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Microsoft Details Windows 8 for ARM
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."
Y'know, for all I hear about Linux being so fractured, I'd expect to see more coherence from Microsoft and Apple.
The vast majority of distros differ in small ways, but they all work with mostly the same paradigms. To install software, you usually install a package from a repository. To add something not in the repositories, it's usually "./configure; make; make install".
Looking at the Windows world, there's worse fracturing, but because it's all under one brand, it's somehow okay. Inter-process communication is done with DDE - no, wait - OLE. I mean sockets. Really .NET has its own IPC and you should use that now. On one system, you install with an executable file obtained from the vendor. On another system, you install through a storefront.
At least Linux accepts that it's fractured, and each distro often learns from the others.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Exactly. It's legacy software that's tied mainstream computing to the x86 architecture for two decades.
It's legacy software that's tied people to Windows for two decades. Break the compatibility and no-one needs Windows any more.
Why? So far t his is just the ARM version. It sounds more like they just are going the cheap route, and not fulling integrating the ARM version with their Intel version.
Basically to my thinking: A) Other Win8 versions have these features, then this is laziness. No borg icon warrented. B) All Win8 versions lack these features (then why the big deal about the ARM version?), then this is a closing of the walls intentionally for a purpose. Borg icon deserved.
There is another possibility: Microsoft has massive legacy commitments. Practically all the world's boring corporate stuff that isn't old, specialized, or hip, enough to be running on some sort of intimidating big iron or linux/web/cloud/thingamawhatsit. Most of that software is absolute dreck, and rather boring, but much of it is also quite critical to a variety of high value operations and impossible or uneconomic to port or even modify very much. For this reason, Microsoft's walled-garden options on x86/64 are pretty minimal. Architecturally they could roll it out tomorrow(Software Restriction Policies are basically that, but under the control of your domain admin); but the customers that matter would scream like nobody's business.
However, since there isn't any legacy Windows software or legacy Windows device drivers, on ARM, since it has never run on ARM before, there is no legacy market to worry about. Microsoft has a free hand, more or less. As with the xbox, the other recent situation where MS started clean, without legacy impediments, they apparently see a walled garden as their best option.
It remains to be seen how long the momentum of more-or-less-open x86 IBM compatibles will carry them into the future; but so long as the legacy/in-house/custom demand is there, they'll be hard to kill entirely. However, I'd say that it is "outlook not so good" for open platforms any time somebody starts a new one from scratch...
It's API compatible minus features not physically available on a tablet. A quick recompile and voila, instant port.
You're not a software developer, are you? Because I wouldn't want to work with someone who thinks that they can just do a 'quick recompile' and ship a product out the door.
And, in any case, that wouldn't help the bazillions of old, unsupported Windows programs that keep people tied to Windows.
The problem with Microsoft's new walled garden is that they have an already entrenched walled garden competitor: iOS.
They also have an entrenched open competitor: Android.
Windows on ARM is just Microsoft's PS/2 like attempt to recreate its monopoly on the new platform where all the excitement and momentum already is. It's not that Microsoft's existing Windows platform doesn't also have momentum, but that is already in a very long slow decline and Microsoft knows it. (I hope they know it, since the decline of PC sales and thus Windows sales was in their quarterly report.)
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.