Re: Hello pot, this is kettle...
> There is one and is called "Windows Installer"
Windows installer is not the best by any stretch, but that is largely irrelevant to this discussion because we are taking about repositories not installers. An installer is not fundamentally much more than a way to check for prerequisites, stop services and to copy a few files around.
An uninstaller is just another application which in theory reverses the process*
There are some important features of an app store not covered by windows installer.
- locating an application for a given purpose.
- visibility of user ratings and popularity
- being sure of the legitimacy of the download link
- buying it.
- knowing about and receiving updates, service packs or hot fixes.
As it stands in the windows world, you get each vendor coming up with their own half baked update mechanisms. Half the time they don't work (HP/Intel), and the others are a mixture of annoying popups every few days (Java), trying to sneak other software in during a supposed update (anything Apple). There are a couple of not to bad ones (notepad++) but they are few and far between. It just doesn't make a lot of sense to compare a store with an installation mechanism.
*unless you are Symantec where it is purely cosmetic.