App Store for Windows 8 Confirmed

No sooner does he pop up after a few years of silence then Windows division chief Steven Sinofsky has started to disclose some of the technologies in Windows 8. His first follow-up post lists the numerous teams working on the operating system, and in doing so, provides some clues as to what is coming.

Because of its complexity, Windows 8 is broken down into 35 feature teams, each with anywhere from 25-40 developers, plus test and program management. That alone is an impressive feat of management on his part. He added that the some of the teams are located outside the U.S.

In listing the 35 teams working on Windows, Sinofsky gave some clues into what’s coming, and he answered a long-speculated question: that there would be an App Store for Windows 8 like Mac OS and iOS have.

How do we know this? Well, one of the 35 teams is called “App Store.” So yeah, that’s fairly conclusive.

Microsoft tried the app store concept before with Windows Marketplace in Vista. Hopefully they will change the name because we know Apple will come a-suing if they use that name, as they did to Amazon.

Some of the teams are obvious and clearly have been involved in past Windows versions, but a few allow for all kinds of fun speculation:

• Applications and Media Experience & App Experience: Why are two app experience teams needed?
• Core Experience Evolved: This makes me wonder what core features are changing.
• Human Interaction Platform: Kinect support?
• Hyper-V: Gives credence to the rumor that Windows 8 will have vastly improved virtualization.
• In Control of Your PC: After all these years I still don’t feel like I’m in control of this beast.
• User-Centered Experience: Probably related to the new UI.

You can see the whole list and Steve’s comments on the his blog.