

Windows 8: BFD — Big Forking Decision - raganesh
http://www.mondaynote.com/2011/09/18/windows-8-bfd-big-forking-decision/

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nextparadigms
This is why I think Google deciding to help Intel get into the mobile game was
a poor strategic decision on Google's part. If Intel becomes a strong player
in the mobile market, who do you think will benefit the most from it? Google?
No. Microsoft. Because then they can get back to using x86 chips, while
Google's doesn't gain much of anything, since competition in the ARM market
was already strong enough, and Intel was far from "necessary".

Unless, Google's plan is to get Android on more x86 (older) machines, once the
OS matures a bit more, and become a real OS choice for people using Windows
today. But we'll see if that's their real plan, and if it is, how it will go.

Until then I still think Google's decision to help Intel take over the mobile
market (if that's even possible at this point) will turn out to be a very bad
decision for Android's future, as it will allow Windows a backdoor to get back
on track. Google should realize that hurting Intel means hurting Microsoft.

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hga
" _If Intel becomes a strong player in the mobile market, who do you think
will benefit the most from it? Google? No. Microsoft._ "

But Google's hardware related efforts (along with many others) are a means to
the end of ensuring their core business doesn't get shut out by one or more
gatekeepers. If Microsoft benefits more in this narrow sense I'm sure that's
OK with Google, as long as they don't use that to substitute their own
advertising system for Google's.

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taariqlewis
Great review by Jean Louis Gassee. It will be interesting to see whether this
forking risk is indeed temporal or risks growing into a real issue. Intel has
slipped on maintaining a dominant position on the mobile chips platform. I
think they're waking up to the issue: "What!!?? People actually use these
silly tablet thingies as laptops substitutes? WHAT?" Not sure whether they can
move quickly enough to respond.

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dangrover
Obviously it's a bitch to worry about whether your ARM device will run an old
x86 app, but CLR/.NET apps should be fine, right?

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ghurlman
Not necessarily if you're building a Metro app, which may be all the ARM
devices will support. Metro apps get use of a small subset of .Net namespaces.

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MarkSweep
From what I can tell, the Metro subset of .NET is a projection over the real
.NET 4 framework, which suggests that even on arm the full framework will be
available. Either way though, CLR Metro apps should run on both x86 and ARM.

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protomyth
Logically, if you are writing a new app and believe W8 will sell a lot
(probable), the go with the Metro since that gets you both chipsets. The
problem with that is that Microsoft has been a little erratic since .Net with
what I should write to. It is almost like Java and what UI library I should
use. I do think the app store, if it only shows stuff that will run on your
machine, will mitigate a lot of the problems.

