The Windows 8 Consumer Preview suggests that things will get even worse for unsigned applications - whilst it's still straightforward to force it to download anyway, the UI makes it less obvious IMO. From what I've read, even signed applications will still be seen as untrusted if they haven't been downloaded a large number of times. On the flip side, it will be such a common issue that users will soon learn just to click to download them anyway.


(Although with Windows 8, presumably there'll also be the way round it to distribute on MS's download site, paying $99 a year for the privilege, and letting them take 30% of any revenue ... yeah, I don't like where things seem to be heading.)

I still don’t understand as to how thousands of penniless kids  -- that obviously never formed a company --  publish their apps (and there are tens of millions of downloads of that kind of apps!).

Because they don't bother with signing anything on Windows, and plenty of people ignore the pointless Windows warnings.

The Windows 8 Consumer Preview suggests that things will get even worse for unsigned applications - whilst it's still straightforward to force it to download anyway, the UI makes it less obvious IMO. From what I've read, even signed applications will still be seen as untrusted if they haven't been downloaded a large number of times. On the flip side, it will be such a common issue that users will soon learn just to click to download them anyway.

I still don’t understand as to how thousands of penniless kids  -- that obviously never formed a company --  publish their apps (and there are tens of millions of downloads of that kind of apps!).

Because they don't bother with signing anything on Windows, and plenty of people ignore the pointless Windows warnings.