Thinking of buying a tablet or a Smartphone, you have choices between an iPad or an iPhone, an Android tablet or Android Smartphone or a windows 8 tablet or a windows 8 Smartphone. Between the three, windows tablets are often the most expensive ones. Also , software availability is another crucial factor to consider. At present, the windows store has reached over 70,000 apps that can be downloaded either for free or paid. And with the launch of Windows 8, it proves that web applications are the future of computing. Let’s take a peek at the windows store and see how it fare with the established competitors.
- Videos. Video player apps are well represented in the windows app store. Popular apps like Netflix and Hulu Pus are available for download. These apps allow the users to purchase or rent movies and videos from the Microsoft video marketplace. The windows tablet is doing good here but still can’t stack to the other platforms. Amazon instant video and the official YouTube app are not available.
- Music. The built xbox music app can do free music streaming in Win8. The downside is if you have already invested on a third party music service it may not be available in Win App store. Pandora is only available as an unofficial application together with Tune In Radio and Slacker so it’s not a complete miss but still its not up there yet. You can listen to the services in a browser through the IE app but the music will stop playing when the browser goes to the background, which is still an issue.
- Games. The store offers a selection of simple table games. It will also depend on the type of gamer you are but you may be happy with time wasters like plants vs. zombies, angry birds and cut the rope. Some versions of the mentioned games are still not yet available on the Win Store and costs $5.00 while they are free on Android and iOS. For this one, iPad and Android are still the best sources. Plus, many established and big name games are released on iOS then followed by Android. Hopefully some of these games make its way to Windows RT.
- EBooks. The windows application store offers a good selection of eBook services and apps. Official apps like Amazon Kindle, NOOK and Kobo are available for download. Other services are still not available like the Flipboard news reader, Instapaper and Pocket.
- Social apps. People app is offering some integration with popular social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. Twitter has an official app in the windows app store but there is no official Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Instagram, Tumblr or Pinterest applications. The searches for this app will show poor quality applications while searches on the other two established platforms will give quality apps. Because of this, there is a perception that windows 8 offer junk applications which is not helping its cause.
- Google services. As expected, Google and Windows 8 have some issues. There is an official Google search app and Google Chrome app which only works on Win8 and not of WinRT and that’s it. Other Google services like Gmail can be read in the bare bones mail application included in the OS. Google calendar and the calendar app cannot be viewed. Google maps, google docs, google Drive can be accessed using a browser but not on an official app. Because there is none available.
Microsoft till has a lot of catching up to do to turn Windows as a usable and credible platform. It’s just a waste if many popular applications are not available in windows but are readily available in iOS and Android. The number of apps is not the deciding factor, its the quality apps that people want and need. If Windows do not solve these shortcomings, then the platform will get left behind.
