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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

#161

Post by xorxornop »

raminonstuff wrote: post #99

Wow I just did a quick search here and found zero references to the word "Internet"! Nobody mentions the IoT. Internet of Things is and will be running on ARM CPUs, ARM GPUs, ARM Display, ARM Video, etc. Not having your major OS on ARM means you are behind Android, behind iOS, behind Linux, behind IoT and basically behind the world... Have you seen Windows 10 IoT Core? https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/io…

Yup, I run IoT Core in my Raspberry Pi 2, and run a C# UWP app on it to dynamically update my DNS settings. The UI is lovely, and the UWP API in general, too.

Both JIT and native modes of operation work. Hell, I can also build it for my desktop PC, and it's literally only changing the build target. It's phenomenally easy, so easy that I was actually a little in disbelief at first. .

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

#163

Post by ianai »

bitmapbrother wrote: post #97
ianai wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you can count Microsoft out of entering a market. They have the capital to startup and launch in probably any industry, including big pharma. I also think it'd be dangerous for Apple or google to count Microsoft out. Furthermore the economist in me wants to see many more options in the IT industry than just 2-3 so adding one more is welcome.

What market are they entering? Mobile? Didn't they just quietly step away from it from it after losing more than 10 Billion and achieving a less than 1% market share?

Leaving a market doesn't mean Microsoft can't re enter.

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

#164

Post by nailer »

bhauer wrote: post #149
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 Snap…

If it works, how usable would a desktop app run on a phone? I think Microsoft would intend to do this for tablets (which need longer battery life than what Intel provides) rather than a Surface Phone.

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

#165

Post by nailer »

tluyben2 wrote: post #42
ianai wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you can count Microsoft out of entering a market. They have the capital to startup and launch in probably any industry, including big pharma. I also think it'd be dangerous for Apple or google to count Microsoft out. Furthermore the economist in me wants to see many more options in the IT industry than just 2-3 so adding one more is welcome.

> They have the capital to startup and launch in probably any industry, They tried that more than a few times and failed. X-box worked, but portable music players, mobile and search would be things they pumped massive amounts of money into and didn't get very far with. But yes, I would like choice above all. I am not a big Windows fan, but Android is really starting to annoy me and iOS (or at least the rules around i…

They pumped massive amounts of money into mobile and won it. Windows Mobile destroyed the previous incumbent Palm. Sure, they subsequently lost it, but let's not be too quick to forget.

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

#166

Post by roryisok »

pjmlp wrote: post #159
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…

Amazon only pulled theirs from Windows Phone 8.x. It is there for Windows Phone 10.

Sadly my Lumia 925 doesn't do windows 10. It let me try out the dev previews but not the official release

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

#167

Post by imtringued »

criddell wrote: post #74
pjmlp wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a neat idea, but I think it's an idea ahead of it's time still. There have been docking laptops forever and even that doesn't seem to have taken the world by storm. Probably not the world, but the customers I deal with, surely yes. Laptops with docking station have been my work tool since 2006.

I'm not saying the market doesn't exist, just that it's probably not going to take off. I too use a dock (or port expander) but haven't had a lot of luck since I started moving to high-dpi displays a few years ago. Do you have a laptop that can drive a couple of 4k displays?

The latest macbook pro can drive 2 4k displays per USB C port.

https://www.startech.com/AV/Converters/Video/thunderbolt-3-t...

I don't know if apple fixed the incompatibility problem with older thunderbolt 3 devices though.

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

#168

Post by simonh »

dpark wrote: post #127
simonh wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's really for 5-10 years from now, they should release it in 5-10 years when it's fully baked. How can any product that needs at least another 5 years of work be anything other than a poorly implemented beta product that isnt fully thought out and doesn't work properly? Apart from the total disregard that shows for current customers, the big issue with that attitude is that it's fundamentally incompatible with t…

> If it's really for 5-10 years from now, they should release it in 5-10 years when it's fully baked. You can't go dark and build a product for 5-10 years and then drop it on the market. While you're "baking" for years the market will change around you and you'll find that you built the wrong thing and someone else launched early and took the whole market with iterative improvements. > Poorly thought out, badly imple…

But as so explained the example given - MS tablet computers or 'pen computing' shows the opposite. The modern Windows Phone OS would never have happened if Apple hadn't brought out the iPhone. They still be iterating on Windows Mobile. They had to throw out every bit if mobile tech they had and go back to square one. That's almost impossible to do on your own initiative if you've already got an existing viable product.

Another counter-example. What ever happened to Myspace and Orkut? What did their first mover advantage buy them? A legacy platform that held them back.

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

#169

Post by ralmidani »

eropple wrote: post #150
ralmidani wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, b…

Thanks for your insights.

I believe computing freedom is a right people should assert, and I should inform them why they should assert it, but I don't go as far as saying it's unethical to use non-free devices and/or software. At least not when non-free is more readily available and, from the perspective of the average user, more "convenient" than free.

Personally, I like Debian because it removes non-free blobs from the kernel (and I check the license on a package before I install it). But let's say Ubuntu was the only available GNU+Linux distribution. I would still choose it over Windows or MacOS because mostly free is better than completely non-free, and I would rather support Ubuntu (or Android, for that matter) than enable and give money to Microsoft or Apple.

As for peripherals, from a practical point of view, doesn't the type of peripheral matter? A monitor or printer (output devices) going rogue seem far less dangerous than a rogue webcam, for example.

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

#170

Post by imtringued »

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.

The distinction is very simple. Either it's hardware or it's software.

If the firmware is written to flash once and then can no longer be updated by the vendor or the user then the firmware is treated as hardware, even by RMS.

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-hardware-designs.html

>What is the boundary, in digital devices, between hardware and software? It follows from the definitions. Software is the operational part of a device that can be copied and changed in a computer; hardware is the operational part that can't be. This is the right way to make the distinction because it relates to the practical consequences.

>There is a gray area between hardware and software that contains firmware that can be upgraded or replaced, but is not meant ever to be upgraded or replaced once the product is sold. In conceptual terms, the gray area is rather narrow. In practice, it is important because many products fall in it. We can treat that firmware as hardware with a small stretch.

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