If your customers check a setting called “side-loading” in "Updates & Security" under "For developers" with a fairly scary warning, then yes you can sell outside the Windows Store.

Nope. Now you can double-click the appx file. Demonstrated on Build keynote.

Well, that's a whole lot nicer than their website is currently telling me. I did look for updated instructions as this has been a bit of issue with contractor supplied software.

These settings are about digital signatures of applications.

Yes, they've been trailing that for a while. Do you know if there's any kind of legally-binding commitment to keep this option open, or might this be a temporary thing while they try to get some traction for the platform?

I'm sure it's not legally binding, but neither is Apple's letting people run unsigned applications or even signed applications from outside the app store.

MS seems pretty serious about trying to get developers on board with their platform. I can't imagine them reversing course on this, especially with "Tim Sweeney is wrong about everything, UWP is an open platform" being a recurring subtext of the keynote.

You mean programs?

No, I mean apps. I'm just as lazy as anybody else, and I don't see a need to use an older word with an extra syllable and a bunch of baggage just to show off that I was using computers before the iPhone came out.

If they were distributed as .programx files instead of .appx files, maybe you'd have a point.

So when the IPhone came out, the word 'program' was changed to 'app'?

In popular usage, pretty much.

I'd object more if it were something like "nuculer" where we're adding in wrong letters to pronounce it wrong, but I really don't care if something is an "app" or a "program".

As far as connotations go, "app" tends to mean a simple single-purpose piece of software, and "program" is an all encompassing legacy blob that takes a dump in 40 different folders because it can't keep its shit together. Not always true, but still what I think of. I tend to use the words that way when the software in question falls into one category or the other.

Will I call Forza an app because it's on the store? Eh, maybe. I'll probably call it a game (does anybody call those "programs"?). Would I call AutoCAD an app if they started distributing it as a UWP package? Less certain. Maybe not. Skype? Absolutely.

Even before the iPhone came out, people used the abbreviation "app" for "application".

Source: I was around then ;)

True, especially with OS X having .app file extensions. I still called them "Applications" more often than not though.

Oh, so it's like a Mac thing. So why do we have to call Windows programs 'App'?

It's not a Mac-only thing, it has been used on Linux and Windows for decades.

http://www.drdobbs.com/windows/windows-apps-and-exception-ha...

But did they use "app" instead of "program"?