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Comment by purplelobster | Hacker News Reader

I don't get the whole "not enough apps in the app store" critique. What are they expecting? The tablet is not even out yet and they expect a million apps or what? Obviously this is a problem with a new operating system... It's a valid critique in a way but there is nothing Microsoft can do short of hiring ten thousand developers to just make apps for it before launch.

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They could have allowed running native applications. Not really sure how they expect to sell the Surface RT when it's competing with the Surface Pro. Except maybe the price of the Pro will be far out (I haven't found a price so far for Pro, it's not yet known?). Also if they had supported XNA for that thing formerly known as Metro they would at least have more games now. I'm rather puzzled why they don't support one of their most popular libraries for game development when introducing a new platform.

Probably time and other resource constraints. I'm pretty sure their wishlist of things they would have liked to have finished by launch date is quite long :-)

What native applications are there for Windows on ARM?

If you're a prospective buyer, knowing the availability of popular software is valuable knowledge.

I, for one, would not want to buy a $500+ tablet based on its potential for running good software.

Yes, but they're acting as if this is a permanent disadvantage of this device. And again, I think it's a bit harsh to judge before it's even been released. If there were like 10 apps I'd be worried, but there are around 5000 apps already, and Win 8 will be running on plenty of desktops and laptops as well as tablets, so I think this is not really a fair critique quite just yet.

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