Hey, those of you interested on running Windows 8 on ARM, guess what!  The cake ARM is a lie.

But as if that we’re bad enough, we now have some more official word on just exactly how ARM will be supported. No, there will be no lightened kernel to run Windows with. Microsoft is not taking a page from Linux in any way. If you install Windows 8 on an ARM processor, you don’t get Windows. You get Phone. That’s it. That’s all that you get.

What does that mean?

That means that you can only install “apps” on Windows 8 ARM, and so far sounding like only through a Microsoft app store no less. Called, imaginatively, the “Windows Store”. There will be no running of full Windows applications, at all, ever, on Windows 8 ARM. (Though I don’t expect it will take long for people to “unlock” their Windows 8 ARM to install their own apps manually at the very least.)

At least as far as I can tell by reading between the lines. Because, frankly, Microsoft is not being very frank and clear with us on this matter. In theory it may be possible that Windows 8 ARM will actually be a full version of Windows, and not just Phone. In theory. In practice however this is of very little value if you cannot install an application onto it because of being locked in to the Windows Store. Further, even if any old application could be recompiled for ARM, there are bound to be bugs and kinks to work out. And that’s even if someone bothers to try, which most software companies will not!

How do we know these things?

Because Windows has been here once before.

Only back then it wasn’t ARM, it was the DEC Alpha. Microsoft made an NT4 compilation of it. And it almost even worked. Except when it didn’t. Because almost no third parties bothered to support it in any way. And in fact even Microsoft kind of didn’t, as their compatibility system, basically an emulator-on-demand as far as I could tell, failed often. Very often. And worse, on things as common as most major installation packaging systems. So just trying to install non-Alpha software often crashed. You couldn’t even get to actually trying to run the software. That was Microsoft’s idea of support. And third parties. It was an absolute failure!

And now Microsoft is doing it all over again with ARM.

So even if Microsoft at some point tries to claim that your x86-compiled applications can be installed and run on Windows 8 ARM, the cake is a lie.  It will never happen if third party software producers don’t likewise port all of their software over as well, which they won’t!

What you are effectively getting if you install Windows 8 ARM on your tablet is … Windows Phone 7+.

Not Windows.

If a software vendor completely ports their application for WinRT then that’ll run on Windows 8 ARM. But most won’t, because that’d be a lot more work than just recompiling for ARM, and most won’t even bother recompiling, let alone porting.

That’s the only truth.

Except that it’s actually worse than that! Because while you should be able to run Windows Phone 7 apps on Windows 8 ARM / Phone (Is there anyone who will be running Windows 8 on a PC that will actually want to run Windows Phone 7 apps?) you will not (if I’m reading things correctly) be able to run Phone (yes, Metro, we went over this in the first Windows 8 rant) apps on your Windows Phone 7 smartphones. They may be similar platforms, but not identical. Windows 8 apps are built on Windows Runtime (WinRT), where as Windows Phone 7 apps are Silverlight and XNA. Windows Phone 8 is backward compatible with Windows Phone 7, but not vice-versa. It is not a forward-compatible design. Sorry all of you Windows Phone app developers. (All two of you.)

It even sounds like Microsoft is taking this a segmentation further, and that Windows 8 will only be for tablets. Phones will be stuck on Windows Phone 7. So it’s not just a matter of backward compatibility, but also about … modem form factor? I mean seriously, what’s the difference between a 3g-capapble 4 inch tablet and a smartphone? Not bloody much!  And far less yet between a 4g tablet!

But so anyone who ever envisioned of running Windows on ARM, sorry, you’re SOL. The tabletard has commanded that “Thou shalt not be productive on ARM.” The most you can do on ARM is still run apps. No soup applications for you!

You can think of Windows 8 ARM then being just another tablet OS like iOS and Android. It might say Windows 8, but it’s not Windows.

And actually, I’m kind of okay with that part. Honestly, what I want is a full-blown Windows smartphone/netbook combo device. You know, a PCphone. A Smarter phone. ARM may be The Next Big Thing, but I’m actually okay with x86 being the processor to make Smarterphones happen. It’s not like Intel and AMD both aren’t trying to make low-power mobile chips for just this purpose. (Why nVidia or even -gack!- Via doesn’t do so though is beyond me.)

Still, it’s very disappointing that Microsoft didn’t take this opportunity to do ARM right by any sense of the imagination. To have actually run a full-blown Windows OS on ARM would have been nice to see. Of course with what that could do to the server world, maybe it was done this way for a reason.

Yes, this is a rant. It’s not politically correct. This one perhaps more so than most of mine. If you want to complain, that’s nice. Send all of your complaints here.

Microsoft is the new tabletard.

Microsoft just released the hounds on the Windows 8 NDAs and I think it’s well and good to finally admit that we have a new word: Tabletard. For those unfamiliar with this word, please see commentard, twittard, celebritard, ad nauseum. And no, I do not mean people who are stupid about tables. I mean people who are stupid about tablets. Of which, now, apparently Microsoft is one of them.

Why do I say that Microsoft is a tabletard? Simple, look at what Windows 8 is. Take Windows 7 and Windows Phone 7, mash them together in the worst possible way, and tada! You now have Windows 8.

When first announced that Windows 8 would have a Metro mode and Windows 7 mode (which within this rant I will refuse to use as a term and will from now on call Phone, because that’s all it is), I rather figured that the Phone part would be something gimmicky that you can on the side. Like how Windows 7 has that Windows XP Compatibility mode. Call me crazy, but I had rather assumed that Microsoft was rational enough to comprehend that PC users use PCs. That Windows was the primary OS people want on their Windows box. That the Phone part is just there to run “apps”.

Apparently Microsoft doesn’t get it.

I guess I can’t entirely blame them. Ubuntu obviously missed the boat on that one as well.  More so than Microsoft, by a mile.

Still, it’s rather ludicrous to suddenly assume that every device you ever install your OS on is now a tablet or phone, and that it has no keyboard or mouse. You’d have to be a flipping moron to make that assumption. I mean you would literally need to be mentally retarded to assume that. Hence why Microsoft now joins Canonical (the folks responsible for Ubuntu) amongst the ranks of tabletards.

I’m already sick and tired of Windows 7’s Start Menu. I didn’t like it any better when it was Windows XP’s. The “Classic” Start Menu is what I vastly prefer, because as someone who actually works for a living, I have a lot of applications which I use. There’s simply not enough room in the psychic ever-failing-to-predict Start Menu that Microsoft has been trying to replace the classic Start Menu with forever. I am constantly using the “All Programs” button any time I can’t have my Classic Start Menu. Which is really freaking annoying.

I do not want my icons hidden.  I do not want my Start Menu shrunk.  I have a lot of icons that I need.  I have a lot of programs that I regularly use.  Stop trying to make me click a lot of extra times to do everyday tasks, Microsoft!

Now enter Windows 8, which replaces the bad Start menu with something even worse: Phone! (Remember, I am not calling it Metro.) Yes, that’s right, now a bunch of tiles make up your Start Menu. Tiles which will mostly lack any and all useful information for people like me who will be using Windows to run applications, not Phone “apps”. It takes up even more room. It’s uglier. And it’s even less useful. Huzzah?

Likewise, you get a schizophrenic experience in Windows 8. If you run a Windows application, it operates just like you’d expect. It’s the Windows experience that you know and love. But if you run a Phone app, it runs fullscreen, and with all of the finger-swiping interactivity that you’d come to expect from apps. Will people be able to figure out what to do when the run an app instead of an application?

And the bigger question is, how well will the dichotomy of application/app … aka app(lication) even work when navigating Windows. So far that’s one that people have been keeping rather quiet on. Will Alt-Tab even work at all? How does Aero handle applications vs. apps? Will navigating from within an app be like apps? Will navigating from within an application be like applications? Frankly, even if these questions are answered right now, until the final binaries hits the silicon, I’m not going to believe for a minute that tweaks and refinements won’t happen, or features of navigation change entirely. It’s a messy messy world that Microsoft is creating by treating apps as apps within Windows.  And it’s a mess the way that Microsoft is cramming Windows Phone 7 into Windows 7 and calling it Windows 8.

Seriously, is it so hard to comprehend that most people are not going to find Phone in any way useful on a desktop PC? Now if you want to enable some goofy Phone interface, as an option, I’m all for that. After all, tablet PCs like my Viliv S5 could very well use some finger-friendlier navigational aid. (Something Viliv tried to accomplish with Cube UI, but failed badly.) But again, Phone should be an option, not forced upon everyone. Not everyone has a touchscreen. Not everyone even owns a smartphone, let alone wants to navigate their PC like it were one, using a mouse instead of a finger no less. In fact most do not! A phone is a phone and a PC is a PC and never the twain shall meet in many people’s minds. So any defaulting to phone behavior or navigation on a PC’s operating system is A Bad Thing! The kind of thing that only a tabletard would design.