While Apple seeks to lock down the App Store ever more, Microsoft takes the total opposite course for its own application store by clearly showing itself on the side of publishers and developers in the fight against Apple's practices. And after the words, the actions: the Microsoft Store will undergo an overhaul both in form and in substance.

It is true that the Microsoft Store, which vegetates in a corner of Windows (it was launched with Windows 8), needs a vigorous injection of new blood. Windows Central reports that the store's interface is getting a serious facelift, with new buttons, a refreshed design, and additional animations. A lot of work will also be done in terms of the fluidity of navigation – it's very simple, it's like being on the Mac App Store before macOS Mojave.

This fresh start should be official with this fall's "Sun Valley" update (read: Microsoft: a "Big Sur" moment for Windows 10). But if the container is important, the content is just as important, if not more so. The publisher should allow developers to submit Win32 software packaged in EXE or MSI format, more common than the MSIX imposed by Microsoft so far.

Another profound change, software updates can be provided to users from the publishers' own servers (so far, it is Microsoft's servers that distribute them). We can thus imagine that the Creative Suite or Chrome could be offered in the Microsoft Store and updated from the CDNs (content delivery network) of Adobe and Google. Finally, developers will be able to use their own billing mechanisms – so exit the commission to be paid to Microsoft. Science fiction when you see it from the shore of Apple…

All of this should reinvigorate Microsoft's store, which is now looking to position it as an open platform as much as a showcase for the best Windows software. Starting with Microsoft's own software: Teams, Office, Edge and Visual Studio could finally make their appearance there!