16 MACWORLD AUGUST 2021
MACUSER 5 WINDOWS 11 FEATURES APPLE SHOULD STEALpercent cut is too high, Microsoft is
changing its own rules in Windows 11.
While the terms of the Microsoft Store
have always been friendlier than the Mac
App Store (85/15), in Windows 11 Microsoft
is giving developers the option to keep
100 percent of what they sell by using their
own third-party commerce platforms.
On one hand, it’s obviously a
response to Apple’s regulatory issues, but
it also begs the question—if Microsoft can
afford to make that change, why can’t
Apple? Allowing third-party commerce
engines would open the Mac App Store
to developers put off by Apple’s terms
and open the door for the iOS App
Store to relax its conditions as well. It
seems inevitable that Apple will have to
relent at some point, and it makes sense
to start with the Mac, where the App Store
isn’t the only way to download.
WIDGET FEED
Windows users will finally get widgets
when version 11 arrives on their desktops
and laptops, and while it looks very similar
to macOS Big Sur, with customizable and
resizable blocks of data, Microsoft has
also integrated widgets with a news feed
to give a full dashboard of information.
Rather than seeing a skinny rail of
widgets, users can expand the widgets
pane in Windows 11 to fill the entire screen,
where they’ll find an array of useful
information, including traffic, sports, and a
customizable news feed that presents
stories of interest using both local and
national sources. Microsoft has even
built a way
to contribute
to local
publications if
you like what
you read. With
Apple News
and News+, it
seems like a
wasted
opportunity to
leave all those
articles
cooped up in
(^) an app. ■