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Windows RT Could Make a Comeback

Posted by timothy on from the well-that's-a-low-bar dept.

SmartAboutThings writes: Windows RT has been a terrible flop for Microsoft, but it seems the company isn't yet ready to totally abandon the concept. There's now speculation that Microsoft is working on Windows 10 RT, as mentions of the 'new OS' have been spotted inside of Device Guard which is a new security feature for Windows 10 Enterprise that scans a program for a digital signature, and determines whether it's trusted or not. Judging by its name, the OS should not be confused with proper Windows 10 that we see on Microsoft's mobile devices, as Windows 10 RT is a version of the OS that is designed for the desktop class PC and tablets.

4 of 73 comments (clear)

  1. Windows CE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Forgive me for being unfamiliar with Windows RT and CE, so perhaps this is a dumb question. What's different between Windows RT and Windows CE? I was under the impression that Windows CE was a decent (or at least successful) OS for mobile devices.

    1. Re:Windows CE by Lisandro · · Score: 2, Interesting

      MS without Intel is not exciting, and Intel isn't particularly well positioned under 10W TDP, except if the user needs to run Windows.

      Intel's Core-M chips (aka Skylake) are impressively competitive and average around 4.5W. I bought a Zenbook a while ago expecting to give it some light web browsing use and it is my main travel gear right now - lightweight, fanless and powerful enough to code in.

    2. Re:Windows CE by Solandri · · Score: 3, Interesting

      WinCE became Windows Mobile (this was back in the PDA days when Palm was the main competitor), which became the starting point for Windows Phone.

      Windows RT was a port of the Windows API from x86 and AMD64 to ARM. People erroneously refer to it as a flop. Yes it was a flop in the market, but it succeeded at what it was intended to do - to allow Microsoft to hedge their bets.

      Back when Microsoft began working on Win RT, mobile devices had just become the fastest growing computing sector. Nobody knew what the future held - if Intel/AMD desktop and laptop processors would continue to dominate, or if ARM processors were going to erode away their market share until ARM became the dominant player. Despite Microsoft's long relationship with Intel, they were a software company so didn't really have a horse in the race. Consequently they hedged their bets. The created both Windows 8 and Windows RT. Developers could then write their programs to a single API. Regardless of which processor architecture won, they would just be one recompile away from having a functioning Windows program that would run on contemporary computing devices.

      Basically Microsoft threw Intel in the way of the ARM bus, telling Intel that if they wanted to continue to be the CPU that Windows ran on, they'd be solely responsible for making their CPUs competitive with ARM processors. That's a large part of the reason Intel has been concentrating so heavily on Atom and ultra low voltage Core processors lately - so they could compete with ARM in power consumption, and prevent ARM processors from spreading beyond the phone/tablet market into the laptop and eventually desktop market..

      Intel was mostly successful, so Win 8 became dominant and Win RT was tossed into the dust bin. If Intel had failed, Win RT would've become dominant and Win 8 would've been put into the dust bin. Microsoft made both knowing one of them would fail. They just didn't know which one ahead of time.

    3. Re:Windows CE by slew · · Score: 3, Interesting

      In my opinion, Microsoft stacked the deck against Win RT (to Intel's benefit). Although Win RT was a port of the WinAPI, you couldn't develop for it unless you were a professional developer. I was just about to buy a WinRT machine, until I found out Msft *disabled* the capability to write WinAPI apps in their released WinRT (it was present in the beta version).

      They apparently did this under the guise that they wanted to force developers to write "Metro" apps that would work on their tablets, rather than port WinAPI apps to WinRT. Had WinRT been able to run more WinAPI apps (than office), one might make the argument that Microsoft was all in for WinRT, but as it turns out Microsoft was just all in for WinPhone/Metro. WinRT was a crippled afterthought (kind of like WinNT for DecAlpha). There was no way WinRT would ever become dominant because Microsoft's focus was on WinPhone instead.

      Intel simply placed their bet: Linux datacenter, Win8 for server to desktop to low-end laptops, and Android for mobile. Microsoft placed their bets on Win8 for high-end to low-end laptop, and WinRT/WinPhone for mobile... Intel basically used Microsoft's Win8/WinRT segmentation as an opportunity to create a firewall around the remainder of their low-end PC laptop business and spent their time "investing" $2B+ money in their mobile Android business against WinRT/WinPhone.