APT of 15 years ago is a pretty far cry from APT of today.  In fact APT was abandoned by it&#x27;s original maintainer and kinda sucked until something like 2007 or 2008 when someone else started working on it again.  But you know rose colored lenses.<p>WU has never really been about software installation or upgrade, it&#x27;s focus has always been about bug fixes and security patches.  Silverlight and IE are the only apps that have ever been upgradable via WU and for IE that&#x27;s been a relatively new occurrence primarily driven by getting users off of older insecure versions.  So really Silverlight is only app ever distributed via WU.<p>You also have to consider that APT was a solution to the horrible experience of getting and installing Debian libraries and applications which still is a pain in the ass without APT.  Windows never had the problem, apps that were available for download were easy to download and install.<p>Keep in mind that APT is for opensource software and doesn&#x27;t have to deal with authentication and authorization of software licenses.<p>And since WU isn&#x27;t a store front and most Windows software isn&#x27;t free, opening up WU to 3rd party apps would probably have come with distribution costs that I would wager most app developers wouldn&#x27;t pay.<p>So again not a very fair comparison.