Chapter 5: Taking Control of the Windows Store

In This Chapter

arrow.png Getting the lowdown on Windows Store apps

arrow.png Exploring the Windows Store

arrow.png Updating your Store accounts and preferences

If you’re familiar with buying programs in the Apple App Store, you already know about 90 percent of what you’ll find in the Windows Store.

Microsoft’s Windows Store launched simultaneously with the release of Windows 8. The Windows Store is a big, extensible, very usable source of new programs for the tiled side of your Windows computer. There are even apps that run on the desktop side, too.

Apps make or break any computer these days, and Microsoft knows it. That’s why you find an enormous breadth of apps in the Windows Store — it’s good for you, and good for Microsoft, over and above the 30-percent commission Microsoft makes on every sale.

The only way you can get apps for the tiled side of Windows is to download and install the app from Windows Store. While large companies can put tiled apps on their Windows devices (using a technique known as sideloading), normal people like you and me have to go through the Windows Store: the alpha and omega of tiled, new style Windows 8 apps.

Checking Out What a Tiled ...

Get Windows 8 All-in-One For Dummies now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.