Except Microsoft is not Apple and even Apple did not nearly succeed in getting developers to use their App Store on the desktop. They did get developers to use Cocoa but that is clearly much better than Carbon and Apple worked hard to make it do everything Carbon does.
The selling point for developing on Windows is that you can mostly do anything and the Store is a sandbox. Developers aren’t going to want to get into the sandbox. And that’s ignoring the situation Microsoft has created where nobody wants to invest in new platforms because Microsoft keeps abandoning them.
Groove Streaming Music
Microsoft Office Groove
Access Services for SharePoint Online
Microsoft Continuum
Skype for Business
Kinect Adapter
Microsoft Band
Xbox One TV DVR
Kinect Xbox One
Kinect Windows
Wunderlist
Sunset
Games for Windows
Silverlight
Zune
Kin
XNA
PlaysForSure
Flight Sim
Expression Suite
SteadyState
Windows RT
Windows Phone 10
Windows Phone 8.1
Windows Phone 7
Forefront
Front Page
Money
Thanks for that. That Wikipedia entry uncovered these additional discontinued products
Microsoft Forefront Threat Management Gateway
Microsoft Forefront Unified Access Gateway
Microsoft Forefront Identity Manager
Microsoft Proxy Server
Windows Essential Business Server
Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio
Microsoft BackOffice Server
Content Management Server
Microsoft SNA Server
Microsoft Site Server
Microsoft Merchant Server
Microsoft Groove Server
System Center Capacity Planner
Microsoft Commerce Server
Microsoft SharePoint Workspace
Microsoft InfoPath
Microsoft Office Document Imaging
Microsoft Office Document Scanning
Microsoft PhotoDraw 2000
Microsoft Photo Editor
Microsoft Schedule Plus
Microsoft Virtual PC
Microsoft Vizact 2000
Microsoft Data Analyzer 2002
Microsoft Ofice Assistant
Microsoft SharePoint Designer
Microsoft Office InterConnect
Microsoft Office Picture Manager
Microsoft Entourage
Microsoft Office Forms Server:
Microsoft Office Project Portfolio Server
Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server
Office Live Small Business
Office Live Workspace
Office Live Meeting
I don’t think Skype for Business and Wunderlist have been discontinued. But my comment was more about things like ‘PlaysForSure,’ Silverlight and Windows Phone. It’s not really that big a problem they discontinued Space Cadet.
The selling point for developing on Windows is that you can mostly do anything and the Store is a sandbox. Developers aren’t going to want to get into the sandbox. And that’s ignoring the situation Microsoft has created where nobody wants to invest in new platforms because Microsoft keeps abandoning them.