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Microsoft is bringing Windows 10, with desktop app support, to ARM chipsets

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Re: Microsoft is bringing Windows 10, with desktop app support, to ARM chipsets

#141

Post by flukus »

scholia wrote: post #131
criddell wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's not the vision from the article ("Microsoft is about to turn a phone into a real PC") or this thread. Take a phone and plug in a bigger display and keyboard and mouse and suddenly it's a desktop computer. So a single application is going to need to cope with a 4" touchscreen display with no keyboard or mouse as well as a multi-monitor setup without touch, but with a keyboard and mouse.

> So a single application is going to need to cope with a 4" touchscreen display with no keyboard or mouse as well as a multi-monitor setup without touch, but with a keyboard and mouse. Yes, it reflows. You use the app when it's in phone mode, and you get the full desktop-style UI when in Continuum mode. There are several demos online. See for example, from April 2015 (so it's surprising you haven't seen it before):…

Sounds good in theory, but so far the real world results I've seen from the windows app store haven't worked out in practice.

Re: Microsoft is bringing Windows 10, with desktop app support, to ARM chipsets

#142

Post by protomyth »

scholia wrote: post #134
protomyth wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it screwed up Microsoft's original Surface Phone strategy if the tech press is to be believed.

You're worrying about ill-informed speculation about a hypothetical product? ;-)

No, I'm worrying about a strategy that would have been a bit easier to implement. I have about as much belief in the hypothetical nature of a Surface Phone as people had about an Apple Phone. An intel chip would have made much more sense for Microsoft.

Re: Microsoft is bringing Windows 10, with desktop app support, to ARM chipsets

#143

Post by ralmidani »

eropple wrote: post #109
ralmidani wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if the OS itself is free, using the modem requires a non-free blob. That's why I prefer to keep my phone and PC separate.

Do you have access to the firmware code in your keyboard? Your monitor? I'm not criticizing your decision, and it's certainly yours to make, but people (and also Stallman) draw such very strange lines of demarcation about this stuff.

You raise a good point, which prompts a genuine question: does having a free OS and BIOS help safeguard against "rogue" peripherals (since the system knows what they're supposed to do)?

Re: Microsoft is bringing Windows 10, with desktop app support, to ARM chipsets

#144

Post by alexkavon »

setq wrote: post #122
roryisok wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I enthusiastically started using windows mail when I switched to win8, and then discovered that file attachments were severely broken. They disappear from emails over time, and rather than fix the problem, it was suggested that we move a message from one IMAP folder to another to make them reappear. I wonder if they seriously thought anyone would put themselves through that. That said, I am still a windows phone user…

Whilst bitching heavily about it earlier, I've got to be honest here. If they fix the people, mail and calendar app bugs, which they are doing rapidly, it destroys Apple and Google's offerings. I've only used them with an outlook.com and office 365 account so far but it really has potential. Just please Microsoft, don't screw it all up and feature dump too hard! For reference I went on a six month long hiatus after u…

People and Calendar have a ways to go with no Carddav or Caldav support.

Re: Microsoft is bringing Windows 10, with desktop app support, to ARM chipsets

#145

Post by intended »

drawnwren wrote: post #21
mhomde wrote: post #16

I'm more than a little confused about MS "mobile" strategy. Continuum sounds like a good idea, in theory. For enterprise I can kinda see it be attractive to just give your employees mobile phones and hook the office up with continuum docks. But it seems problematic in more than one aspect. For starters it's based on the fact that people are going to want to use a windows mobile as their primary device to start with.…

My personal take away from your critique is that the problem is not just the computer. We also need a mobile display solution. Whether MS thinks they have that solved with their coming AR devices or they are looking farther down the pipe, I'm not sure. I think MS's plan right now is to not have a plan. Many of their products point to them thinking that we are at a point where computers are making a fundamental shift…

That's a pretty good point.... (mobile display)

That means that msft must be working on some way to address this.

Possibly, they see continuum as a way to interconnect many devices made by their vendors?

Re: Microsoft is bringing Windows 10, with desktop app support, to ARM chipsets

#146

Post by intended »

derekp7 wrote: post #116
no1youknowz wrote: post #4

As soon as I saw Ubuntu Edge back in 2013, I have been dreaming of the day something like Continuum is a reality and not just for Windows. For Linux and MacOS as well. Hopefully, it's not to far off now.

This is something I've wanted for a few years now (even before the Edge). But the more I think about it, the less sense it makes. To explain, let's examine a couple variations. First, you have your phone which connects to a dock, which lets your keyboard and monitor connect to the phone. Now, replace the dock with a full computer, but uses the phone for storage. If you had these two systems side-by-side, could you te…

Don't think of just the American markets, think of developing markets.

India is mobile first. Most people don't have a PC, and may never have a PC.

Re: Microsoft is bringing Windows 10, with desktop app support, to ARM chipsets

#147

Post by toast0 »

sdegutis wrote: post #5

Wow. It just clicked: We could have a future where your personal computer fits easily in your pocket, you can carry it everywhere you go, and you just plug it into whatever monitor & keyboard & mouse you happen to be near by, whether it's in a coffee shop, at work, at home, on an aeroplane, anywhere! It's almost kind of the return of the mainframe & terminal. Your OS & apps would be installed on your device, and your…

I notice you didn't have any phone interactions. You could do this with a compute stick today, although there aren't that many kvm stations hanging out right now.

Re: Microsoft is bringing Windows 10, with desktop app support, to ARM chipsets

#148

Post by wklauss »

intended wrote: post #146
derekp7 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is something I've wanted for a few years now (even before the Edge). But the more I think about it, the less sense it makes. To explain, let's examine a couple variations. First, you have your phone which connects to a dock, which lets your keyboard and monitor connect to the phone. Now, replace the dock with a full computer, but uses the phone for storage. If you had these two systems side-by-side, could you te…

Don't think of just the American markets, think of developing markets. India is mobile first. Most people don't have a PC, and may never have a PC.

Would they need it?

Re: Microsoft is bringing Windows 10, with desktop app support, to ARM chipsets

#149

Post by bhauer »

reynoldsbd wrote: post #129

I don't understand all the hate here. Either it will work well or it won't, and the market will decide if it gets to live or die. For a company with resources like Microsoft that has its fingers in so many corners of the market, this seems like a workable, if inelegant, business strategy. I am much more interested in the technical details of such technology. How are they doing this? Is it pure emulation? JIT transpil…

This announcement provides a bit of credibility to the suspicion that Microsoft has been wanting to make a "Surface Phone" device for some time, but was delaying until the right pieces were in place. It is possible they had been working with Intel's Broxton and that chip's cancellation required returning to the drawing board, so to speak.

But it seems likely, to my mind, that what we see today—x86 emulation on a Snapdragon—materialized because Microsoft wants to deliver full Windows 10 on a phone-sized device and Intel wasn't able to give them the necessary platform.

Emulation may be inelegant, but the video [1] confirms performance that would be "good enough" (oh how I hate that phrase) for many users.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_GlGglbu1U

Re: Microsoft is bringing Windows 10, with desktop app support, to ARM chipsets

#150

Post by eropple »

ralmidani wrote: post #143
eropple wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have access to the firmware code in your keyboard? Your monitor? I'm not criticizing your decision, and it's certainly yours to make, but people (and also Stallman) draw such very strange lines of demarcation about this stuff.

You raise a good point, which prompts a genuine question: does having a free OS and BIOS help safeguard against "rogue" peripherals (since the system knows what they're supposed to do)?

The system doesn't, though, not really. I mean, consider something running over Thunderbolt. A device that doesn't even tell you it supports Thunderbolt (and triggers it via USB3 alternate modes) then has direct, unimpeded access to the physical memory space of the computer. PCMCIA cards, PCI cards, FireWire...USB, itself is more intermediated--but that's also why latency is higher. You can disable DMA in the BIOS, but then lots of devices won't work at all.

If you're doing free-all-the-stuff for principle, I think it gets un-comfy drawing the line at stuff that runs on x86 and ARM ('specially as your monitor probably has an ARM in it anyway). If you're doing it for security, I think you must strive for peripheral openness too, or you're mostly wasting your time.

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