I'm thinking that Win8 is two gambles in one, and while it ultimately will work out okay, it'll look bad short-term.
1) Windows RT on ARM. In the battle between RISC and CISC, CISC won because CISC was Intel and Intel ran Windows and everyone wanted Windows. This is a truer story of better technology losing than VHS vs Betamax. Because the basic instruction set is the same, programs written for Win95 or even DOS should still run on your hot Win7 laptop, and the Windows team has to keep code built to work around bugs in not only their code but third-party code from the 80s on, and Win8 on Arm might be their best hope to break cleanly from it.
2) The Interface It works fine as a phone/tablet thing (it isn't perfect, but few get everything right on the first try) and (not that I've tried it) it looks like it'll be usable as a TV interface. But it is weird as a desktop interface. But that's probably ok, as the desktop graphs flatline while personal devices grow. Windows and Office have paid the bills in Redmond for 20 years, but today the desktop is dying and Google wrote an office suite in Javascript.
So, I think it'll pay off. I just don't know that it'll pay off as Windows 8. Windows 9? Tiles 1? Dunno.
1) Windows RT on ARM. In the battle between RISC and CISC, CISC won because CISC was Intel and Intel ran Windows and everyone wanted Windows. This is a truer story of better technology losing than VHS vs Betamax. Because the basic instruction set is the same, programs written for Win95 or even DOS should still run on your hot Win7 laptop, and the Windows team has to keep code built to work around bugs in not only their code but third-party code from the 80s on, and Win8 on Arm might be their best hope to break cleanly from it.
2) The Interface It works fine as a phone/tablet thing (it isn't perfect, but few get everything right on the first try) and (not that I've tried it) it looks like it'll be usable as a TV interface. But it is weird as a desktop interface. But that's probably ok, as the desktop graphs flatline while personal devices grow. Windows and Office have paid the bills in Redmond for 20 years, but today the desktop is dying and Google wrote an office suite in Javascript.
So, I think it'll pay off. I just don't know that it'll pay off as Windows 8. Windows 9? Tiles 1? Dunno.
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