While Apple fights to maintain its strict App Store rules and its 15-30% cut of all purchases and subscriptions, Microsoft is taking the opposite approach. The company on Wednesday announced major changes to the Microsoft Store that will make it fairer, more open, and more transparent.
Its new Open App Store Principles — which include allowing developers to accept alternative payments systems without fear of retribution — are designed to show that Microsoft (unlike Apple) is committed to adapting to new regulation that promotes competition in app markets.
Apple fans who also use Windows can download an updated version of iCloud from the Microsoft Store today. This brings an improved iCloud Drive experience for Windows 10 users.
It follows on the heels of iTunes for Windows appearing in the Microsoft Store this spring.
Microsoft is developing a “Movies & TV” app for Android and iOS in an effort to boost downloads from the Microsoft Store, according to a new report.
Customers can enjoy content purchased from Microsoft only on Windows platforms for now. The company hopes that by supporting new platforms, it will encourage more people to use its store over competitors like iTunes.
It’s okay to use a PC alongside your Mac, but you’ll find that some of the best macOS features aren’t available in Windows. One of those is Finder’s awesome preview function, but you don’t have to live without it.
QuickLook is a free app that brings the same preview feature to Windows 10’s File Explorer.
Apple plans to shut down the Texture app for Windows following its acquisition of the magazine subscription service back in March. The app remains available to download from the Microsoft Store for now, but it will stop working on June 30.
iTunes is finally available to download from the Microsoft Store for the first time.
The release makes it possible for Windows 10 S users, who cannot install applications obtained from third-party sources, to get their hands on Apple’s popular entertainment platform. This version of iTunes is exactly the same as the one available through Apple’s website.
But a new report underlines just how poorly Microsoft Stores are doing as they finally crawl past the 100 store milestone — but without being able to attract a significant number of customers along the way.
Microsoft officially opened its flagship store on NYC’s historic Fifth Avenue today just blocks away from Apple’s iconic glass cube, and it’s taken a few pages from the iPhone-maker’s playbook in the process.
The doors to Microsoft’s new store opened just in time for the release of the new Surface Book and Surface Pro 4, but Microsoft says it’s totally cool if Apple fans bring in their devices too.
“If you bring your iPhone in here, I’d love to show you how to use Office on it,” said Kelly Soligon, senior director of retail stores marketing at Microsoft. There are signs of Apple’s influence throughout the store through, from the giant glass facade to the glass staircase.
Microsoft has copied (or “been inspired by”) many, many Apple innovations over the years, and now it’s set to copy the location of its most famous Apple Store of all.
That’s right: the Windows maker is set to open up shop with a retail store just blocks from Apple’s iconic Fifth Avenue glass cube. The new “flagship” Microsoft Store will move into a location previously occupied by Fendi.
“This is a goal we’ve had since day one — we were only waiting for the right location,” Microsoft’s corporate vice president for retail stores said in a statement. “And now we have it.”
Were you crazy enough to brave the murderous masses of people looking for deals on Black Friday this year? If you stopped by the Apple Store to get a cheaper MacBook or something, you probably noticed that the Apple Stores were even more crowded than usual. But then if you went over to a Microsoft Store it looked like just a normal day.
Here’s a video that compares the amount of people visiting the Microsoft Store and the Apple Store. Surprise, Apple won on Black Friday.
I had a great idea this morning. I figured I’d head to the Microsoft Store in Scottsdale around 10am, waltz in, buy a Microsoft Surface, and then be out in 10 minutes. I assumed the store would be empty. I mean, come on, this is a Microsoft tablet we’re talking about, and who goes to the Microsoft Store anyway?
I was completely wrong. Microsoft’s new tablet, the Surface RT, may not do everything an iPad can, but it’s drawing some pretty big lines to Microsoft retail stores across the country for its launch this morning.
Could it get any sadder? Ten years late, Microsoft is finally set to open its sad sack retail store later today at Tysons Corner, pretty much directly across from the original Apple Store that started it all way back in 2001. Needless to say, the world’s pretty much yawning at the news, and so Microsoft is trying anything to get people to attend the grand opening. I’m not sure what’s sadder, though: the fact that they hired a Jonas Brother to draw in crowds, or the fact that the Jonas Brother they hired, Joe Jonas, is both a Mac user and a former entertainment act for Apple, famously drawing scores of screaming teens to the SoHo Apple Store in 2008.
It looks like Microsoft’s plan to beat Apple in the retail space by building their own Microsoft Stores right across from mall-based Apple Stores is paying off: Microsoft’s successfully chased Apple out of its space in the Bellevue, Washington shopping mall.
It’s something of a pyrrhic victory, though. Apple’s just moving to the second floor of the mall to a larger retail space. Directly overhead, overlooking Microsoft’s store, where it will literally be living in Apple’s shadow. If there was ever a time to LOL, this is it.
Back in the flower of my youth, I took a job at the local mall working as a minimum-wage cashier at a discount clothing outlet permeated with the distinct smell of moth balls. It was awful. My boss had a greasy pencil moustache and a lazy eye and was overly complimentary about the softness of my hands; my only customers were antique, gum-sucking grannies buying pre-soiled brassieres and underpants by the carriage full.
Meanwhile, across the way, my friend Josh had landed himself a job in a posh clothing boutique aimed largely at girls in their late teens and early twenties. It being summer, there seemed always to be a bikini sale going on, and I can’t even count the hours I spent watching him through the greasy yellow plate glass of my work store window, encouraging the buxom and spritely clientele — freshly emerged from the changing rooms in some impossibly flosslike two-piece to show off to their friends — to take a bounce on the complimentary trampolines that had been installed around the show floor. It was enough to make an undersexed teenage boy spill a vein in sheer impotent jealousy.
This memory came flooding back to me when I first saw the picture above of the Mall of America’s new Microsoft Store, which is currently under construction directly across from the Apple Store.