Windows 8 on ARM: Microsoft bets on Office 15 and IE10 Steve Ballmer wasn't kidding when he said Windows 8 could be Microsoft's "riskiest product bet." With two-and-a-half weeks to go until Microsoft delivers the Windows 8 Consumer Preview, time has run out on holding back and Microsoft is now telling Windows devs just what they're in for with the next version of its PC client. …
im kinda interested in x86 Win8 on a tablet but wouldnt line up at a door and would wait for a few months or second gen hardware, this ARM bussiness doesnt sound helpful, and Im not convinced by Win8 on a desktop yet, but assuming Win8 x86 will end up on a tablet and i can do as i please on it id probably get one
WOA (sounds like what you yell to a horse just before it goes off the cliff) will
1) Will not run any existing applications
2) The tablets will probably cost just as much if not more then an IPad
3) Is based on an interface that claim to fame is it has driven down MS share of the mobile market share.
4) Is a totally different experience then what MS currently offerings (how you purchase applications, what you can do with it, ...) that is looks nothing like what they sell today. Why don't they just call it "Ms IPad".
5) Offers (as far as I see it) zero compelling reasons to buy over the current market owner (other then for the some percentage of Reg readers who either hate Apple or love spending their nights working on spreadsheets).
Someone at MS took the list of five top ways to lose the tablet race and turned it into the feature set for WOA.
WOA will live forever - in many a text books that are going to be written about how badly MS screwed this up - this is going to make "New Coke" look like the best marketing move in history.
The desktop on ARM is obviously an afterthought. Why is it there? Because the MS devs had to realize that their shiny new approach does not work at all for certain tasks, office applications being among these.
So they were forced into a compromise: "Okay, here you go, you can run Office on the desktop, but nothing else! When you're not using Office, please pretend that the desktop doesn't exist! Pretty please!"
Metro as it is right now is not suitable to become the only UI for Windows, not only on desktops (haha), but apparently on tablets as well. Considering this, the way the desktop is treated in Win8 will come back to haunt Microsoft VERY soon after the release of the OS, if not sooner.
I think it's there because they didn't have the resources to replace its functionality with Metro versions. They'd have had to rewrite all of the Control Panel bits, as well as the file explorer and Office, to use WinRT. That's much more work than recompiling for ARM and tweaking the few places that waste battery.
If WOA succeeds, they will eventually get around to rewriting the desktop functionally to use WinRT and then drop the desktop from it entirely. Meanwhile they've tried to limit the damage it can do by only allowing their own apps (and not all of those). If they truly believed mouse and keyboard were essential for certain tasks, they'd open the desktop to everyone, not just their own stuff; to do otherwise would cripple the platform.
I know a huge digital pay TV network invested millions of dollars for silver light Drm inside browser. Not naming them and they aren't in EU or USA.
obviously, they can get some kind of shell app but it breaks the basic reason why they went with silverlight, to sell content to facebook/ twitter addict, never writing browser types and of course, badly administered working types.
Some people even forgot how to install apps. Activex model was working for them.
anyway, they shouldn't have trusted Microsoft who didn't even release an official plugin (that monkey's clone doesn't count)
Microsoft's strategy is still directed towards the cloud (eg Azure). The tablet is a cloud access device so WOA essentially becomes the hardware access device to Microsoft services (including App in their App store). You tie down the browser to ensure the use of apps.
So Microsoft has a story for corporates. The corporate can move to tablets - the tablets can be x86 if you want existing code to run, or ARM-based if you want to move to cloud-based development. In both cases you have the Windows UI. So in one way it's partly shoe-horning in x86 tablets into the ARM space, but it's also styming full scale move to Android/iOS ("Wait, wait, Windows is coming on ARM..."). Microsoft is therefore trying to play two games - entry into a space where it currently has nothing, but also providing a bridgehead for x86 tablets. I just don't know if it has a real compelling reason to buy. Do you really want Excel on a tablet?
> also styming full scale move to Android/iOS
When Netbooks started they were cheaply built from DVD player screens, cheap CPUs, SD memory and free Linux. While the OEMs must conform to using Windows on all machines in order to 'earn' the MS discounts and 'advertising partnership incentives' these netbooks could not run Windows, especially Vista, so were exempt from the directives.
MS brought back XP and raised the spec just so that the OEMs would be forced (through threat of discount loss across _all_ PCs) to drop Linux.
So the OEMs started making ARM 'all in one' and tablets. These again could not run any form of Windows. MS saw this as loss of control of the OEMs, the whole basis of its marketing and sales.
So WOA is announced. ARM machines _must_ be locked so they can only run WOA. This isn't about whether consumers would buy ARM tablets or PCs, it is about stopping OEMs from shipping Linux or Android in any form, and retailers from carrying them. It doesn't matter if WOA is judged useless by the consumers, they would just have to buy x86 tablets running Windows 8 because no other alternate would be available.
"Desktop" WOA might be handy for VDI. The tablet lets MS try out all sorts of things with windows and ARM.
Consider HP/Calxeda's server - it would be quite handy to fit 288 VD's into a 4U rack system.
Like Apple's "no flash" rule, the lack of emulation is to ensure only apps which take account of ARM's architecture (limitations) are run, improving the customer experience.
i don't actually know anyone who does ! Everyone moved to Open Office years ago, and now uses Libre Office. Whatever, I will be one of the millions and millions who won't touch it, but I am looking forward to a Win8 mobile - bored shitless of Apple's whiney bullshit, and while droid is good it's not great. Win8 mobiles soonest the betterest
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