Looking through my old email – it was apparently 13 years ago this week that I first exchanged email with Bill Hill. We had been working on making all of our content on Slate into a neutral format so we could output it into multiple types of content (Word, Word two-column, text-to-speech) – and when I first read Bill Hill’s writing on reading, he captured my imagination about it – when few around him really believed that eBooks could happen,…
For two days last week, I was at the annual Chicago installment of our Microsoft Licensing Boot Camp. I’ve been to several of our camps to help present a couple of the topics. I’ve also noticed something unusual (and somewhat frightening) occurring. What I’ve seen is the growth of – or at least growth of the interest of – Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI). In VDI, the desktop operating system that a user interacts with is virtualized (and often remotely located)…
Apologies for the brevity of today’s post – didn’t time my travel to Chicago well. This week has been a rather slow week, as I think next week may be as well. I’m anticipating things really picking up as we go in to the week of 10/22 and on after the launch of Windows 8 and Windows RT. There should be well over 5,000 apps on launch day – perhaps more – depends on the bumps on the way. For…
I thought for something different, I’d take a look through one day’s apps to see what showed up that actually looked interesting to me. Easier said than done, since I decided to do this with yesterday’s apps (356 new apps yesterday). As I noted last week, there are a lot of apps showing up that are simply Web portals. I’m not really considering those in this list. I wanted to try and highlight a few apps and games that looked…
If you haven’t yet read my post from yesterday, please do. It’s very relevant to this conversation. As I stated – The Windows Store doesn’t need a large number of apps to be successful. It needs a number of great apps that drive people to the platform. Sermon aside, I know many people are visiting this site to find out where the store is at, and where it may be by 10/26. So let’s have a look. As of today, the…
I noted yesterday on Twitter that many of the apps that are appearing on the store look alike. This is really unfortunate. It’s unfortunate for consumers as they’ll need to sort through lots of chaff to find really unique apps. It’s unfortunate for developers because, well, they’re wasting their time. If you’re a dev who is cutting and pasting into the VS 2012 templates, and putting little effort into making something unique, you’re not going to stand out, and you’re…
I’ve had a few people ask me why I started counting the number of apps. Why should I care? Do I have some sort of vendetta against Microsoft or something? No. I don’t. The Windows Store count is what it is. I’m not here to say it’ll trounce iOS. I’m not here to say it’ll be a failure. That doesn’t matter, and little I can or do say will change how Windows 8 does with consumers and corporate customers. My goal…
I just posted an entry on my “regular” blog that relates to this site. Thought some of you might want to read it. What’s the deal with counting Windows Store apps?
It’s been a few days since I posted an update on the growth of the store. Yesterday Mary Jo Foley posted an article with some of my recent stats, and Alex Wilhelm posted a bit more cynical take. Today, fellow EXMSFT, Charlie Kindel posted on his blog about how important it is that the growth of the Windows 8 Store (or any sustainable ecosystem) be organic, not subsidized. First: I’m happy that there is so much interest in these statistics….
Milestones. Every one counts. Sure, the iOS app store has considerably more apps than the Windows Store today – that’s not news. But developers are adding to the Windows Store every day – and though some apps are removed from the store periodically, the number that grows every day. Today, the Windows Store broke the 2000 app mark and arrived at 2,079 apps available internationally. Though I can’t explain the divot of September 12th (the day after the Windows Store…