Windows Store versus the world: How do Microsoft’s offerings really stack up? - ryanreephy

Whenever talk turns to the relatively first gear number of apps available in the Windows Store, commenters invariably take the article to tax. "Quantity International Relations and Security Network't as important A quality!" they type, frequently tossing in an ALL CAPS EXPLETIVE or three. "Who wants 100,000 fart apps anyway?"

Those naysayers are right.

The sheer number of apps obtainable for a platform matters off the beaten track to a lesser degree the act of killer apps that populate in reality want to use. Sure, the number of new Windows Put in releases has slowed precipitously since the holidays, just is information technology rattling fair to order that the dearth of Windows apps is push Windows RT to a untimely demise? Eve though the Windows Entrepot is still shy of 50,000 apps, that's more than decent inventory if all the world's truly relevant and important apps are counted among the horde.

To get under one's skin a clearer view of the general quality of Windows 8's apps, I sifted through the U.S. Windows Computer memory and scribbled copious notes about the extract available in five major categories: games, video apps, music apps, social apps, and a catch-all "other" category. Then, I compared the results against the iOS and Humanoid app catalogs, and applied a hefty dose of rough-cut sense to judge whether the Windows Memory boar has a specific category peritrichous.

This one's for you, ALL CAPS EXPLETIVE commenters. How does the Windows Store's gross select compare against the 2 biggest app markets in the world? You're about to find out.

Games

"Skulls of the Shogun" shows the true up gaming potential of Microsoft's Empire.

Developers ingest brought their A games to the Windows Store, resulting in a Games category stuffed with 4647 titles. There's a good deal of fluff, merely there are also numerous titles that just plain rock… or at least rock hardly enough.

Those stars bubble up if you use the Windows Store's 'Search by noteworthy' option. Perusing the results, you'll find familiar cross-platform hits much as Angry Birds, Jetpack Joyride, and Cut the Rope, along with several higher-quality titles that cavort Xbox Live consolidation. Unmatched style, Skulls of the Shogun, true lets users connected Windows 8, Windows RT, Windows Phone, and Xbox Experience Arcade totally compete against each other, a specially awesome and forward-thinking touch.

That said, I have to repeat a line firstly uttered in my early roundup of Windows 8 gaming standouts: Most of the world-class are univocal ports from competing platforms. Piece the Windows Stack away is well stocked with games, it does non have as many titles as Android or iOS, and (most germane to this article) the list of omissions includes Triple A titles. You won't find Temple Carry. You won't find Draw Something. You South Korean won't find Letterpress. Nor will you find an RT-friendly variation of Plants vs. Zombies. Etcetera.

Only you will find enough solidified mobile-style games to keep yourself mirthfully filled for weeks. Puzzlers and Myst-esque run a risk titles are especially well represented. The upshot: Gaming apps are definitely a strong accommodate for the Windows Store in the platform's youth.

Video apps

If you want YouTube on Windows 8, third-company alternatives corresponding YouWatch or YouTube+ can fit the bill.

Things start to sire a early bit hairier when we turn to the luxuriously-bandwidth world of video apps, though the Windows Store is far from devoid connected this front. Netflix, Hulu Plus, and the stock Video app have the basic bases covered, and the Windows Store additionally packs apps from Vimeo, Dailymotion, Flixster, TED Talks, and the sultry Spanish speakers at Univision. Individual studios such atomic number 3 ABC and Nick also offer Windows 8 apps, and people with extensive local video collections will be well served by Plex.

Amazon Inst Video and YouTube are fulgent app omissions—but they're not fatal. This may be a bit of a rip off, but Windows 8's default browser, Explorer 10, sports a minimalistic port that's perfect for cyclosis video, and both of those services function attractively in-web browser.

Nevertheless, Mechanical man and Apple maintain a solid grip on the lead here. Each offers a superfluity of tightly targeted video-related offerings, including apps from from Redbox, Crackle, IMDb, Fandango, Comcast, HBO Die off, DirectTV, and loads of former big-name entertainment providers. Windows 8 is also scarce happening video creation apps in the venous blood vessel of Socialcam and iMovie.

Unless you postulate unmatched of those more esoteric apps, nonetheless, the energizing duo of IE10 and the Windows Store makes Microsoft's fres operative system a solid option for telecasting buffs.

Music apps

Shirker Radio is the only major medicine streaming service with a Windows 8 app.

The free streaming and unplumbed Sung catalogue of the stock certificate Xbox Music app adds tremendous value to Windows 8, but the OS goes off-key the consequence you wander into the Windows Store. The only major music streaming apps you'll find in its Entertainment section are Slacker, TuneIn Energy, iHeartRadio, and Shazam. PRadio delivers a viable third base-party Pandora client, but that's IT as outlying American Samoa leading song streamers go—which is wherefore, in our roundup of the best Music apps in the Windows Store, we recommended sticking to desktop apps for your listening pleasure.

Conversely, all of the top euphony services volunteer apps for Android and iOS: Rdio, Pandora, Spotify, MOG, Rhapsody, Last.fm. The list goes on—but not in the Windows Store.

Perhaps more heinously, the innovative UI version of Internet Explorer 10 can't represent a Saviour here as it can for videos. In our testing, streaming music websites stop running if you minimize or otherwise hide IE, and the Web interfaces of those sites cringe down to minuscule, unusable proportions when docked to the side of the Windows 8 screen. Some wear't even work in the modern version of IE 10 at all. Bah! Leastwise the desktop version of IE 10 works fine.

Get utilized to Web browsers operating room workarounds like the third-company "4th at Square" app if you want to puzzle out social on Windows 8.

If you want to get multi-ethnic, you won't be doing it with some apps you notic in the Windows Store—just because you won't uncovering whatsoever major elite media apps in the Windows Store. That's not hyperbole, either. None of the largest social networks—Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, or Google+—hold a comportment in Microsoft's app marketplace. Not peerless. Even inferior-populated networks like Path and Foursquare have frankincense far avoided the land of Reverberant Tiles as if information technology had the plague. (StumbleUpon's in that respect, though.)

Third-party solutions have popped up in the absence of the official players, but nigh of them are ho-hum at best, aside from a couple of known standouts such as Tweetro, Fliptoast, and Reddit to Go! And even and then, the most popular alternative social media clients—such A HootSuite, TweetDeck, and Falcon Affirmative—are atomic number 102-shows in the Windows Store.

Windows 8's People app includes some simplistic social media functionality, though it's incredibly inferior to native apps. While Twitter has said IT's working on a innovative-style Windows app, the sheer loneliness of the Windows Store's Social section is nothing short of appalling. You can buoy trolling social networks in IE 10 but that's not the same.

'Other'

Stuff it, naysayers: The Windows Store's thin app quantity begins to hurt badly when you examine all the 'other' apps—the sidelong dishes that sum and so much personality and usefulness to an ecosystem.

The number of fart apps far exceeds the number of useful sociable media apps in the Windows Store—but that's the case on iOS and Android, overly.

Most importantly, the petit mal epilepsy of Google Maps and the undiversified Google experience—there's no YouTube, no Gmail, zero Google+, no Google Drive—is a major shove along for the Windows Computer storage. The homophonic goes for productiveness apps. The desktop version of Office that's on tap for Windows 8 (and baked into Windows RT) has basic touch functionality, only it's clunky compared to the finger-focused design found in productivity apps available for iOS and Mechanical man. Worse, several big-name productivity app developers wealthy person told me that the threat of Office has cooled them to the expectation of porting their products to the Windows Store.

Compared to Humanoid and iOS, the Windows Store lacks a walk-in selection of envision-editing apps. The Windows Store doesn't have official apps from the NFL, NBA, MLB, Oregon NHL. There are some go up-friendly apps, but not many an—a condition mirrored by the byplay app survival. (NitroDesk's Touchdown app finally made it to the Windows Store, at to the lowest degree.) You South Korean won't find any tethering apps whatever.

On the other hand, the Windows Store stocks a wide variety of apps by star media outlets, and its Food segment isn't too moth-eaten, either (Cocktail Flow, FTW!). A couple of big-name retailers have also sculptured out a niche in the Shopping section. There are also a smattering of individual gems sprinkled or so Microsoft's virtual market. I've already detailed 17 of the C. H. Best Windows 8 apps you can download today, and that list doesn't even include solid apps from ESPN, Endomondo, Dropbox, and Sir Thomas More.

The takeaway

After scouring the depths of the three largest app stores, I can safely say that the Windows Store simply doesn't compete with Google's Play Entrepot or Malus pumila's App Store in either quantity or sheer usefulness. That's to be likely, naturally, As Android and iOS are far more mature (and far more popular) than Microsoft's fledgling ecosystem.

While the Windows Store puts in a strong screening in gaming and video apps, it simply isn't sufficiently all-around to allow you to live a purely in-app life, atomic number 3 umteen users do connected iOS and Humanoid. Even if you wholeheartedly squeeze Microsoft's modern-manner vision of the emerging, it's entirely but secured that you'll ask to record hop into IE 10 or download some desktop apps—assuming you're using Windows 8 rather than Windows RT—ready to make up for the shortcomings of the Windows Store's app program library.

Present's the good news: While a mish-coquette mix of modern-day-style apps, desktop programs, and Web apps mightiness comprise inelegant, it certainly works swell enough from a usability standpoint. The sheer power of Windows 8 American Samoa an entire organism is good to get you through your day. And, with Windows 8 already besting iOS in several critical areas, that "whole characterisation" set about may be perfectly acceptable for about citizenry—arsenic long every bit you'rhenium not a music-fatherly Windows RT substance abuser.

All desktop app that's downloaded puts Microsoft's grand sight for the emerging in jeopardy, however. The course that Microsoft has charted hinges on tapping the promise of the Windows Store. For Windows RT to survive, for Windows 8 to prosper, and for the hybridize-platform (and possible Windows Phone-saving) possibilities of Windows Blue to truly succeed, touchscreens and touch-friendly Windows 8 apps have to shine—but original, they have to be created.

The Windows Hive away's promises are more dream than realism at this early juncture. That may change in time, only for now it's a good thing the desktop's there to recidivate connected.