Lead by Example (Premium)

Windows 10 and the Microsoft Store have an apps problem. And it’s all Microsoft’s fault.

Someday soon, perhaps even this week, Apple will release its first Microsoft Store app, iTunes. This will be celebrated by some, and I will at least acknowledge that it’s necessary on some level. But iTunes coming to the Microsoft Store in 2018 should be seen as the defeat that it is: While Apple is racing ahead with new mobile apps like Apple Music on modern mobile platforms, bringing a legacy desktop application like iTunes to Windows 10 just serves to highlight the utter pointlessness of the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps platform.

The message here is that the future is elsewhere. On Windows, we’re stuck with the past. It is not coincidental that the very best apps in the Microsoft Store—Adobe Photoshop Elements, Spotify, and so on—are legacy desktop applications wrapped in Desktop Bridge containers and a handful of high-quality games. You can’t point to more than low single-digit number of high-quality UWP apps.

And that is, I think, the problem. Microsoft cannot expect developers or users to embrace its next-generation client platform—a combination of UWP, the Microsoft Store, Windows 10 S, and Windows 10 on Snapdragon —unless it can make a compelling case that this platform is superior to the legacy technologies that still push Windows forward, like a shuffling zombie in The Walking Dead. Today, Windows is driven more by inertia than by innovation.

To be fair, the company has done what it can do to attract developers. It’s iterated on the Windows 10 SDK with every major release of Windows 10, and has sped development so that there are two such revisions each year now, each of which comes with some major new features. It holds developer events around the world, and virtually, to highlight the advantages of UPW and Microsoft Store. And it has bent over backward to accommodate legacy code bases in the hopes that developers would bring their existing apps to this new platform, all to no avail. There is not even a single example of a major new app on UWP, nor is there is a single example of a major app from some other platform being ported to UWP. All we get is a few warmed-over desktop apps in the form of Desktop Bridge containers in the Store.

That is a situation Microsoft cannot control: Developers either will or will not embrace a platform, based on pragmatic concerns that include both the size of the user base (which is substantial, at 600 million and growing) and the level of engagement they see from those users. And it is in that latter case that Windows 10 fails. Windows 10 users overwhelmingly turn to the same desktop applications they use on Windows 7 and 8.x.

And that is Microsoft’s fault.

Starting with Windows 8, and continuing through every release of Windows 10, Microsoft has saddled its customers with some of the most amateurish built-in apps that have ever graced a major computing platform. To a one, the productivity apps, in particular—Mail, Calendar, People, and so on—are like Fisher Price toys compared to Microsoft’s more full-featured web app (Outlook.com, Office 365) and desktop (Office 2016) offerings.

There are some signs of hope, of course: Groove turned into a pretty good app before Microsoft killed Groove Music Pass. And Photos has picked up some exciting 3D and video editing features that every Windows 10 user should at least check out. But even these apps suffer from what I think of as a key UWP limitation: An over-reliance on big, touch-friendly controls that make these apps look childish and unprofessional on real PCs. One of the central benefits of UWP is supposed to be the scalable nature of the UIs you can build. Why don’t these apps offer truly scalable user interfaces that look and work better on the traditional PCs that most Windows 10 users own?

Put simply, the built-in apps in Windows 10 shouldn’t just be great. They should be showcases for what is possible with the platform. My worry is that these apps are, in fact, representative of what is possible with UWP. And if that’s the case, then it’s no wonder that the few excellent apps (and games) in the Store don’t use UWP at all.

Microsoft needs to lead by example and turn Windows 10 into a showcase for what is possible … on Windows 10. It should create apps that users want to use, and that developers want to emulate in their own apps. These apps should inspire a virtuous cycle that will drive developers to stop mailing it in, as they are doing now.

Microsoft wants users to “love” Windows 10. That’s understandable, but we need to respect it first. And Microsoft’s apps are hurting that effort.