Above is what Daring Fireball looked like when I visited Saturday night. The only visible content was two ads, navigation, with only the hint of a blog should I choose to scroll down some more. I am the first to admit that the image above is unfair. I lucked into visiting the site at exactly the wrong time, and that the sponsorship testimonial he wrote was unusually long this week. Still, I note this because of his reaction to his discovery that some bundled apps in Windows 8 displayed ads: “Gross”, which is in line with his general distain for advertisements.

Now, I could point out the various promotional interruptions that sometimes greet your Mac or iPad-using day, but I thought it was probably already beside the point when now the major operating systems come with actual stores built into them. Windows 8 has the Store tile which loads what I guess is called “Windows Store” which is the only place to acquire and install the new ‘Metro’-style applications.  Ubuntu has reconfigured its package management application and turned it into a store. (Additionally, Canonical altered its desktop search interface to also search Amazon.com and place products it finds from that store into the search results.) And Apple, which had two stores built in since Snow Leopard, has routed its software update feature through the Mac App Store, as well as selling operating system upgrades solely through the store. Thus, you have to interact with the store to keep on top of system security updates, and to get new OS X releases. Windows system updates still come through a separate applet via the Control Panel, but ‘Metro’-app updates have to be downloaded through the store, too. It remains to be seen, though, if Windows will push new OS versions through its store. It seems a bit late to complain about ads here and there, when the OSes already direct you to exit through the gift shop.