Ask Paul: June 3 (Premium)

After a curiously long short week, we can kick off this normal weekend a bit early with some great reader questions. Happy Friday!
What makes a Store app a Store app?
jeroendegrebber asks:

Earlier this week, I installed Audacity through the Windows 11 Store. I like Audacity, have used it before, and was looking forward to having auto updates through the store.  Installed it, then I found out it's a Win32 app, so it shows up in Program Files, does not show in my store library and through some googling found it's actually not updated through the Windows store. Confusing. Moreso since there's no way to know this upfront. Is this a temporary situation with some sort of roadmap from Microsoft, or just a trick to get more apps in the store? Would like to hear your thoughts on this.

Microsoft has dramatically expanded the availability of apps---and app types---in the Microsoft Store for Windows 10/11, and part of that effort has involved an ongoing loosening of the rules. In the beginning, back when it was called the Windows Store and Windows 8 was still new, Store apps were immersive, full-screen, mobile- and touch-centric sandboxed apps only, the precursor to what we now call Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps, and they were based on the then-new Windows Runtime (WinRT). But over time, Microsoft expanded the types of apps that developers could distribute through the store, sometimes via app packaging methods (like AppX with Windows 10), and in effect expanded the definition of what a Store app was. And most of the requirements/benefits of the Store are now basically optional.

I wasn’t aware of the specifics of Audacity in the Microsoft Store, but when I read that, I could have sworn this had been news somehow. And sure enough, in late April, Audacity revealed that it had put its app in the Store to counter the “ludicrous number of fake”/paid Audacity apps there. (Which could trigger a debate about the quality of the store, which has definitely improved too, but is still kind of an issue.) I can’t find an explanation of what it is that Audacity is doing with the Store version per se, but given the loosened rules, I suspect they just did the minimum. I’m surprised it’s not in your app library though.

Regarding Microsoft’s evolving strategy for the Store, we could see this kind of thing as desperation, I suppose, as it hasn’t taken off in a meaningful way and they continue to have trouble getting high-quality apps. Few probably remember this, but when Terry Myerson revealed that the Store would get desktop apps, he said that Adobe would bring both Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements to the Store, but only the former ever appeared. That’s the problem in a nutshell: users can’t just use the Store, so they still have to get apps from multiple places. And I’m sure most simply just use the web.

I still like the central promise of the Store, however, and I will almost always choose a Store version when it�...