Apple says iTunes won't be available in the Microsoft Store by the end of 2017, as originally planned; new timeline for release is unclear
Sorry, Windows 10 S users. Apple confirms that iTunes won't make it into the Microsoft Store this year, as Microsoft and Apple originally promised.
Context & Ripple Effects
The missed deadline traces back to a promise made when Microsoft announced iTunes would come to the Microsoft Store before the end of 2017 — a commitment aimed squarely at Windows 10 S, which can only install Store apps. With Apple now confirming no ship date at all, the one machine category that depends on Store distribution is left without its media client.
The delay also lands amid lingering questions about iTunes' future on desktop: Apple had publicly denied reports just the year before that it would wind down music downloads, so the Windows port was being built while the platform itself was under strategic review.
First-order effects
- Windows 10 S users are the immediate losers: without a Store version of iTunes they have no supported way to sync iPhones or buy media on those machines, since S blocks traditional desktop installs.
- Apple and Microsoft both wear the miss — a joint announcement from two of the largest platform owners slipping with no revised timeline signals the port is harder or lower-priority than either let on.
Second-order effects
- The failure hands ammunition to critics of Windows 10 S's app-only model, and within months Microsoft demotes S from a standalone OS to a mere mode of Windows 10 — a retreat that reduces the very constraint this delay exposed.
- Until the Store version arrives, users who need iTunes must leave S entirely, pushing buyers toward regular Windows 10 and undercutting the locked-down SKU's value proposition.
Third-order effects
- When iTunes finally does land in the Store nearly a year late, it establishes the pattern that Apple's Windows software migrates to Microsoft's distribution layer on Apple's schedule — culminating years later in dedicated Apple TV and Apple Music apps replacing iTunes there altogether.
- The episode foreshadows a broader structure where OS vendors gate desktop app distribution through their own stores, making cross-platform players like Apple dependent on rival storefronts' timelines and rules.
The trend: Windows desktop software is steadily moving behind OS-vendor store gates, with even Apple's flagship media app dragged through — slowly — as the price of reaching locked-down Windows machines.