newegg, Kaspersky, Norton, and Splashtop Remote Desktop, as cured arsenic several nifty (and unofficial) XKCD apps.

All that said, the missing apps are bright omissions.

As of press time, there's no more Facebook app; no Twitter app; none YouTube app; no CNN app; atomic number 102 IMDB app; no Dropbox app; no Netflix app; nary Hulu app; no ESPN app; no MLB at Thrash app. There are nobelium YouTube, Google Maps, or Gmail apps.

The tilt goes on, and there's nobelium indication as to whether those critical apps and some other essential downloads will constitute available when the Windows Store formally launches. Some apps may seem like no-brainers for inclusion—Facebook has a strong relationship with Microsoft, while Netflix and Dropbox ostensibly come out connected every platform on the planet. Simply the alone thing we know for sure is that most of the big name calling simply ass't be found in the Windows Store yet.

We reached dead set the developers of individual high-shelf apps that have yet to seem in the Windows Storage to determine if more big-name Windows 8 apps are forthcoming, operating theater possibly true already completed and just biding their time until establish.

Instapaper and Facebook never replied to our queries. Pandora and SoundHound refused to comment virtually their plans for Windows 8. Gameloft and WorldMate same they plan to be in the Windows Store, but wouldn't put forward whether their apps will be available on October 26.

A Google spokesperson simply aforesaid, "Our goal is to give users a seamless, glorious know for users across Google products on any device." Beyond that, a Windows 8 Chromium-plate app is definitely in the works.

Most companies are retention their card game close to the chest—only not all of them. Single app makers wheel spoke to a greater extent candidly, and their feedback could shed light on wherefore the Windows Store isn't overflowing with apps.

It simply doesn't pay to play

So where do the more talkative developers stand out? Piece most agreed that Windows 8 ontogeny is surprisingly easy, some are holding back because other platforms let much more momentum—and much more than consumer support—and are therefore simply more lucrative.

Indeed, it really comes down to chasing the money. Wherefore develop for the predict of Windows 8 riches tomorrow, when you can make real money today via iOS and Android sales? To this extent, Windows 8 must cave in line at the hindmost of the development queue. Having an abundance of apps available on October 26th is a starring concenter for Microsoft, but that doesn't meanspirited it's a priority for app developers.

"We do have plans to make the Pinball Colonnade available for the Windows Store, but we're not in a large-scale hastiness," said Jay Obernolte of FarSight Studios. "In our opinion, the station of users buying apps on the Windows Store is likely to ramp up slowly, so we wear't see a benefit to rushing out with an carrying out."

TripAdvisor also has no plans to bring out a Windows 8 app anytime soon, but for a distinguishable reason.

"Generally, TripAdvisor builds the best experience based on the device typewrite rather than the operating system," says Sanjay Vakil, TripAdvisor's Director of Mobile Product. "Windows 8 provides a gainsay in that the user experience needs to conform to different devices: tablets, desktops and laptops."

Notch tweet — Markus Persson, the developer of Minecraft, made headlines when He took Microsoft to project for its confining practices.

Rob Enderle predicts that the inclusion of Office in Windows RT tablets could scare cancelled developers who realise productiveness apps for competing platforms. Jeff Fetchick, the COO of DataViz, confirmed that theory. DataViz produces the well-regarded Documents to Go app for Android, iOS, Blackberry, and Palm devices. Fetchick says Microsoft approached Dataviz nearly porting Documents to Endure to Windows 8, but the company declined.

"In the past, we've always chosen to bring our applied science to platforms that Microsoft chooses non to. The people World Health Organization use our software are people who have already bought into Microsoft's Office applied science, and they just want to bring off IT to places that Microsoft won't allow at the time," Fetchick says. "It's our understanding that Office will follow found connected many Windows machines in any event."

Black tweets and comments shared across the Web offer more insight into why the Windows Store is presently then barren. Microsoft has affected off from a hands-cancelled tradition to adopt, alternatively, a "walled garden"—complete with a 30 percentage cut of app sales, which is the norm for Apple and the iOS ecosystem. This doesn't sit advantageously with many PC enthusiasts and enthusiast-leaning developers.

Valve's Gabe Newell told AllThingsD that "Windows 8 is a catastrophe for everyone in the PC space" for just that reason. And Markus Persson, the creator of Minecraft, didn't respond to our queries, but atomic number 2 was even blunter than Newell in a recent Tweet: "Got an email from Microsoft, wanting to help "certify" Minecraft for Win 8. I told them to terminate nerve-wracking to ruin the Personal computer Eastern Samoa an open platform."

Finally, flatbottom if a developer doesn't have some philosophical problems with Microsoft's modern approach to certification and gross sharing, it still may lack the bailiwick chops to chop-chop translate an alive app to Windows 8.

"In my opinion, Windows 8 has a much more sophisticated framework for construction user interfaces than iOS or Android," says Jonathan Peppers, a senior application developer for Hitcents.com, which will sustain its "Draw a Stickman Epic" gamey purchasable when the Windows Store launches. "However, a slightly steeper learning curve can go along thereupon. If we were non already Windows developers familiar with C# and Xaml, it could take back whatever time to port a domestic iOS or Android application to Windows 8."

The march on to 5000

So, what can we realistically expect from the Windows Store when IT formally launches on October 26th? We reached out to Microsoft for an answer, but the company declined to comment.

Patrick Moorhead doesn't think the Windows Store wish hit the magic 5000 apps mark. "From what Microsoft and its ISV partners have shown yet in the Store, information technology doesn't appear that they will hand out that goal away launch," He says. "I'm not ruling information technology out, as I hear rumblings from the ecosystem that they wish, but I think information technology is low chance."

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The number of available apps is actually growing at a the right way nip, but when you're dealing with so much a moo baseline number of apps, you don't need linear growth, you need exponential growth.

According to Wes Miller's WinAppUpdate.com, the Windows Store had 530 apps on August 16. Along Sept. 12—the day the Windows Store began acceptive submissions from free developers and developers in 82 other countries—the come sat at rectify or so 1000 apps. As of Family line. 21, less than ten days later, 2079 apps were ready internationally.

"Later on Microsoft opened up the floodgates, we've seen a rush of mainstream apps and names we could greet," Miller says. What remains missing, nevertheless, are killer apps. "The Windows Store needs to convert people to say 'I need a Windows RT device,' and it's not there yet."

Carolina Milanesi, a Gartner analyst, agrees, locution that the arrival of key apps will be "the main factor" for set in motion as well as the key to whether Windows RT tablets become studs or duds in the marketplace. Will we see the cardinal apps on Oct 26? That's the critical doubtfulness.

Rob Enderle expects Microsoft to have a few blockbuster apps invisible upwards its sleeve, given its background as a software company. He also expects Microsoft to revolve about app calibre going headlong, sort o than sheer app amount. That aforesaid, Enderle isn't hopeful about the quality even out of the thirdly-party apps that volition be in the Windows Store on establish day.

"Remember that unalterable touches on the apps put on't bug out until codification [is released to manufacturers]. A lot of folks won't even start developing a good deal until the code goes RTM in case Microsoft breaks something that you power ride," he says. (Windows 8's RTM build wasn't released until August 1.) "And then there's a lot of mass scrambling antimonopoly to cause apps cooked," Enderle says. "There's a solid chance some of these apps are going to be pretty naked as a jaybird on launch day, merely like happening other platforms, you'll receive automatic app updates, thusly I would expect things to excite come out by 30 days later launch."

And thusly we wait…

There's lowercase dubiety that Windows 8 will be successful in the long foot race, if only because the vast majority of PCs puchased after October 26 bequeath include the operating system, and in Crataegus laevigata slipway, the Windows weapons platform is presently likewise big to fail. Nonetheless, Microsoft's touch-focused brainchild—its stallion reason for deputation the screen background to second-class status and moving to live tiles and Windows 8 apps—lies in the booming tablet mart. As Personal computer sales flatten, transitioning to mobile is the only room for Microsoft to dungeon foward momentum.

Will the Windows Store personify presentable at launch? Or will IT, like the Windows Phone Store, bear from a scarce app selection and multitudinous missing must-have downloads? Windows RT's near-condition success and Microsoft's long-term hopes ride on the solvent.

The Windows Store has only one chance to spend a penny a prototypal impression. And now the world waits for October 26, when multiple thousands of customers enter Microsoft's new market for the very first-class honours degree time.

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