Apr 26, 2011 12:11 GMT  ·  By

A few screenshots circulating earlier this month, allegedly depicting the upcoming Windows 8 App Store are fakes.

Because they didn’t appear in any way real to me I avoided the topic entirely earlier this month, and it turns out that I had great instincts on this one.

While the screenshots that emerged in the first half of April 2011 come from a real application, the images are not connected with Windows 8 in any way.

According to Long Zheng, the alleged Windows 8 App Store leaked details are nothing more than a third-party Chinese application dubbed Appmarts.

The app is designed to help users simplify download and management of their Windows programs, but even though it was passed for the forthcoming Windows 8 App Store, the real application outlet for Windows vNext continues to remain a mystery.

The Windows 8 App Store (Windows Store) has not been officially confirmed by Microsoft, and personally I don’t expect the software giant to open up on its plans for quite some time.

Although the volume of Windows 8 leaks is increasing constantly with Milestone 1 and Milestone 2 Builds already available for download in the wild, details on the App Store continue to be scarce, and limited to the initial bits of information offered to the public.

This might have something to do with the fact that the App Store will be offered as a Cloud service, complementary to the operating system.

In this regard, there should be very little actual code included in Windows 8, if any. At most Microsoft will work to include some sort of a client in Windows vNext to deliver a native App Store experience to users, although Internet Explorer 10 and HTML5 content should really do this trick on their own.

This weekend testers invited to take Windows 8 Milestone 2 (M2) Build 6.2.7955.0 out for a spin managed to leak the bits in the wild, with downloads now available from major torrent trackers.