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Windows 7 should get an iTunes-like app store

Time: 01:54 EST/06:54 GMT | News Source: APC Mag | Posted By: Kenneth van Surksum

The app store concept is one of the few bright spots in most technology company arsenals this year. Apple lead the ways with the juggernaut that is iTunes+iPhone, while Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft all sell games online for their consoles. So, it’s a natural step for Microsoft to include a dedicated applications/music/video/games store as part of Windows 7, distinct from the current Microsoft-product only web site (below), Windows Media Player stores and other disparate methods of online shopping that it currently uses.

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#1 By 17996 (24.16.47.66) at Friday, March 06, 2009 03:08:28 AM

In other words... Windows Marketplace / Digital Locker...?

#2 By 23275 (24.196.4.141) at Friday, March 06, 2009 08:56:04 AM

Like the Microsoft Store? http://store.microsoft.com/home.aspx easy to say and valid... but there is another take to it...

There is some merit in the idea that an OS resident application, like the "Welcome Center" or "Windows Update" that allows Windows users to buy software and other PC products directly from the OS.

To some extent the Windows Sidebar, Side Show and Gadgets represent the potential available - Microsoft needs to lead here. There is an incredible opportunity they have missed, to add tremendous value to Windows and make it much more compelling. For example, there is no reason whatever that the most useful parts of enterprise, P2P and B2P applications should not have companion Gadgets. Microsoft could have and should have leveraged the daylights out of these two very useful areas.

Most especially, Microsoft should, via both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth extend Windows Gadgets to phones and UMPC's/Netbooks of every type - Mesh'ing if you will, useful and entertaining information into a bevy of Gadgets that are part of every device a person uses - digital picture frames, DLNA compliant televisions included. As an example... the dang refrigerator needn't have some kind of display... that is silly... but the dang thing should talk to one's phone and allow one to build a shopping list, or alert people that the kids just drained the last of the milk... that should push to one on the road, so we can make a stop on our way home and not have to make a special trip, etc... save gas... save money... save the planet, or whatever the mantra of the day is... bottom line should be... make life better.

The trick here isn't "Make Windows Better" - the idea is: "Make Windows more useful and more personal and more compelling" by leveraging what it already has. 'It ain't your Daddy's Side Bar!"

#3 By 1896 (68.153.171.248) at Friday, March 06, 2009 10:43:54 AM

Years ago, actually many years ago, we were still testing Win98, Microsoft had a project involving a refrigerator witha a bar scan reader; the idea was to scan what you were putting in and re-scan it when you were throwing out the empty box allowing the software to build a database of the items you were usually buying and keeping un updated shopping list.

It is beyond me why this concept has not been offered yet while , as you correctly mentioned, we see refrigerators with buil-in monitors andf TVs.

I siad over and over: if half of the things MS Research shows would be made available to customers
Microsoft would be the Jetsons and Apple the Flinstones.
This is the link to the latest example of what I mean, in case someone missed it:

http://www.istartedsomething.com/

Scroll down to "Microsoft Office Labs Vision 2019" and check the second clip; what I am mostly fascinated by is the GUI shown in the clip: soft colors, no windows etc.

Unfortunately the beancounters are in power in Redmond....

This post was edited by Fritzly on Friday, March 06, 2009 at 10:49.

#4 By 23275 (24.196.4.141) at Friday, March 06, 2009 11:30:25 AM

Fritz, two things we did many years ago:

1) The business is not run according to accounting - no accountant, bookkeeper, etc... has a say at all. Financial success is treated as a by-product of doing the right thing and delivering as much excellence as is humanly possible. and 2) technical support was removed - systems, network and software engineers take support calls directly and each individually and collectively, must face customers directly. Each must see how their work impacts end users - for good, or bad. Any mistake is quickly resolved and no question is dismissed.

We'll never be huge, but we'll never really have a bad day, either and most importantly, neither will the customers.

#5 By 1896 (74.166.235.69) at Friday, March 06, 2009 06:01:07 PM

Iketchum would you be interested in running for a seat in the MS board? You would get my vote and I am sure the ones of many, many other frustrated shareholders.
Btw I am serious...

#6 By 23275 (24.196.4.141) at Friday, March 06, 2009 10:45:49 PM

#5, Oh... they'd reject that in short order... most of my ideas about people can seem anti-business (they're not at all) but I put people well ahead of all else. I cut my own heart out with a spoon before I'd lay anyone off. Watching big companies with large sums of cash in the bank do that, really angers me. It's wrong.

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