>When you shop at Wal-Mart or other store, you give them a % of profit everytime you buy stuff. What's the difference?

The difference is that MS / Apple do not provide any value-add to the products sold via them other than a store front. If they want to have a store thats fine. But I should also be able to go to another store (e.g. Amazon or whatever) or have my own store. Having only one store is a monopoly - there are obvious issues with that. Secondly, we sell products that users pay monthly for since we also provide (a) data for the product, and (b) continuous upgrades and new versions. I have no intention of handing over 20% of our company revenue to anyone.

>You can still sell yourself your "standard" desktop apps without any problems and they will run on Windows 8 in the desktop. It's only if you want to sell "Modern UI" apps that you need to pass through Windows Store.

I understand.

>"Standard" desktop apps still look and act like they did in Windows 7 or older. You can put them side-by-side, on different monitors, etc.

They just uglier on Windows 8. And no start button.