The Next Twenty Years: What Windows 8's Closed Distribution Means for Developers

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/179420/

by doty • 14 years ago

114 100 14 years ago

nilsbunger3• 14 years ago

How come I could install chrome and get a metro UI on windows 8, even though it didn't go through Microsoft's store?

I keep reading that windows 8 distribution is limited to the ms store for apps with metro UI , but that doesn't seem to be the case from my limited experience.

Can anyone clarify?

cryptoz2• 14 years ago

I believe this article is about Windows RT. Are you running the regular/full/whatever-you-call-it Windows 8?

nilsbunger3• 14 years ago

I am. But the article isnt about RT only. I've also read this in a number of other places - only windows 8 enterprise officially supports side loading. And Natch has very public refused to submit to windows store, and is pissed that his app can't be metrofied.

So I'm just confused why it worked for me.

gecko• 14 years ago

In general, Metro applications must go through Microsoft's app store.

There are three exceptions:

  1. You can add self-signed certificates and side-load.  This is actually quite
     easy for developers, but a no-go for most people;
  2. You can push corporate apps out to Windows 8 Enterprise devices; and finally,
     the way Chrome is doing this, which is
  3. Browsers are treated really, really specially.

Microsoft is still bound by the US anti-trust agreement to allow other browsers on Intel computers. In order to facilitate that with the Metro environment, on Intel-based Windows 8 computers only (i.e., not Windows RT tablets), the DEFAULT browser may optionally provide a Metro interface, even if that browser does not come through the Microsoft store.

It is this exception that Chrome (and, in beta, Firefox) is exploiting.

This trick only works for browsers. And, further, the way it's implemented is an insanely stupid horrible pain in the ass. I really like IE10 for tablet browsing: it's very fast, it has outstanding touch support, and it's actually a great rendering engine. On the other hand, you can pry Chrome out of my cold, dead, festering corpse's fingers when I'm on Windows 8's desktop. So the logical thing would be to use IE in Metro, and Chrome on the desktop.

But you know what? You can't sanely do that. Only the default browser gets to live in Metro. And when I say default, I really mean default. If you set Chrome as your default browser, then you cannot launch Metro IE--the ONLY Metro browser you can launch is Chrome.

It's the little things like this that are making it REALLY hard for me to stay a Windows 8 supporter. The more I use it, the more the little, idiotic things like this are making me go crazy.

Karunamon8• 14 years ago

I ended up doing the self-sign-certificate-sideload thing to get a prerelease leak of Skype for the Metro UI loaded. It was no harder than running a provided batch file. Once someone sets up a simple application to handle this (and you can bet they will), the whole "closed store" thing goes away.

bradwestness4• 14 years ago

I'm holding out hope that Google is going to release an actual Metro-tailored UI for Chrome around the time of Windows 8 GA instead of the current thing which is basically just desktop Chrome locked on maximize.

apetrovic• 14 years ago

I don't get it.

Everyone is gushing about the post-pc era, Eric Schmidt announced a few days ago that Microsoft is irrelevant, and the article takes for granted that Microsoft and PC as we know it will survive for next 20 years, and Windows will be dominant platform on PC?

If history teach us anything, it's that there's always some solution for the problem. If Windows 8 marketplace turns to be too restrictive, game developers will turn to Steam on Linux. And with enough gamers on Linux, Asus or Gigabyte will not be pressed to make only "compatible with Windows 8" UEFI-locked motherboards.

Or the consumers (and the gamers) will find Win8 marketplace acceptable. Or maybe in five or ten years some other player will sweep the market.

Looking at the current technology and lamenting about the end of the world is just plain stupid.

cryptoz2• 14 years ago

Yeah. This is the "extrapolate one technology, ignore everything else and base your future on that" syndrome.

Star Trek did that with spaceships and AI. You can explore the galaxy way past lightspeed, but your computer can't put up the shields to save your life unless your captain yells "Shields!". Right.

marshray5• 14 years ago

I think the captain even had to yell "Shields up".

krapp• 14 years ago

To be fair (and a pedant) that was for the sake of melodrama. The computers exploded in a shower of sparks during battle for the same reason. Rule of cool.

RickHull• 14 years ago

> If Windows 8 marketplace turns to be too restrictive, game developers will turn to Steam on Linux.

Absolutely. I think this is the implication of the article.

> Looking at the current technology and lamenting about the end of the world is just plain stupid.

I didn't sense any "lamenting about the end of the world" -- rather the end of the status quo, where the 2011 GOTY was packaged exclusively for the most recent Windows platform.

maguay• 14 years ago

The original article link, from the author's own blog: http://mollyrocket.com/casey/index.html

(happens to be much more readable there, too)

programminggeek• 14 years ago

I wonder if MSFT will stop supporting SDK's that don't run through their store long term. At some point will you only be able to write things that run on Windows that go through the Windows store? It looks like Win RT is going to go that route. I think it will be hard for MSFT to totally shut that down on mainline Windows for a while, but longer term it might all look a lot like walled garden distribution across all Windows.

I imagine that MSFT will have some kind of enterprise program where you can run your own Windows Store Server to do enterprise deploys of Metro apps.

Either way, it looks like Linux might end up the one place where you can install and run your own software over the long haul.

bradwestness4• 14 years ago

It's going to take a while, but they are definitely going to keep moving in that direction. I think it's safe to expect future versions of Windows to continually de-emphasize and virtualize the desktop (much like what they did with DOS). Remember how they almost didn't release a version of Visual Studio Express 2012 that could target the desktop?

silverbax88• 14 years ago

If they do this - and they have always wanted to - it will open the door for massive development on other platforms. I say this as a Microsoft developer. After looking at what's coming, both in the mediocrity of the upcoming OS releases and the push to put everything behind a MSFT wall, I've been actively looking at whether we should be moving primarily to Linux.

onli2• 14 years ago

So the point of the article is that because of the bundling of windows store and Metro UI, Windows will become a closed platform. Like with DOS, in some versions the desktop UI will vanish.

If that would happen, GNU/Linux would be the biggest remaining open (biggest free it is already) operating system. That would be a good thing. If Microsoft really tries to control Windows-Apps that much that they ban popular games, they probably will kill Windows and games will adapt to Linux. Fine with me.

But it doesn't have to come that way. The comparison to DOS is probably flawed. The new UI is, as far as i understood without being a windows developer, just an UI (with maybe a new API). The classical desktop is not like DOS an operating system Windows has to evolve from. Though it's quite possible that they might try to kill it sometime, it is not the same technical cause like the move away from DOS.

Anyway, before declaring Windows dead, let's wait how well Windows 8 sells and how many will use the new UI and the Windows store.

AimHere• 14 years ago

>If that would happen, GNU/Linux would be the biggest remaining open (biggest free it is already) operating system.

OSX and Android are both open and both have larger install-bases than GNU/Linux. Linux is fourth in the pecking order of open operating systems, or third if you only mean desktop computers.

>Though it's quite possible that they might try to kill it sometime, it is not the same technical cause like the move away from DOS.

It's not about any technical cause. The argument is that users will flock towards the new method of interacting with computers, the same way they went headlong towards the windows/mouse/icon thing and the developers will be forced to follow suit, and thereby become slaved to Microsoft (or alternatively, run off and join the GNU/Linux/Android circus).

The users didn't care whether DOS was an operating system or Windows 95 was just a shell on DOS 6 point whatever. They just wanted to be able to run their mission-critical applications like Word and Excel and Solitaire without having to learn and then invoke inscrutable command line incantations like 'DIR' and 'FORMAT A:' and 'ECHO c:\XCOM\XCOM.EXE > c:\AUTOEXEC.BAT'.

Microsoft thinks the same thing is going to happen with our Brave New Tabletized World; they'll keep the old desktop-style around as a legacy, but they'll exert control over anything touchscreeny, and let nature take it's course.

onli2• 14 years ago

OSX isn't even targeted for normal PCs and afaik not easily installable. And it has means in place to close the system, see https://developer.apple.com/resources/developer-id/ and the consequences. And yes, obviously talking about desktop-systems here, so Android is not fitting (and in this context subset of Linux anyway).

And I still think the different technical situation influences the situation, it is not only about the UI (and the jump not as big as the jump away from DOS).

nissimk• 14 years ago

is there really no way to "side-load?" According to this, that will be enabled in the Server and Enterprise editions:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12008252/sideloading-apps...

Between this and UEFI secure boot these guys are really messing up the PC ecosystem.

freehunter5• 14 years ago

What about the UEFI secure boot is messing up the PC ecosystem? You're referring to the widely-spread but extremely false rumor that secure boot is turned on, can't be turned off, and Microsoft has to approve any other OS you want to install?

Because that's not true. Secure boot is turned on, but for Windows 8 certification, it must be able to be disabled by the user. Microsoft is mandating that PC builders give you the option to disable secure boot. So I don't see how this is changing really anything. Maybe you can explain.

marshray5• 14 years ago

Last I heard any manufacturer of an ARM device capable of running Windows RT would be required to prevent the loading any other OSes via secure boot, or the disabling of secure boot.

ZachPruckowski2• 14 years ago

OK, but that's not viable for everyone. The only applications where the vast majority of the userbase is going to have Server or Enterprise editions are business applications, and even then, to use your application, your customers have to manage expiring developer licenses on each of their machines. That's a lot of hurdles for the average application, where most of their customers don't have the right version of Windows and can't be expected to obtain and maintain a developer license.

jiggy20116• 14 years ago

I find it very impossible to believe that in 20 years there will be no "adult" games available.

For one thing the XboX is a very closed platform run by Microsoft and there is no lack of violent games available there. I imagine this part of the agreement is simply an oversight that will be corrected in one form or another.

The only other possible way that this could play out if MS stubbornly don't want to allow adult content on computers is that anybody who wants to play games will switch to another platform, be it Android or Ubuntu or whatever.

The most likely dangerous thing that this could do for game developers would be if MS took control of launch dates for third party games so that they didn't clash with games they planned to heavily promote themselves or with preferred partners.

So maybe if you're an Indie developer you can't launch a game during the Xmas period if Halo 6 is due to come out or something like that.

bradwestness4• 14 years ago

Yeah, there's no way they don't make an exception for legitimate mature rated games. The restrictions are just there so they have something they can point to when they reject malware apps or apps that are blatantly promoting violence or drug use or whatever.

They just released a Netflix app, and you can watch as many R-rated movies on it as you like. You can certainly view adult content with any Metro-enabled web browser. There's no way, as a corporation, that they're going to give up the revenue stream that is mature rated PC games.

w1ntermute• 14 years ago

> Yeah, there's no way they don't make an exception for legitimate mature rated games.

Why should they? They don't have any reason to allow mature games, which certainly haven't been very common on consoles. It looks like PCs are headed in the same direction. Chances are these sorts of products will simply follow the path of least resistance and move to the web.

Edit: my bad, I'm not a big gamer, so I'm not familiar with the ratings terminology. When I said "mature" games, I was referring to games with adult content, not the games where you can shoot/kill people.

bitwize• 14 years ago

Windows 8 is the Oogieloves of operating systems: no one wants it, but that doesn't stop its creator from pushing it hard.

mariusmg• 14 years ago

Actually Win 8 is a great OS (from my personal point of view is Ms best OS so far). So saying no one wants it it a stretch.

seanmcdirmid• 14 years ago

I like Win 8, I work for Microsoft, but we will have to wait until its released to see how the market accepts it (and pass judgement). So saying either way is a bit early so far, its definitely a risky bet.

freehunter5• 14 years ago

> And these are just some of the features in this version of Windows. Who knows what new features Microsoft will add in future versions that will make desktop apps even less able to compete with native apps?

Slippery slopes are fun to think about, but are difficult to form a logical and rational argument with. You can't base decisions on a slippery slope. All we have are the facts currently available today.

Today we have one version of Windows being sold. Next week we'll have three (Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows RT)! What if the week after that we end up with six versions of Windows?!

bradwestness4• 14 years ago

Judging by current trends, the number of versions of Windows available for purchase is tripling every week! By Christmas we'll have 59,049 versions of Windows to choose from!

fghh45sdfhr3• 14 years ago

You can't base decisions on a slippery slope. All we have are the facts currently available today.

This kind of thinking is essential for a court system. That's why we say that justice is blind. But if you are not in the middle of a lawsuit, you should not use this type of thinking.

Thinking about trends and creating testable theories is essential for polity planing. You can't prepare for the future if you don't make projections about it.

freehunter5• 14 years ago

But this same line of thinking can be extrapolated on any system. OSX has a software store! Sure they let you install third party software now, but who knows what other restrictions they'll put on it later? Linux systems have software repositories! Sure they let you install software outside of these repos, but who knows what kind of restrictions they'll put on it later? The new version of my laptop doesn't have a floppy drive! Sure there's a DVD drive and USB, but who knows what other ports they're going to remove?

It's been a year since Microsoft announced Windows 8's restrictions. That's a pretty darn good run-up time, industry-wide. If/when they do put in some new restrictions, it's not going to be sprung on anyone overnight. All these articles are doing is spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt about something that may or may not come to pass.

leeoniya• 14 years ago

In what way are Windows 8 app certification requirements written in stone? If there are hundreds of millions to be made from changing some text, trust me, those rules will fall faster than Felix Baumgartner.

cube133• 14 years ago

In all honesty, the requirements aren't that bad, especially for game designers that aren't just attempting to make a quick buck. There's really nothing in there that should force good developers to really have to stretch to follow them.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh69408...

And their user agreement is friendlier to FOSS projects than Apple's.

  c. Third Party Rights. Your app, including any app that contains FOSS, must not infringe or misappropriate any intellectual property or personal right of any third party. You will obtain and maintain all necessary rights, clearances and consents, and pay all performance, licensing and reuse fees, including any consideration associated with providing music or video related content in and through your app. If your app includes FOSS, you must comply with all applicable FOSS licensing terms, including any source availability requirements.

    d. FOSS Software. If your app includes FOSS, it must not cause any non-FOSS Microsoft software to become subject to the terms of any FOSS license.

mattmanser• 14 years ago

Did you read the article?

He's talking about this, mass censorship that many of today's games and TV shows cannot pass:

5.1 Your app must not contain adult content, and metadata must be appropriate for everyone

5.2 Your app must not contain content that advocates discrimination, hatred, or violence based on membership in a particular racial, ethnic, national, linguistic, religious, or other social group, or based on a person’s gender, age, or sexual orientation

5.3 Your app must not contain content or functionality that encourages, facilitates or glamorizes illegal activity

5.4 Your app must not contain or display content that a reasonable person would consider to be obscene

5.5 Your app must not contain content that is defamatory, libelous or slanderous, or threatening

5.6 Your app must not contain content that encourages, facilitates or glamorizes excessive or irresponsible use of alcohol or tobacco products, drugs or weapons

5.7 Your app must not contain content that encourages, facilitates or glamorizes extreme or gratuitous violence, human rights violations, or the creation or use of weapons against a person or animal in the real world

5.8 Your app must not contain excessive or gratuitous profanity

bo1024• 14 years ago

Sure, and if there aren't hundreds of millions to be made in some area, the rules for that area might not change.

The point is that we should be very unexcited about the walled garden approach because it will exclude a lot of cool and fun and useful software. Even if they make an exception for high-grossing software, the whole idea is still a bad one.

potatolicious2• 14 years ago

Indeed. The concern isn't for AAA-level games or multi-billion dollar software industries, they will find their way.

The problem is: how many billion-dollar markets are we nipping in the bud because we operate strictly in a walled garden?

pkamb• 14 years ago

The Accessibility API is excluded from the Mac App Store under the new sandboxing rules, for example. Most people won't notice. But it's incredibly inconvenient for those people whose 3rd party accessibility tools give them the ability to use their Mac.

mark-r• 14 years ago

One of the points in the article is that Microsoft can't predict the future, and might miss a hundred-million dollar opportunity because they don't recognize it. Today there's nothing to stop someone from exploiting that opportunity regardless of Microsoft's blindness, but that won't be true in the future.

keyboardP5• 14 years ago

I talked to the author about this article, but I don't buy some of what was said. I wrote up a rebuttal (http://digitalbalance.tumblr.com/post/33276814981/windows-8-...) when the author originally posted it.

Basically, IMO, the article didn't really have hard facts and was mainly just pushing slippery slope arguments. Whilst there's potential for this to become a closed platform, there's no evidence that it will be. The DOS/Win 3.0 similarity doesn't work because Win 3.0 did not close off the platform at all. There's been no precedence set on the desktop to close the platform off completely and I doubt it'd do MS any favours to do such a thing, especially when gamers will soon have Steam on Linux (which is the one thing stopping some gamers from moving from Windows to Linux).

Maascamp• 14 years ago

Not sure why you're being down voted, the very first sentence in the article is quite a stretching of the truth.

keyboardP5• 14 years ago

The whole article came off a bit sensationalist (do people really believe there won't be any 18+ games in the future on PC?). I agree that MS could close the platform, I felt the article assumed that it already has and built it up from there. I guess people disagree with me here and do feel that it's closed :/

ekyo777• 14 years ago

is it legal to make an installer that would explicitly add a self-signed certificate to be able to add the application?

assuming there would be a way to distribute that installer other than microsoft's store

cabirum2• 14 years ago

FUD.

Desktop apps don't have to be distributed through Windows Store. In fact they can not. Windows Store contains only Metro UI apps, available for both tablets and desktops. All the software and games and stuff are installed exactly the same way as in other Windowses, without any restrictions implied by the article. Steam isn't going anywhere, Skyrim, Mass Effect are not, either. The problem does not exist.

s_tec• 14 years ago

The article argues that Metro apps are the future, not desktop apps. If the past is any guide to the future, desktop apps will be unacceptable to consumers in 10 years time and completely unusable in 20 years time (based on the MS-DOS to Windows transition).

Steam and other apps may work fine now, but what happens in 10 years? That is the long-term issue this article is trying to bring up.

keyboardP5• 14 years ago

The MS-DOS to Windows transition was more technical than business. It is not an apt analogy because Windows Next being completely closed down would be a purely business decision. If we're using 'what-if' arguments, then what if Microsoft does remove desktop in favour of Metro and then open up Metro to everyone?

stinos• 14 years ago

That's very well possible, but to some extent only. It's at least doubtfull that desktop apps like CAD/IDE software will ever ceise to exist.

sliverstorm• 14 years ago

Presumably Steam will either start developing to the Metro interface, or continue targeting the old desktop interface. They are hardly about to throw up their hands and say, "well we had a good run but we're done now".

msbarnett• 14 years ago

Given Microsoft's track record with Win32 replacements, it seems a little far-fetched.

I'd say there's more of a risk for Metro developers that the platform will be EOL'd/legacy/forgotten in 5 years than there is a risk to traditional desktop devs.

Karunamon8• 14 years ago

>The article argues that Metro apps are the future

I'm not seeing it. Metro's entire UI paradigm would seem to limit it to primarily content consumption apps and toys (games). For instance I don't think we'll ever see Photoshop or Ableton on metro as we know it today.

That's not to say creation apps won't exist - look at the iPad, you've got full office suites, music apps that emulate synthesizers with a great degree of fidelity, etc - but those are most definitely a niche.

cabirum2• 14 years ago

Windows still runs applications build for Win95, released 17 years ago. If anything, MS have always been known for maintaining backward compatibility. The MS-DOS argument.. it's simply not worth supporting 16bit dos programs in 2012. Also, VMs.

jiggy20116• 14 years ago

I'm still a bit sceptical of this. Metro only allows you to work with one app on the screen at a time and you have to hit start every time you want to switch apps instead of a taskbar.

If people want to use their desktop computers in such a way, why didn't they build the UI this way years ago?

bitcartel• 14 years ago

The danger is that in future APIs may be tied to the Windows Store. This is already happening on Mac OS X where if you want to use the iCloud API your app must be distributed through the Mac App Store.

ZachPruckowski2• 14 years ago

Which is fine now, but what happens when Windows 9 and DX12 drop in 2015, and all the new features and APIs only work with Metro UI apps? Suddenly all those desktop applications are second class citizens. By Windows 10 or so, non-Metro apps will be slower, heavier, and crippled relative to Metro apps, and it'll be hard to even find modern and supported tools to develop and compile them. And that's assuming Microsoft doesn't make deliberately crippling moves - throwing up warnings about "uncertified and potentially dangerous" applications or blocking uncertified desktop applications from using some features (webcam, arbitrary ports, whatever) without configuration changes.

The reason people are speaking up now is not out of fear of Windows 8, but out of fear of Windows 9 or 10.

Navarr• 14 years ago

Fun Fact: Desktop applications can use Metro APIs. Chrome is a good example of this. Upon installing Chrome on a Windows 8 computer, you can use it through the metro interface.

Spearchucker• 14 years ago

In my opinion the only reason a closed system like Windows is still so dominant is the open nature of it's software distribution. Close that and the masses will move away. I write Windows apps purely because there are no restrictions on distribution/deployment, and because of the huge user base. When the status quo changes, I move.

pedalpete• 14 years ago

With one anti-trust case behind them, and a loss (packaging IE as the only browser for those to young to remember), a single access point for all software would likely raise similar flags.

Apple can get away with it (or close to it) because they are still not the dominant platform.

I suspect we'll get to a point where the App Store, Google Play and Microsoft Store (not sure what Microsoft's is called) will be considered monopolizing the sales channel and be decoupled forcing competition in the store space, or allowing software to be installed without going through a store at all.

Thankfully we've got history on our side with installing apps from any source being the default behavior.

mark_l_watson• 14 years ago

What about open source software? How about applications we might write for ourselves?

OS X Mountain Lion is a little fussy about apps from the Internet that did not come from the APple App Store, but it is easy enough to override this default on an app by app basis.

I would hope that Microsoft would also allow users to override this restriction. e.g., installing Emacs.

hayksaakian• 14 years ago

We shit on Microsoft for this but with iOS it's somehow OK?

cmccabe• 14 years ago

Saying that closed software ecosystems are bad because they hurt games is like saying the Nazis were bad because they made it harder to find good Jewish rye bread. It's like... um... way to focus on the important stuff, Mr. Muratori.

The Next Twenty Years: What Windows 8's Closed Distribution Means for Developers

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