Microsoft Can Remotely Kill Purchased Apps

Meshach writes "The terms of service for Microsoft's newly launched Windows Store allows the seller to remotely kill or remove access to a user's apps for security or legal reasons. The story also notes that MS states purchasers are responsible for backing up the data that you store in apps that you acquire via the Windows Store, including content you upload using those apps. If the Windows Store, an app, or any content is changed or discontinued, your data could be deleted or you may not be able to retrieve data you have stored."

Re:And?

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple has never remotely killed an app. Google and Amazon have. Apple has removed apps from their store, but that's not the same thing.

Re:And?

[InsightIn140Bytes]

You can't allow unknown sources with all Android phones. Some operators also lock that feature out, so you have to jailbreak it. Which is the same situation for iPhone. For Windows phones, there's an $5 app that does let you run any app you want.

Oh great....

[iamhassi]

I've already lived this with iTunes. I bought iFitness [appshopper.com] (more here [medicalprod.com]. During an iOS upgrade there was some sort of issue and PC backup turned out to be corrupt and couldn't restore the apps. "No problem," I thought, "I downloaded all of these apps from the store, I can just re-download everything."

Nope, despite being one of the five best fitness apps [lifehacker.com] it was pulled from the market for unknown reasons. Some claim it was banned for posting fake positive reviews, [appadvice.com] but that seems completely unnecessary considering how [mensfitness.com] much [thatsfit.com] praise [nytimes.com] iFitness [go.com] received. [washingtonpost.com]

Because of that I no longer trust my phone or the "cloud" to keep my data safe.

Re:Well, no real surprise.

[syousef]

They're moving towards a complete lease model as opposed to ownership.

You already lease your software anyway.

This version of Windows will pretty much make you lease your hardware what with the "secure" boot for all practical purposes. And you'll be leasing any administrator access MS might grant you as well.

Actually it will push me to Linux - something I thought i'd never do. I've always used Microsoft Windows because it was the better solution - it runs more of the software I want to run (including games and graphics intensive apps) and thus gave me the most flexibility. But now Windows gaming is all but dead, all the apps have become ridiculously priced (Have you seen what Photoshop costs these days???) and now they want to control what I can run. Seeya! Don't let the door hit your arse on the way out.

Re:And?

[bluemonq]

1) For $9 ChevronWP7 provides an officially sanctioned tool to root your Windows Phone. It's not $0 like Android, but at least easy to do and isn't disabled at on a whim by Microsoft, unlike how Apple treats jailbreaking. Yes, jailbreaking is legal, but nothing in the law says Apple has to make it easy -- so they don't.

2) Apple has yet to remote pull anything.

Re:doubt it

[tepples]

Then they'd be no more different than the iOS App Store is from the Mac App Store. Those have roughly the same rules and the same pricing ($99 per year plus 30% of revenue), with one difference: in Mac OS X 10.7 you still don't have to jailbreak or join the developer program to run your own software on your own machine. Microsoft has indicated that the Windows Store will be the only way to obtain Metro Style apps; this probably means that joining the developer program (required for sideloading) will likewise cost money.