Windows systems set to be merged by Microsoft
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
The OS kernel will more or less be the same. However the UI experience will be vastly different as you can image.
Mary Jo Foley explains it well here - http://www.zdnet.com/what-one-windows-really-means-and-doesn...
Maybe complaining about some of Microsoft's decisions has more to do with user frustration and less to do with being "all the rage"?
Same old Microsoft, same old mistakes.
spoiler: It is not like what you are thinking, quite clean actually.
> [It] gives developers the entire volume of Windows, which is 300 plus million units as opposed to just our 4% share of mobile in the US or 10% in some countries
Great strategy, nothing new or visionary, but something tried and tested. Use your strength in one market to enter a new one. From my (much more modest) experience at Red Hat, I know this can work.
Those peripherals are not as useful with any mobile OS as they would be with full Windows.
I have it on 2 tablets and one of my workstations and to sum up my experience with it: It's awesome! Nothing else even comes close.
It all starts with the most basic interactions. For instance - there's no other window manager that lets you completely control the OS with just the keyboard and in such a consistent, logical and discoverable way as Windows.
The plan here seems to be to build all Windows phones and tablets with x86 chips to eliminate that issue.
FTFY
That was an analyst guessing, not Microsoft setting a strategy. It is extraordinarily doubtful that Microsoft would go all in on x86 like that, and it would be somewhat archaic if they did.
I would surmise that Microsoft is speaking from a development/management perspective. If WinRT had all of the APIs available in Win32/64, for instance, whether it's ARM or MIPS or AMD64 shouldn't really matter that much for cross-targeting apps like Office (which I doubt has much assembly in it): If the compiler supports it, it's an option.
And from an internal perspective we know from a post yesterday that they laid off a Windows test engineer, probably because their plan going forward is that the major services (and obviously teams) of all of the platforms combine, which makes a lot of sense. Instead of teams forking off bits of Windows and then creating their own silos, it makes sense that the active development copy of many subsystems for all of the products is shared live.
And really, if cross compiling a rich desktop application was simply a matter of picking a different target configuration in Visual Studio, everyone would target ARM(v8) as well, because it costs close to nothing. As is, however, that is not the case- WinRT is a very special snowflake, with a subset API. Even if you went purely virtualized with .NET, you still have the special restrictions and constraints of WinRT that mean that you have to generally specifically develop for it.
Microsoft is in such a strange place. Well over a decade ago they tried to move everything to higher layers, abstracting themselves from the underlying hardware. Today they seem to be in a worse place that they even were then.
As for storage, if a unified platform supported every legacy API, the same problem exists whether it is x86 or ARM, so that seems orthogonal to this discussion. Regardless it's worth considering how mobile and tablet devices have exploded in capabilities (my smartphone has 2GB of RAM. Windows XP required 64MB).
Would it support every legacy API? Not necessarily. Being unified doesn't necessarily mean that, and Microsoft has threatened Win32 and friends for time eternal (e.g. http://www.windowsdevcenter.com/pub/a/windows/2004/07/13/win...). Unified can simply mean that from this point forward, WinXX is unified, or the .NET platform is holistic and all-encompassing (which has always been the goal of that platform, but somehow keeps getting screwed up), or whatever.
You're right that the API issue is basically orthogonal, but I can't see how this could be done without having either a very bloated phone OS or an overly restricted desktop OS.
Anyone care to fill in some blanks for me as to why Microsoft is so embolden now? What is Intel up to?
And before you jump on me about "use server core you moron", that's not feasible in my environment. We have users who cannot solely rely on powershell to do most of their day to day work flows.
I kinda wish I could have been in the meeting where they decided that windows 8 should be the same for all their different devices, it sounds kind of appealing at first, 'One experience for mobile, tablet and desktop' until you think about it for a second.
I mention this every time, but I think the most interesting thing about it is that developers can integrate their apps with it. For example, you could open Cortana and say "Send a Yo to John Doe" or "GenericBankingApp, transfer $25 to my checking account".
I've been meaning to sit down and build a couple small apps that take advantage of this, but I haven't gotten around to it yet.
Not joking but x86 on phones doesn't work either.
More suckery to come...
It's like an auto manufacturer trying to standardize controls between a corvette and a dump truck. No... both of those are different machines with different use cases. They need to have unique user interfaces.
Sure, the kernel may be the same but you say it very clearly yourself.... "user interface is part of the OS". So you can't have the "same" OS with different interfaces.
Nor for that matter can the apps be the same. They would work differently.
Edit: I didn't catch the user interface would differ among devices in the article, so I suppose my original complaint about user interface has been addressed. Developers still have to address how people will interact in different ways with their applications among platforms however... even if the binaries compile on all.
You posted above in this thread "Maybe complaining about some of Microsoft's decisions has more to do with user frustration and less to do with being "all the rage"?"
Maybe you need to rethink the reasons why you're complaining right now. Because you have a legitimate complaint? No. Because it's fashionable? I think that's closer to the truth.
"can't be done" -Where do I even vaguely reference that something can't be done? Did you even read my comment? Sure... The underlying kernel is the same. I understand. I also understand now, (after reading the top comment) that it is kernel changes referenced in the article rather than UI. My complaint is with standardized UI so that complaint is irrelevant (which I note). But, according to pilsetniek, an OS encompasses UI. So if you have have a different UI, by his definition, then you have a different OS. Very simple logic 101.
Speaking of motive, I'm not going to presume to ascribe motive to your comment, but I have to wonder about it. It doesn't seem to have been worth the time taken to post it as you didn't address the content of my comments. More like an attempted jab that falls short. Why? I don't know. My psychology degree hasn't come in the mail yet.
And yes.. I believe frustration with some of Microsoft's decisions results in complaints.
>you can't have the "same" OS with different interfaces
Also, if I'm running Ubuntu and I apt-get install xfce, I still have the same OS, but the UI is completely different. All the same applications still work, and they adapt to the new UI.
So yeah, you're bitching just to bitch. Did you complain 20 years ago when Linux decided to have one OS regardless of what UI package you decided to use? Hell, I just switched my Windows 7 UI to classic mode. Does that mean I'm running a different OS now? Man, I hope my applications still work.
OH NO! The time on my clock changed, now I'm running a different OS... very simple logic 101.
Those systems are substantially different enough to require different methods of user interaction. Do they utilize the same OS at that point? Maybe, depending on definition. But the definition given by pilsetniek specifies UI as part of the OS. So by this definition, No, they cannot use the same OS.
"you are bitching because..."
Whatever dude.
At that point can be needed at least 24gb of intern memory on the phones to just run wp
On hacker news or the BBC? Inconceivable!