
Microsoft demos future Windows version running on Intel and ARM chips (video) - shawndumas
http://venturebeat.com/2011/01/05/microsoft-demos-future-windows-version-running-on-intel-and-arm-chips-video/
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Niten
I just hope that, from the end user's perspective, they pull this off as
smoothly as Apple managed the PowerPC to Intel transition. I'm taking it for
granted that most .NET applications will work on Windows ARM out of the box,
but that won't be nearly enough.

If people can't run existing native x86 Windows apps on this, it won't be
thought of as "real Windows". Legacy x86-only Windows binaries will be around
for a long, long time given the enormous size of the Windows ecosystem.

------
Hoff
In two years, Microsoft will probably be competing with...

...maybe the second or third-generation iPad? ...maybe the forth or fifth-
generation iPhone? ...maybe Mac OS X Lion, or later? ...whatever might follow
the A4 SOC? ...and whatever else Apple is baking in the Cupertino product
ovens.

Not to mention Android Saltwater Taffy, and Ubuntu Peckish Pixie, or
whatever...

And then there's HP and their WebOS, RIM, and the various other vendors that
are already in or are seeking to get into the ARM and phone and tablet and
related markets.

And then there's the inherent delay before folks can or will adopt the new
Windows platforms. How many folks that are still on WXP and thinking about W7
and WP7 (as good as those are, too) are going to leap onto WARM, after all?

Microsoft need to aim _way_ past the existing iOS and Android and WebOS
environments here and way past WP7, and they're going to be encountering a
massive amount of (new) work as porting can inherently delay or derail
parallel new feature development. And then the third-party vendors will need
to add support.

And then will the existing customers then want to buy WARM products in
quantity?

------
S_A_P
The line

"If these ARM-based rivals can succeed in the market with their chips, they
could break Intel’s near-monopoly on Windows PCs. And if Microsoft can do it,
Apple probably can too."

Has me shaking my head. Apple already basically _is_ doing that. I suppose you
have to dumb tech news down in some cases, but still.

~~~
shawndumas
I think what you quoted means that Apple can also move off of Intel. As far as
I know Apple are not currently moving off of Intel.

~~~
S_A_P
I disagree- Apple could have used Atom for the iPad. They Purchased PA Semi,
and seem to be taking an interest in that space. I dont think they bought them
without at least entertaining the idea that they _may_ be able to transition
this to Mac someday.

~~~
shawndumas
desktop was implied. I mean even Microsoft is off intel everywhere else.

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rbanffy
On one hand, it makes me happy to see that evolution away from the x86 ISA is
possible. On the other hand, it saddens me a bit it's Microsoft driving this
change - we may have better, more modern processors under the same old OS
monopoly we face today.

~~~
akadien
You may need therapy if it saddens you to see Microsoft port its OS to non-
Intel chips, like they used to do with NT. Who else is going drive change away
from the x86 ISA?

~~~
pohl
People keep mentioning non-x86 ports of NT in the context of yesterday's news,
but I think a more nuanced recollection of history may be in order.

There's one very important apparent difference between the move to support ARM
and those old NT-on-RISC ports of yore: Microsoft never, for even a
microsecond, took those ports seriously. They were brought into being for the
sole purpose of creating uncertainty in the unix market to slow enterprise
adoption of Unix on those exotic RISC architectures. NT, recall, was supposed
to be "a better unix than unix" in those days. As soon as that move succeeded
in neutralizing the competition, those ports became legacy.

By all appearances, on the other hand, the port to ARM appears to be intended
for actual consumers — that is, not merely to freeze a market, but to enter
one.

~~~
CoreyH144
This is not really a fair recollection of the events. Things like NT for Alpha
were not successful not because MS wasn't "serious" about it, but just by the
fact that it didn't sell. Those architectures just weren't commercially
viable. The products themselves were basically the same (and impervious to not
being "serious") because of the investment they made in maintaining a
microkernel that wasn't tied to x86.

~~~
iuguy
This is closer to the mark. I remember rebuilding an NT 4.0 server on x86
after Microsoft dropped Service Pack support for Mips after SP1. We'd been
sold a right lemon by the vendor who obviously must've known that about 3
months after NT4 ships Microsoft announced they were dropping MIPS. In the
end, instead of buying more expensive IRIX kit or facing the political fallout
from going back to Novell my then employer decided to grit teeth and go
x86/NT4.

------
trezor
Ok. So I didn't see that coming. That is actually rather impressive.

My only "complaint" here would be that Nvidia's Tegra system, although
noticably smaller than the basic Intel-setup, seemed very much to be at the
same scale, i.e. big. At least not tiny by the same factor as the Snapdragon
setup.

On a related note: Whoah. A snapdragon seemingly capable of running Windows
smoothly.

Anyway. If Microsoft can help getting rid of the x86-legacy and move on, I'll
be the first to applaud it. x86 is a _butt ugly_ architecture and I'm
surprised it has survived this long.

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cleverfoo
They look really lost. It's 2011 and they just demoed "printing"

~~~
wvenable
The reason why Microsoft wins consistently is they take things like "printing"
pretty seriously.

~~~
redial
But i still can't cancel a print job in Windows...

