Microsoft Details Windows 8 for ARM 372
MrSeb writes "In an 8,000-word treatise, Steven Sinofksy himself has taken up pen and paper to describe Windows 8 on ARM (WOA) in great detail. There's a lot of good stuff in there, but one point is particularly troubling. Quoting Sinofsky: 'WOA does not support running, emulating, or porting existing x86/64 desktop apps. Code that uses only system or OS services from WinRT can be used within an app and distributed through the Windows Store for both WOA and x86/64. Consumers obtain all [WOA] software, including device drivers, through the Windows Store and Microsoft Update or Windows Update.' It's hard to under-emphasize just how huge a change that is. It's one thing to say that ARM CPUs won't support x86 emulation; something else entirely to split software delivery and installation. Up until now, one of the biggest differences between desktop and mobile operating systems has been the ability to install software. It's true that Microsoft's decision to wall off unapproved software installation is similar to the approach of Android and iOS — but iOS isn't the same thing as OS X. Combining both of these decisions under the 'Windows' brand could be disastrous, not because Microsoft is evil, but because it creates two entirely different user experiences on the basis of which ISA your CPU supports."
Re:Please, (Score:2, Informative)
I say no borg icon, because Microsoft is irrelevant.
Re:Please, (Score:4, Informative)
May we have the old Borg icon back for this story?
No, the old borg icon had the Bill Gates face, a guy that since then has saved millons of lives. He deserve a better icon.
Why Go ARM when there is Medfield? (Score:5, Informative)
I am failing to see why anyone would get an WOA tablet.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5365/intels-medfield-atom-z2460-arrive-for-smartphones [anandtech.com]
Summary Medfield is running in similar power envelope to an ARM SoC, but with faster benchmarks.
ARM might get you marginally more battery life, but Medfield gives you full backward compatibility.
Re:Like NT/RISC before it... (Score:4, Informative)
Why are uninformed FUD comments like this getting modded up? The blogpost clearly states that WOA devices will be unequivocally labelled to strongly distinguish them from traditional x86/64 devices.
WOA is not an attempt to replace Windows with a gimped version of itself. It's meant to be another member of the Windows family, like Windows Server, Windows Phone, etc., that extends the basic Windows paradigm to devices where it does not have significant market share. It is basically a rearchitected Windows CE that takes into account the rise of iOS.
iOS is derived from OSX, but you wouldn't expect to run an OSX application on iOS. So Joe Q Public is already primed to the idea that top-tier desktop applications won't run on WOA, and from reading the article, it seems that the marketing of the tablet devices will make that abundantly clear. Windows 8 Desktop is the successor to Windows 7 and WOA is something different, a competitor to iOS that has a Windows-esque look and feel.
Where WOA claims to have an advantage over iOS is, first, that it will allow users interact with the device with a traditional desktop paradigm, if they choose. Secondly, WOA apps, unlike iOS apps, will be also able to be run on your traditional desktop/laptop, making for a much more integrated total experience. And thirdly and most importantly, MS Office.
However, if the concept of being able to "up-run" your tablet apps on your desktop proves fruitful, there's no engineering reason why Apple couldn't do the same thing. And of course, once Apple did do it, suddenly up-running your apps would be the most awesomeish thing ever.
Re:Well (Score:5, Informative)
For the people that absolutely cannot live without legacy Win32 code, there will be x86 devices in similar form factors as the ARM devices. There was a whole pile of them unveiled at CES this year.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)