

Microsoft yanks Windows 8.1 after bricking issues - kposehn
http://venturebeat.com/2013/10/20/microsoft-yanks-windows-8-1-update-after-users-report-machine-bricking-boot-errors/

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TylerE
Windows _RT_ 8.1

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Touche
Why have different names based on cpu architecture? Isn't that _way_ too
inside baseball?

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nwh
It is bizarre really. Apple managed to keep OSX running even in their
transition from PowerPC to Intel, not sure why Microsoft decided to split
Windows up quite so badly.

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Jare
Apple did split OSX and iOS in much more profound ways than MS did with
Windows & RT. But as usual lately, Microsoft did a terrible job with their
branding, PR and product strategy, despite the underlying idea being great.

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nwh
I would liken it more to the OSX PPC > Intel transition than between OSX >
iOS, though both did involve porting a whole operating system to a new
processor architecture. In the case of iOS, Apple had a fresh start so there
was no need for inter-compatibility between mobile and desktop apps, so no
transition layer was ever created. For PPC > Intel, they created Rosetta (an
emulation layer that allowed the older apps to run) in order to smooth the
transition, and make it somewhat transparent to the user. This was a win by
all measures, users got a completely different underlying system that was
faster and more power efficient, and they never had to think about it; that's
not to say it wasn't slow, but it wasn't something you had to think about.

Microsoft really should have taken the route Apple did, it's the same OS on
new hardware that needs an emulation layer to run old apps- and that's alright
until there's native builds of the most common suite. The fact that it was
barely ever mentioned in Apple's transition says that it worked, and the
constant confusion RT causes shows that Microsofts didn't.

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Geee
Microsoft should get their act together, really. I recently bought Windows 8
from Microsoft Store online for $150 and installed it on my iMac. Turns out,
after installation, that it's just an update package and can't be properly
activated with the included activation code (the ISO is full Windows). Now, I
can't even activate it because it has 'bricked itself' in an boot/update loop
of some sort. What is this nonsense Microsoft?

