Ondrej Holzman Our recent premise that it would iTunes could be retired, she took to her rather quickly. And somewhat unexpectedly, we hear it from Microsoft, which announced that the iTunes application is heading to its Windows Store. PC owners can access the application, among other things, for managing iOS devices even more easily than before.
The arrival of iTunes in the Windows Store, the PC alternative to the Mac App Store, may not seem like such a big deal, but you need to look at the whole thing a little more widely. iTunes in the Windows Store only confirms Microsoft's new mobile strategy, which the company announced last week at the Build developer conference. iTunes will play a role in it.
Windows PC loves both iPhone and Android
Microsoft's success, or rather failure, in the mobile market is generally known. After the end of mobile phones with the Microsoft logo (which, however, may return one day) and especially its operating system, the company from Redmond re-evaluated its activity in the mobile field and decided to take a step in a different direction. He starts to "love" all devices, regardless of their creed, whether they have iOS or Android in them.
Since the arrival of new CEO Satya Nadella, Microsoft has made no secret of the fact that it is not necessary for users to exclusively use its hardware, but that it primarily wants to be present in various forms wherever possible. Whether it is through its services, the cloud or perhaps the voice assistant Cortana, which can be used not only on Windows, but also on competing platforms.
Microsoft has already realized that it can't catch up with iPhones and competition with Android, so it's trying a different way - it wants its Windows to be able to communicate with these phones as best as possible, which hasn't always happened so easily. Especially with iPhones. Therefore, the autumn update for Windows 10 should arrive with new functions, thanks to which you can connect your iPhone to a PC in a very similar way to what iOS and macOS can do.
It is precisely from this cooperation, the so-called Continuity, that Microsoft takes many examples, but it is not surprising. A seamless connection between a computer and a mobile phone, especially when it comes to switching between them, for example during a work deployment, is absolutely crucial for many users today. That's why Apple scores in this regard with an almost flawless ecosystem.
You start in Word on the iPhone, finish writing on the PC
Windows 10 Fall Creators Update will be released in September, and its main focus will be on cooperation with iOS and Android. One of the biggest new features is the Timeline function, which will make it very easy to move divided work between multiple devices. In Timeline, you will always see which applications you are currently using or have recently used on Windows 10, iOS, and Android, and you will be able to easily continue the divided work on your PC.
Cortana will play a role in the whole experience, allowing a similar connection in some of Microsoft's iOS and Android apps as well, and the result should be a smooth navigation, as it is within iOS and macOS. The communication gateway to all of this is the Microsoft Graph cloud service, with which when developers link their applications, they will be able to easily transfer content between different devices and operating systems.
Microsoft has also prepared its own universal clipboard (clipboard), with which you can easily paste copied text from Windows 10 on iOS or Android and vice versa. For this, for a change, Microsoft will use, among other things, the SwiftKey keyboard already at the beginning of the year he bought and which enjoys considerable popularity even on competing platforms.
A bold move
This is clearly a rather bold move by Microsoft, with which it may not succeed, certainly not immediately, but for some iPhone owners in the future, the alternative of not necessarily using a Mac for perfect operation may be very interesting. The reasons may be different. At the same time, however, it depends very much on how Microsoft can implement the mentioned functions and whether in the end it will really be as perfect a continuity as in the apple ecosystem.
It is to him that Microsoft approaches in certain respects, while at the same time in many others it moves very far away. Apple mainly wants to be on Apple and control everything it can, Microsoft missed this chance, so it wants to be omnipresent at least in some way. In this context, the arrival of iTunes in the Windows Store is a decent success for Microsoft, even considering Apple's strategy.
Although Apple has long had iTunes for Windows downloads on the web, it was this application that was one of the most searched for in the Windows Store, where it will now finally appear. In addition, another important player Spotify is heading to the software store, which is important for Microsoft to attract users to its own platform. It still needs to acquire other large applications from Adobe or the Chrome browser from Google, although it is speculated whether Google will even be interested in it.
With the Windows Store, it is possible that over time Microsoft will go the way of Apple and (optionally) limit the download of applications in Windows to its own store. At that moment, the presence of not only iTunes is crucial, because the potential obstacle to working with the iPhone will be overcome. As part of the version of Windows 10 S for schools, Microsoft has already hinted at something similar.
Well, it's desperate, the scrap should have been canceled and not compiled for other platforms.. After all, it's paid off fifth through ninth, what on earth do they want to do with it..? :-/
Well, I hope that what they put in the Windows Store will be a completely different iTunes than we know today. And that maybe that's why the introduction to WS is not right away, but will be sometime after the June Keynote and maybe even after the introduction of new versions of Apple's OS among users.
if it goes to Win iMessage it will be the bomb!
Just so the new iTunes isn't even worse than what we have now. Apple dropped iOS, OS X, Pages, Numbers, ... They probably won't surprise you with anything anymore...