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432 points nobody9999 | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.194s | source
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amelius ◴[] No.46246687[source]
Why didn't Microsoft, back in the 90s, have an app store that businesses had to pay for to sell Windows applications in?

I mean, it's certainly not for lack of business insight. And you don't need the internet to sell applications.

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1. whstl ◴[] No.46248730[source]
That's how Game consoles operated, so there was definitely precedent.

But it took until 93-94 for Windows to actually become dominant enough to have such leverage, some argue that this only really happened with Windows 95. Since it was an open ecosystem for almost a decade at that point, changing was hard.

The Apple AppStore was different, it was launched after the iPhone shipped 13 million units and "only allowed web apps".