• tempest@lemmy.ca
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    5 days ago

    What? No it’s not. The selling point of the app store is the owner of the app store gets to rent seek. Getting to control the app store is the selling point of developing an ‘OS’ for free.

    You as the user are just the product.

    • atomicbocks@sh.itjust.works
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      4 days ago

      It’s probably worth pointing out that Windows has very much not been developed for free. Up until Windows 8 and still today in some cases Windows license cost in the neighborhood of $250, and there are parts of the OS that have not changed since Windows 95, the format hard drive dialogue for instance. That’s before we even start mentioning how much they took from IBM to develop Windows secretly while helping IBM develop OS/2.

      The App Store itself was the product of a creation of a unified code base between Xbox and Windows Phone and Windows and Windows RT, Then they threw that out with the bathwater because fuck Windows Phone for some reason.

      • tempest@lemmy.ca
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        4 days ago

        Windows was sold that’s true and as you say the app store came with the attempt at a mobile / tablet OS.

        Windows is well into the extract phase of the product. Microsoft missed the mobile boat and fewer and fewer people are buying laptops. Grandma gets by on a tablet etc. so things are just going to get worse and worse for Windows users going forward.