back to article Is Windows RT not invited to the Windows 10 upgrade party?

With all the hoopla coming out of Microsoft's Windows 10 event in Redmond on Wednesday, there was surprisingly little talk of Windows RT, the feature-limited version of Windows 8.x for ARM-based tablets – and perhaps with good reason. In a Q&A with press following Wednesday's keynote, Redmond OS bosses Terry Myerson and Joe …

  1. JDX Gold badge

    RT seems pointless now

    Maybe it was in theory worthwhile initially - although Winsows Phone would probably have been better - but as El Reg showed only this week you can now get a full Win8.1 tablet, that actually runs OK, for £100! So where's the place for a cut-down, budget version that costs more than the real thing?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: RT seems pointless now

      I wouldn't call the £100 windows tablets running OK, they are total dogs.

      1. Ossi

        Re: RT seems pointless now

        You've never tried one, obviously.

        1. myhandler

          Re: RT seems pointless now

          Ossi - please tell me what's good about it?

          My wife bought me a Surface2 for Christmas and got shirty when I wanted to swap it.

          Sure the construction is good but getting it up and running was a nightmare cos of a million upgrades and a messed up charging system that refused to function.

          The browser has no history in touch mode - you have to switch to desktop mode to get history - joined up thinking? I use history all the time, it's essential.

          Apps ?

          £100 keyboard?

          Horizontal scrolling as the way to scroll general pages ? that's dumb and counter intuitive

          It's a very nice kitchen tablet . The end.

        2. Ossi

          Re: RT seems pointless now

          Bugger - my comment was aimed at a reply (the 'total dog' comment), not the original comment. I have a cheap Windows tablet and it's perfectly usable, and very useful.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: RT seems pointless now

        "I wouldn't call the £100 windows tablets running OK, they are total dogs."

        They are way better than Android tablets at this price point though. A full OS and none of the laggyness.

        1. wikkity

          Re: RT seems pointless now

          > They are way better than Android tablets at this price point though. A full OS and none of the laggyness.

          Hardly worth coming out from under your bridge for 4 measly downvotes was it.

      3. Lysenko

        Re: RT seems pointless now

        "I wouldn't call the £100 windows tablets running OK, they are total dogs."

        Really? Strange how I'm running Visual Studio, Word (full version, not 365) and a dozen browser tabs on one that cost me £79.95 right now.

    2. Zola
      Holmes

      Re: RT seems pointless now

      I wonder how much an x86 Windows tablet would actually cost if both Microsoft and Intel weren't giving away their part of the deal...

    3. Arctic fox
      Windows

      Re: RT seems pointless now

      I agree with you JDX. Indeed I find some of the take in this article rather strange.

      "That sounds like bad news for Windows RT fondlers. Even if Redmond isn't killing off its ARM OS now, the fact that it won't promise full feature parity with Windows 10"

      RT did not have full feature parity with Windows x86 at any stage - and I believe was never intended to. It was intended by Sinofsky to compete with iPad/iOS, not with its x86 older brother and we all know how well that went. As you point out full fat Windows devices are popping up at almost all price points and with Intel (finally) getting its act together when it comes to producing chips that really tackle the power consumption/processing power relationship in a way that begins to make sense in the context of tablets, both price-wise and performance-wise, then it is difficult to see any point in RT at all. With the former Windows Division boss out of the way then I suspect that the general balance of opinion amongst senior managers at Redmond may have swung decisively in the direction of not seeing any point in RT, at least not to the degree or in the same way as Sinofsky conceived of it.

      1. Hans 1
        Windows

        @Arctic fox Re: RT seems pointless now

        So Windows Phone^H^H^H^H^H 10 will be Intel only ? Thought not ... Windows RT is dying because they failed and are canning that, there will not be a Windows Phone^H^H^H^H^H 11, they will can that as well, eventually.

        They have less than 3% market-share, are spending billions on advertizing alone across the globe ... all those prime time tv ads, product placements in series ... and they do not get it ... Windows is synonym with malware-ridden - that is why Windows Phone is failing - Windows 10 [for mobile] will be even worse.

        1. Arctic fox
          Headmaster

          @Hans 1 ".......Windows Phone is failing......" You will have to help me old chap..........

          ............given that you are apparently "replying" to my post. Where in either of my posts did I say anything about Windows Phone, explicitly or implicitly, hmmm? As far as I can see I was very clearly discussing Windows x86 contra Windows RT in the context of tablets.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: @Arctic fox RT seems pointless now

          "Windows is synonym with malware-ridden - that is why Windows Phone is failing"

          Not in mobile - Android is the synonym with malware-ridden here. Windows Phone 8 has had zero malware and zero security vulnerabilities to date. Hence why Windows Phone already has about a 20% share of enterprise mobile sales...

          1. Danny 14

            Re: @Arctic fox RT seems pointless now

            My linx 7 cost £59.99 and is fantastic. Runs like a dog? Not mine, it plays Civ 4 (at lunch time of course - and a huge earth map too), runs word, internet, outlook and has a few steam games on there. The only bad thing about it is the relatively poor battery life - more "phone" level than tablet level of battery.

            It has a usb, uSD and separate HDMI port though and runs XBMC quite happily.

            In comparison my £50 chinatab is pretty useless for just about anything. Its only saving grace is that it runs XBMC reasonably well (720p only though). The kids wont touch it as a lot of games wont run on it - the galaxy tab 2 from a few years ago still going strong.

            1. wikkity

              Re: my £50 chinatab is pretty useless

              How old is it? Are they comparable specs?

              1. Danny 14

                Re: my £50 chinatab is pretty useless

                generic rockchip cortex affair that just about every chinatab was using, bought about the time venue pro came out (work subsidised it as I was doing a comparison of what absolute minimum would look like for remote work). Not a truly fair comparison as it has 512mb RAM - the failing stat but the GFX is also awful and wont run a lot of things. I'd prefer the linx 10 for the bigger screen (7 is ok but fiddly in menus- screen quality is good).

                Brings me onto the dell venue pro, a little more money but specs are better and those run filemaker pro 12 on them just fine (they are domain devices here at work and have docking stations).

                What is does prove is you can buy multiple (usable) windows and androids for the price on an idevice :-) (just saying!)

            2. Arctic fox
              Windows

              @Danny 14 "more "phone" level than tablet level of battery."

              Yes Danny 14 that about sums up my experience with my Lenovo ThinkPad 8 HD. The performance is entirely acceptable but the battery-life is not yet quite there. However, the tech is moving on, at a very high rate of knots in fact. In practice, for most "ordinary mortals" the bottom line is "does it last the day"? When Intel chips have squarely tackled that issue (I do not believe that we are talking more than about 12 - 18 months here*) then I believe that any x86 system (not just Windows) will be the equal of anything the competition can throw at it.

              *I have to say that IMHO Intel should have been in this position at least three years ago, that they only now are really beginning to do the business is not exactly impressive. Indeed I am fairly convinced that MS' announcement at Windows 8's Build Conference 3 years ago that they would release an ARM-version of Windows (i.e. RT) was at least as much driven by the desire to give Intel a good kick up the arse as any great desire to be involved in that hardware platform (outside of course of Sinofsky's apparent belief that Windows RT would stuff the iPad - ho, ho, bloody ho).

    4. big_D Silver badge

      Re: RT seems pointless now

      The problem was, when they started RT, Intel didn't have an answer to ARM.

      As RT was finally released, Intel launched the Z series Atom SoCs, which performed as well as ARM and offered similar levels of battery life. That meant a full Windows experience for the same price, or less, than the "touch only" RT experience (i.e. no chance of running legacy desktop applications if needed).

      RT became an anachronism even before it hit the streets.

      1. Arctic fox
        Windows

        Re: "RT became an anachronism even before it hit the streets."

        It did indeed big_D. I run a Lenovo ThinkPad 8 whose SoC is the most powerful of the current Z-series generation and it is more than adequate when handling basic "desktop" tasks. Handles the full Office package without stumbling etc. Highly mobile of course but at the same time I can dock it via a receiver/HDMI setup with our 55 inch wall-mounted Sammy and use it as a basic living room PC via keyboard and mouse in the comfort of my favourite (not-ARM)chair. This area of the market is in another period of rapid change - should be interesting going forward.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: RT seems pointless now

        I'll say this, the Atom tablet I have is very weighty compared to an ARM one. Similar battery live by having a much bigger batter no doubt.

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: RT seems pointless now

      £75 for a HP Stream 7. Runs really well for fairly simple stuff.

    6. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: RT seems pointless now

      "the fact that it won't promise full feature parity with Windows 10 is hardly a resounding vote of confidence in the platform."

      Windows RT is an alternative to Android / IOS - which are cut down crippleware anyway. It's therefore not surprising that Windows RT won't be getting the full features of Windows 10.

    7. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: RT seems pointless now

      > but as El Reg showed only this week you can now get a full Win8.1 tablet, that actually runs OK, for £100!

      I think the recent appearance of the x86 Bay Trail tablets seals the fate of Windows RT and MS will let it die as it's basically redundant.

    8. proud2bgrumpy
      Devil

      Re: RT seems pointless now

      Yeah - the WindowsRT users out there will be very disappointed - both of them.

  2. cambsukguy

    Windows RT isn't really required anymore, as the above poster says, full windows is almost as good for battery etc. so it just isn't worth it.

    I imagine that MS originally thought that the Intel chips would not manage the performance/power characteristics in such a short timescale.

    It ultimately doesn't matter, the Surface Pro (soon to be just Surface I imagine) has a low-end version that is almost as cheap, almost as good at battery, almost as light and can run .exes etc. Perhaps they will make an even lower powered effort with some Atom class device.

    But, my Surface 2 RT will still run like it does now. It will still get updates for ages and ages. And now, apparently it will get some of the new features, I am assuming Cortana for instance - perhaps as an App like WinPhone. Possibly, the Spartan browser because it is new and therefore written using the APIs that support all windows versions.

    So, by then, Surfaces will be pretty old and, while useful, some of us will look to a replacement and pass the venerable old units to offspring etc.

    I paid 200 quid for it and got a years world-wide Skype and 200GB of OneDrive, it was worth it. It is a fantastic device, I no longer take a laptop when travelling abroad but don't have to rely totally on my phone, especially for watching movies etc., brilliant.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      be honest

      Come on we know your employer gave it to you. Microsoft itself because no other major company bought these things. Even the Playbook laughed at what a fail the Surface RT was.

    2. dogged

      > I paid 200 quid for it and got a years world-wide Skype and 200GB of OneDrive, it was worth it. It is a fantastic device, I no longer take a laptop when travelling abroad but don't have to rely totally on my phone, especially for watching movies etc., brilliant.

      I personally think this is great news because I've been itching to play with one of these things but could never justify the price. Now hopefully they'll start hitting Ebay at the price they should have retailed for.

      1. Danny 14

        Lack of Silverlight on RT showed the commitment MS was going to put into RT. It was stillborn.

        1. asdf

          >Lack of Silverlight on RT showed the commitment

          Kind of like the commitment MS showed silverlight itself huh?

  3. Nya

    WinMo 7 all over again. It was made to look like 8 but never was.

    1. dogged
      Stop

      > WinMo 7

      Never existed. The last version of Windows Mobile was 6.5

      1. Danny 14

        WinMo was a good OS too (for the era we are talking). At the time I had a Samsung Omnia when android released their 1.5 Motorola keyboarded affair, WinMo 6.5 blew it away with just about everything from connectivity, apps, reliability and especially battery life. Problem is MS didn't adapt fast enough to the android trend especially from a licensing cost point of view, WinMo were nearly always premium devices due to costs.

  4. Peter27x

    ARM vs ATOM

    When the Surface RT came out a lot of the analysts were saying that MS *had* to have a ARM tablet, Android and Apple devices, running ARM were so popular and making so much money that MS would be a dead company by tomorrow... So I'm guessing that (partly) that WinRT was a reaction to that.

    Come forward a couple of years and we've seen how the smart-phone and tablet markets have matured and the mad growth has settled. Alongside that there's been a rush to the bottom from some manufactures, so there's less profit in the market now. Finally we're seeing a lot of Atom powered devices appear, and getting good reviews, compared to ARM... So I think MS is right to consider dropping RT, it missed the rapid growth period, it couldn't compete with the better "full-fat" windows and it couldn't compete with "landfill android".

    Porting what-was-called-Windows Phone to the RT tablets would seem like a good move, but I'm guessing MS want to have a fresh start further down the line to re-launch Windows on sub £300 tablets. A shame.

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

    2. Richard Plinston

      Re: ARM vs ATOM

      > When the Surface RT came out a lot of the analysts were saying that MS *had* to have a ARM tablet, Android and Apple devices, running ARM were so popular and making so much money that MS would be a dead company by tomorrow.

      It seemed to me that RT was not so much about selling Windows ARM tablets and was more about stopping the OEMs making ARM tablets with some other OS. Following on from the success of killing off Linux Netbooks by threatening to remove all discounts on all MS products if the OEMs did not 'loyally' change to using the regurgitated XP, they could use a similar threat on Dell's Android tablets and HP's WebOS.

      And it worked.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: ARM vs ATOM

        "Following on from the success of killing off Linux Netbooks by threatening to remove all discounts on all MS products if the OEMs did not 'loyally' change to using the regurgitated XP"

        That's rubbish. Netbooks didn't even really exist when XP was about. The main reason that almost no one bothers selling Linux based PC products is that they cost lots more to provide support for than Windows...

        1. dogged

          Re: ARM vs ATOM

          > That's rubbish. Netbooks didn't even really exist when XP was about. The main reason that almost no one bothers selling Linux based PC products is that they cost lots more to provide support for than Windows...

          Sorry, that's rubbish. The main reason that Asus stopped selling linux-based netbooks was (according to them) that customers returned them on discovering that they couldn't install Office or play any games.

          1. asdf

            Re: ARM vs ATOM

            >that they couldn't install Office or play any games.

            Ding ding give the man a prize. This is still one of the big reasons Microsoft unlike BB can afford to totally fail in the mobile space. Billions coming in regardless. The games though is become less of an edge with steam but it will be a while before Joe Punter understands this.

    3. big_D Silver badge

      Re: ARM vs ATOM

      That's the point, when RT was concieved, Intel had no answer to ARM in the tablet space.

      By the time it was released, Intel had caught up and RT was no longer really needed. It became an anachronism.

      1. Dan 55 Silver badge

        Re: ARM vs ATOM

        RT was only an anacronism because it was so nobbled in the first place. If they didn't lock it down and instead let it run proper desktop apps on ARM (instead of some bodge for Office RT) then it would have sold more. If they had put some kind of emulation layer on for simple apps that use the GUI and wait for input then it would have sold a lot more.

        1. dogged

          Re: ARM vs ATOM

          @Dan 55 - that would require supporting a version of (presumably Visual Studio) compiled for ARM.

          Which I personally would have viewed as added value but I'm guessing they didn't fancy the extra support overhead OR Sinofsky ran into political obstruction from the head of Server & Tools which was, er, Nadella.

  5. Frank N. Stein

    RT failed. Consumers didn't want it and neither did businesses. MS would be crazy to continue the RT "experiment". They're having enough trouble convincing users to open their wallets for the expensive and highly capable Surface Pro Tablets. RT hasn't sold very well because not serving a market that actually exists (consumers/businesses who want a hobbled tablet with a weak app store).

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    On life support?

    I've seen long dead corpses with more life than Windows RT.

    Long dead - just waiting for the wake.

  7. Dan 55 Silver badge

    Windows in all the usual places, not everywhere...

    They've only got Windows to go everywhere by dropping ARM for tablet devices and relying on Intel to subsidise Atom. Intel's subsidies aren't going to last forever though.

    And it's proof that under the hood it's as much held together by rubber bands and paperclips as Windows 8 is. If it were otherwise they could press a button and have yet another build to go alongside Windows 10 for Atom tablets and Windows 10 for ARM phones.

    That's marketing for you.

    1. werdsmith Silver badge

      Re: Windows in all the usual places, not everywhere...

      " Intel's subsidies aren't going to last forever though."

      True, but they will last until they have sufficiently slowed the rise of ARM. Maybe its time for another anti-competitive case. Go EU!

  8. Zola

    Windows RT didn't fail because of ARM

    It failed because Microsoft hobbled the OS, cutting away useful features in order to justify the markup on full-fat Windows. We now see how that worked out, with Microsoft having to give away full fat Windows to attract hardware manufacturers, RT dead in the water and Microsoft only able to compete in the tablet space at all thanks to Intel giving away their x86 chips at zero cost (or worse).

    Microsoft botched Windows RT right from the get-go. It was a poor cousin to a piss poor OS (Windows 8), and stood very little chance.

    A decent version of Windows on ARM could have been a very fine thing, however the fact it wasn't had nothing to do with ARM and everything to do with the crass and arrogant design choices made by Microsoft.

    1. disorder

      Re: Windows RT didn't fail because of ARM

      I more or less entirely agree with this. The surface is/was a fine tablet on hardware terms but the software didn't exist at launch, and still doesn't - because noone is really using the windows app store at all, even for full-fat windows 8, and why would they.

      When the distinguishing feature as a user between RT and 8 is lacking desktop apps, for a while when RT was still "8.0-like" there was a functional jailbreak that made this possible. MS stepped on that with the 8.1-like patch, without which it'd have been remaining quite interesting because it otherwise 'is' ARM Windows 8. The difference is only the name MS give it, and that they took the car keys back after they caught you joyriding.

      Asides from the bundled (non-commercial) Office "2013" (sans scripting - and called it Office RT, so as to build the RT brand as 'restricted technology') then - the software just wasn't there for it. Tiny x86 8.1 tablets then still have access to desktop software, but it's through MS's choices this is so whereas ARM got shut down, and the fact this is leveraged on them now shows just fine this could have been a vector to build out surface on ARM if they'd wanted to. I'd point out, a range of software had been recompiled for ARM/RT even just for a jailbreak. It worked.

      At least it enough, that it could have shored up the gaps to quite a few people but seems like MS didn't want it to succeed without the app store model behind it (I'd be concerned, if it were possible for such concentrated envy of apple's store margins, to congeal into a black hole - we'd be in big trouble) - a model with W10 they're still pushing because, after all, £90 for x86 tablet, and no licence but hoping for a %age on app sales is still a model, even if it's wishful at this stage.

      Let's all wish that remains so.

      Surface stillborn - maybe - but it was because MS's decisions. ARM all too clearly works for everyone else as a source of profit (slim as that became), not loss.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Windows RT didn't fail because of ARM

      Why would they have a version of Windows RT with a desktop when there's no apps that would work?

      People would download and try to run x86 .exe files and then complain to the shop that sold it to them when it didn't work.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Now that Win RT is dead I'd like to know

    Is Microsoft going to tighten SecureBoot on Intel devices ? With Windows 8 a qualified failure and Windows 10 as-a-service looming, a lot of businesses and consumers might understandably be on the lookout for some alternatives so I'm quite worried for my *nix/*BSD Intel PC. I'm not yet ready to allow myself to be squeezed into Raspberry PI.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Now that Win RT is dead I'd like to know

      "Is Microsoft going to tighten SecureBoot on Intel devices ?"

      Why would they need to? Secureboot used with a TPM still hasn't been publically cracked.

      1. asdf

        Re: Now that Win RT is dead I'd like to know

        Think he is implying that Secureboot with TPM will become required to run Windows at some point. Could be wrong though.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Does this mean the end of the ARM powered Windows Phone?

    Looking at what Microsoft have been saying: Windows Phone is dead. Windows 10 is now the OS that runs everywhere, including phones. Windows RT will not become Windows 10 for ARM (according to this article). If correct, doesn't this leave us with Windows 10 running on Atom powered phones? I'll be impressed if Microsoft and Intel can pull that off (but here and now I'm sceptical).

    1. JDX Gold badge

      Re: Does this mean the end of the ARM powered Windows Phone?

      I was under the impression some WP8.x devices would support W[P]10 although I cannot remember where I got that impression.

      "Write once run on any device" doesn't actually mean all devices have to have the same instruction set. Even with Apple, you have to compile your code multiple times to build binaries compatible with 64bit & non-64bit hardware and sometimes more - it does this automatically and packages it into one big file but you can see it compiling 2-3 times in one of my projects.

      So W10 could still support x86/64 and ARM in the same way as long as they have all the APIs - Visual Studio would just build multiple versions which get uploaded to the Store, and your device automatically downloads the appropriate one.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Does this mean the end of the ARM powered Windows Phone?

        I suppose it is possible we could get phones with full blown Windows 10, sporting a phone UI and with applications that have skins for both small and larger screens. Imagine being able take a phone, plug it into a dock, and then use it as a full blown desktop PC. I know similar has been tried with Android phones/laptop form-factor docks, but perhaps Microsoft has the software architecture in place to actually make this work.

    2. asdf

      Re: Does this mean the end of the ARM powered Windows Phone?

      >I'll be impressed if Microsoft and Intel can pull that off (but here and now I'm sceptical).

      Why Intel the largest most advanced chipmaker in the world finally catching up to upstart ARM years later or Microsoft finally getting traction in a market post Gates? Intel biggest problem has been trying to make the ugly old dog x86 instruction set work in mobile and being motivated by the tiny margins in mobile chips to do so. They are being dragged in to make it happen. Microsoft well over half the company still seems to think its 1999.

  11. Refugee from Windows

    Please turn the lights off

    M$ are banking that the x86 franchise keeps going, but given that a lot of the world develops on ARM based cores, that would really mean an exit from the embedded market for one.

    The danger is that their OS that's supposed to run everywhere can't because there's a whole class of processors it can't run on. In that case, Google will rule the roost with Android and M$ will just be selling an office suite as a service.

  12. psyvenrix

    lone user

    I can easily believe i am one of the few to own an RT device.

    I bought it to see how bad it would be. most of the reports are true.

    It can be slow but my usage is squarely IE web browsing, the Metro RDP client, SSH & IRC.

    So my asus vivo tab works more as a remote terminal than a stand alone device.

    Funny how we have almost looped back to the mainframe days where there are looming great machines *out there* and everyone connects back with their own terminal deck.

    1. Hellcat

      Re: lone user

      You're not alone, there are a few of us out there.

      When they say it will run with some of the features, I wonder if that is in the same way that a phone will run with some of the features? I wouldn't expect to be able to install Exchange server on my RT device, but being able to run IE, skype, etc should all be possible. If so, then perhaps it's not the end lf the line?

  13. vmistery

    At least RT owners will get security updates and what not for 7/8 more years which is more than Playbook owners will be getting. It might not be that much comfort consderin the App store will still be terrible but it is something! If all you want is a web browser then it is almost certainly better than having an Android tablet too from a security standpoint.

    1. Naselus

      True, though Windows RT has the early-90s Apple security advantage built-in anyway - like most of the junk Cupertino churned out in Steve Jobs' absence, no-one would be interested in writing malware to run on Win RT. There's next to no user base, and those who do use it use real computers for anything useful anyway.

  14. xenny

    I really rather like my RT tablet. Battery life is good, and apart from the lack of Macro support, the Office implementation is of course excellent. The icing on the cake is that x86 malware goes nowhere.

  15. gymychoo

    WIndows RT is a total joke and complete waste of time. It was obvious from the start it was doomed.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    ARM doesn't really fit in with the Windows tablet concept. The whole point of a Windows tablet for me was to have some full blown Windows apps in a highly mobile form. There simply isn't enough apps for the "metro" style Windows to bother.

    Microsoft would have been better trying to enhance the touch screen usability of normal Windows rather than developing a totally different approach. It just seems like split personality.

  17. Mike Dimmick

    Horrible communication from MS

    I think this is bad communication from MS, compounded by poor/lack of branding. They have both 'Windows 10' as an umbrella term meaning the whole family of related products, and 'Windows 10' as a specific set of components, which is the product for x86 desktops, laptops, and tablets over 8" in diagonal. I think they mean that Windows RT devices will not be updated to 'Windows 10' the product - just as Windows RT 8.1 doesn't have all the components of 'Windows 8.1' the product - while there will still be a product from the Windows 10 family. They haven't decided exactly what will be in it yet, and they don't want to brand it 'Windows RT 10' because they don't want to continue the confusion.

    The big question is whether to continue to include the desktop, and all the Win32 and COM components which it depends on.

    It hinges on Office. Windows RT devices all included Office Home & Student 2013, the same code recompiled for ARM, with only features removed that couldn't be easily rewritten for ARM within the time available. The proposed Office for Windows Runtime is expected to have a fuller feature set than Office for iOS or Android, but it could well end up being smaller than what Office RT provided.

    If so, the dilemma for the Windows team is whether to replace Windows RT with SKU #2, and lose features from Office, or to replace it with SKU #1, and continue to ship the desktop version of Office, appropriately cut down (although presumably still missing the same features as it was before, depending on whether they invested any effort in rewriting those components.) It may be that Office's feature set is still not finalized sufficiently to make this decision - it could be a very late breaking announcement as to which way they're going to go.

    Saying that there will be no upgrade path, or that it won't be Windows 10 (what on earth else would it be if not some subset of all components in the Windows 10 build tree?), is massively premature.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    My theory, if the Internet is interested

    My theory is that the fine folk at Microsoft who decide on strategy and product delivery are so very clever that what they do and the decisions they make are completely beyond the ability of most of us to comprehend. Same as Yahoo! and HP really.

    Windows RT is a case in point: most comments I've read on this forum have stated how Microsoft botched the whole RT/Arm thing right from the start and are now flogging a dead horse long after the whip has broken and the horse decomposed.

    But maybe Microsoft are actually doing something really, really clever. I just don't understand what.

  19. launcap Silver badge
    Facepalm

    Brand confusion

    What surprises me is that Microsoft are going back to the "Windows everywhere" idea - ignoring the fact that ordinary people got/will get confused and buy something for their shiny "Windows 10" portable device and then expect it to work on their shiny "Windows 10" desktop (which it probably won't) or vice-versa (ditto)

    I know they are trying to harmonise the APIs for the different platforms but I suspect they don't understand that the platforms *need* to differentiated. Which (I suspect) is why Apple clearly delineates between iOS and OS X despite tyhe fact that are, fundamentally, the same.

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