iTunes now available from the Microsoft Store for Windows 10, nearly a year after Microsoft announced it would be coming to the store before the end of 2017
Tom Warren / The Verge :
Context & Ripple Effects
This closes a loop that opened with Microsoft's 2015 push to fill the Windows Store: the SDKs for porting iOS apps to Windows 10 were built precisely so flagship apps like iTunes could arrive as packaged store apps, and Microsoft's own Music purchases had already moved into the Store Beta that June.
The arrival is also late by design of the timeline, not accident: Apple confirmed in December that iTunes would miss the original end-of-2017 target, leaving the release date open until today's listing.
First-order effects
- Windows 10 users can now install and update iTunes through the Microsoft Store rather than Apple's standalone installer, giving Apple an auto-updating distribution channel inside Windows.
- Microsoft gets a marquee third-party app for a storefront whose consumer content story since 2015 has leaned on first-party Music and Video apps.
Second-order effects
- A working iTunes port gives Microsoft a reference case for courting other big iOS developers whose apps skipped the Store, strengthening the pitch behind the 2015 porting SDKs.
- The precedent softens resistance inside Microsoft's own ecosystem to admitting non-UWP software — the same logic that later let devs bring Win32 games into the Microsoft Store.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the Microsoft Store's identity shifts from a UWP-only walled garden toward a general package manager for Windows software, with legacy desktop apps arriving through the front door rather than around it.
The trend: The Microsoft Store is evolving from a closed Universal Windows Platform catalog into a broad distribution channel willing to package mainstream desktop and ported iOS apps.