Windows App Store? I Swear I've Seen This Before…

With a tide rapidly shifting towards mobile and tablet devices, it should be no surprise that work is well already underway on Windows 8. An early build circulating apparently hints at a more unified OS to combat what Apple is doing with OS X/iOS and what HP is doing with Palm webOS. And some screenshots are starting to leak out. And a few appear to include, what else, an app store.

WinRumors posted the shots this morning while noting that they’re unverified. But actually, the shots in English were previously out there, what’s new are the ones in Chinese that Cnbeta found that seem to verify the design. And what a design it is — I swear this looks familiar…

Last year, we ripped Google for ripping off the design of Apple’s App Store for their Chrome Web Store. This actually might be worse. It looks almost as if Microsoft is ripping off Google ripping off Apple. Again, allegedly — the shots aren’t confirmed.

Let’s hope Microsoft isn’t actually doing such a lame copy job with their actual store. Rushing to release a store baked into the OS months after a competitor is bad enough. At least nail the design or bring something new to the table.

Stop me when these look familiar.

Windows App Store:

Mac App Store:

iOS App Store:

Chrome Web Store:

Android Market: