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AMD's Hondo Chip 'A Windows 8 Product'
dgharmon points out comments from AMD's Steve Belt, who was asked about the company's upcoming Hondo APU. Hondo is their biggest attempt to date to break into the tablet market, and they're doing so with a distinct focus on Windows 8. Belt said, "This is a Windows 8 product, only. We're not doing Android on this platform, at least not now. ... It is a conscious decision not to go after Android. We think the Windows 8 space has a lot of opportunity, there's plenty of TAM [total addressable market] there for us to go at. So we don't need to spread ourselves into other markets, we think Windows 8 is a great place to start. Down the road we may look at Android, right now we're focused on Windows 8." The article adds, "With both AMD and Intel readying Hondo and Clover Trail respectively for Windows 8 and pushing their respective customers to come up with designs at roughly the same time, it will be interesting to see just how many Windows RT tablets will appear at the operating system's launch. However one thing is clear, neither AMD nor Intel will have Android x86 tablets running with their respective next generation ultra low voltage chips." Fortunately, there's nothing stopping users and manufacturers from running other OSes on Hondo.
I think Windows 8 is shaping up to be like Vista: An attempt to coerce consumers into buying into a walled garden. PC hardware and software manufacturers have been looking jealously at Apple's profit margin and smacking their lips, wondering how to lock in their own slice of the pie. Vista had a bunch of DRM and other features that were friendly to manufacturers but bad for consumers. I am not convinced Microsoft is even trying to make Windows 8 successful -- I think they know it's going to fail, but they're using it to set the stage for its successor, which will do away with many, but not all, of the bad features of Windows 8.
It's a marketing ploy commonly used elsewhere, but not on such a broad scale. It's like this:
Would you buy this memory card for $100?
Hell no!
Well, how about $30?
Oh, well, that sounds more reasonable.
...It only cost $5 to produce and distribute. It's a negotiating tactic -- you shock them first, then back off to appear more reasonable, but still wind up bilking them for more than they'd pay straight across. It's psychology. I think Windows 8 and it's peripheral products -- like this one, are about psychology. It's conditioning the consumer to accept vendor lock-in. Windows 8 is being thrown under a bus so Windows 9 can be shoved down your throat.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
What's with all these new CPUs being labeled for "Windows 8 only?" First it was the new Intel processor, now AMD. Does Microsoft have some new ridiculous "partnership" strategy going on that we need to be aware of?
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Microsoft went open (Shh, let me make my point), Apple went walled-garden, app-stores and didn't take kindly to the replacement of their apps, hardware components etc with others - basically decided they knew best and this would ultimately benefit their users.
So, two different approaches to the market - and Apple have come romping home the winner.
MS switches to the Apple approach - but I'm just not quite sure it's going to work. IF I personally wanted this experience, I'd be typing this on an Ipad already. If MS think they can out-apple, apple - then good luck to them, but I just don't see it happening (whilst I can see myself getting quite pissed off and giving Linux another punt).
Consider this: x86 on Android is a second class citizen, ARM is better supported by the ecosystem. Intel's trying hard so as not to be left out of the party, but ultimately advancing Android is counter to x86's interests in the near term.
Consider more general Linux: next to no application affinity to a particular processor architecture in the desktop space. All the popular software *today* is pretty much straight from distro and trivial to recompile. The exception being flash, but even Adobe seems to be trying to kill it at this point. Again, x86 vendors are likely not to be excited about advancing that picture of the future. Of course, the other fact of relatively low desktop share attributed to linux.
Finally, Windows. While they are trying to do an ARM strategy this go around, 99% of the reason to run windows is to run applications that, coincidentally, are x86-only. If you make x86 processors for a living, you *want* Windows to win at this point as the alternatives erase your competitive advantage and in fact turn it into a disadvantage. There is also probably some fear that the 'safe' Windows market that has always been x86 constrained getting away from that if MS' ARM effort actually takes hold. The more AMD and Intel do in the near term to be 'kind of like ARM, but with real application support', the more unlikely Windows on ARM is to make an advance.
As a desktop Windows developer I was disappointed at how Microsoft has abandoned its desktop roots and users for a single-minded pursuit of the iOS/Android smartphone market.The alienation of their existing customer base has been made very clear to Microsoft. So has the widespread dissatisfaction with Metro 8, but no one at Microsoft is listening to us or even feigning concern.
If Microsoft and hangers on like AMD want to bash their heads into a brick wall that's their choice, but they're not taking us with them. We read the writing on the wall and have switched our desktop efforts to Android tablets. Thanks for the push, Microsoft.
When the talking point is "Windows 8, not Android" my first question is "Windows RT or regular Windows?" In other words, is this an ARM chip (as is the case with 90% of Android systems) or an x86 chip? That key fact is buried near the end of the article (x86).
That little detail makes their decision not to support Android initially a lot easier to understand: people who sell Android tablets have all their expertise in ARM, and are not going to be in a hurry to buy an x86 chip.