win8 The Windows 8 desktop on ARM: Here it is!

[Zain Adeel]

maybe because data in WP7 and Metro part of Win8 is saved by type.

All pictures are stored together. And like that maybe adding folder support would be weird. But i agree to one thing. A simple metro app can be made to make folders and all to organize the computer.

But again. You are missing a very important part of desktop. Desktop allows to resize windows with ease. Multiple windows at a time. No limit on the windows you have opened. So they are allowing ppl on WOA devices to open two word documents side by side. U cant do that in the Metro interface. The apps only have 3 states. one fullscreen. one bigger side snap. one smaller side snap.

Somebody there at B8 posted a catchy name for Windows on ARM.

Winona.

:p

[PGHammer]

the desktop is to use Office or IE10 and the file manager. Dont know about you. But my biggest grip with Metro or WP7 is that i love file managers that allow me to create folders. I hate working with libraries or tagging pictures and stuff. I keep everything perfectly organized by creating folders for each thing.

So atleast it will allow me to keep my data like i like it even on WOA device

You can still create folders - even in Metro/Immersive. The folder view in Metro is exactly like that in Windows 7 Explorer today. While each user has a default Documents, Pictures, Music, and Videos folder (just as Windows, for as far back as Windows for Workgroups and Windows NT, has done) you are still just as free to subdivide, or even ignore, Windows' default folders - just as is the case with Windows today. (Neither WOA or even Windows 8's Explorer changed that.)

What in Ned gave you the idea that that wasn't the case?

maybe because data in WP7 and Metro part of Win8 is saved by type.

All pictures are stored together. And like that maybe adding folder support would be weird. But i agree to one thing. A simple metro app can be made to make folders and all to organize the computer.

But again. You are missing a very important part of desktop. Desktop allows to resize windows with ease. Multiple windows at a time. No limit on the windows you have opened. So they are allowing ppl on WOA devices to open two word documents side by side. U cant do that in the Metro interface. The apps only have 3 states. one fullscreen. one bigger side snap. one smaller side snap.

Somebody there at B8 posted a catchy name for Windows on ARM.

Winona.

:p

However, that is because Word for WinRT is not a legacy (Win32) application. WinRT applications - especially those that follow the Metro structure - are rather tightly constrained in what they can do - and how they can act. Notice that Outlook (and Access) were conspicuous by being missing.

[Vice]

I was really interested in getting a windows based tablet as I've used them in the past. But the only reason I'd want one is to run Windows applications that I currently use. Chrome browser, WLM, iTunes, Steam. If I can't do that on an ARM tablet then I'll just wait for Intel to produce a better competitor to the ARM architecture and buy a tablet based on that.

I don't get why Microsoft would provide the desktop experience only to lock it down. What a giant disappointment. I was also hoping that ARM would spread beyond the tablet and we would eventually get NVIDIA producing desktop level processors and compete with AMD and Intel's dominance but doesn't look like that is going to happen either. Sad.

[Zain Adeel]

You can still create folders - even in Metro/Immersive. The folder view in Metro is exactly like that in Windows 7 Explorer today. While each user has a default Documents, Pictures, Music, and Videos folder (just as Windows, for as far back as Windows for Workgroups and Windows NT, has done) you are still just as free to subdivide, or even ignore, Windows' default folders - just as is the case with Windows today. (Neither WOA or even Windows 8's Explorer changed that.)

What in Ned gave you the idea that that wasn't the case?

I didnt see that in any video demo :s

How can u create folders? I mean it shows pictures as pictures from documents or skydrive or facebook. Just like on WP7. So i assumed it will almost be the same. All the music files will be visible from the music app and will be presented by artist album or song name and not how its structured in folders on ur Harddrive. Correct me if im wrong and can u post a screen showing folders in metro?

I was really interested in getting a windows based tablet as I've used them in the past. But the only reason I'd want one is to run Windows applications that I currently use. Chrome browser, WLM, iTunes, Steam. If I can't do that on an ARM tablet then I'll just wait for Intel to produce a better competitor to the ARM architecture and buy a tablet based on that.

I don't get why Microsoft would provide the desktop experience only to lock it down. What a giant disappointment. I was also hoping that ARM would spread beyond the tablet and we would eventually get NVIDIA producing desktop level processors and compete with AMD and Intel's dominance but doesn't look like that is going to happen either. Sad.

Why would u need steam on ARM? it will hardly run any heavy game.

Also i think iTunes like apps will be possible. As it says u can use USB to transfer data from cameraz and stuff. Im pretty sure it must also allow itunes syncing. It will just require a metro app to do that. And again. Chrome is going to be possible too. But in Metro.

Other than that i think its actually nice that x86 has life and intel and AMD are both working on reducing power usage to compete with ARM.

It will allow pretty sleek tablets capable of running latest games . Imagine that.

I imagine myself taking my tablet to a friends place and loading FIFA 12 on it and using wireless xbox controllers to play it. Now that'll be sweet. Its something not possible on ARM tablets right now.

My only complaint with x86 tablets is the price. As far as we know they will be $600 plus. And thats alot.

[Glassed Silver]

[...] I was also hoping that ARM would spread beyond the tablet and we would eventually get NVIDIA producing desktop level processors and compete with AMD and Intel's dominance but doesn't look like that is going to happen either. Sad.

A full ARM desktop would clutter non-Metro applications...

Sure you could do something like "universal binaries", but boy...

Desktops are supposed to have a solid x86 IMHO and that is just perfect for legacy applications and all that.

Of cause, I bet, there will be methods of getting a desktop ARM machine.

Either by building and hacking or a later introduction.

Glassed Silver:mac

[Vice]

Why would u need steam on ARM? it will hardly run any heavy game.

Also i think iTunes like apps will be possible. As it says u can use USB to transfer data from cameraz and stuff. Im pretty sure it must also allow itunes syncing. It will just require a metro app to do that. And again. Chrome is going to be possible too. But in Metro.

Other than that i think its actually nice that x86 has life and intel and AMD are both working on reducing power usage to compete with ARM.

It will allow pretty sleek tablets capable of running latest games . Imagine that.

I imagine myself taking my tablet to a friends place and loading FIFA 12 on it and using wireless xbox controllers to play it. Now that'll be sweet. Its something not possible on ARM tablets right now.

My only complaint with x86 tablets is the price. As far as we know they will be $600 plus. And thats alot.

To access my games obviously? - Steam currently offers OS X and Windows apps and if ARM became mainstream (as Microsoft wishes it) developers would soon offer ARM versions. ARM is not as many people believe just a mobile architecture. ARM Holdings has a clear roadmap that leads them from Phones to Tablets then to Netbooks/Ultrabooks and then to full Notebooks, Desktops and then Servers/Workstations. Their goal is to one day have a CPU that is faster than the fastest Intel CPU available at a significant power advantage. They intend to build a MCA (Many-Core Architecture) SoC (System on Chip) which could potentially offer 100+ computational cores.

Having only two companies competing (Intel and AMD) for Notebooks and Desktops is bad for the market. We need other high performance contenders to keep innovation moving and prices lowering. At the moment Intel dominates the market in the mid to high end and they have abused this position constantly with 4 needless socket changes in 3 years that cost consumers a bundle in extra worthless chipset purchases. They divide low-end (1155) from high end (2011) sockets to limit consumers upgrade options and they do this on purpose. At one point they were going to offer three separate sockets but AMD's 1 socket approach made them abandon the lowest socket type (thank goodness).

A full ARM desktop would clutter non-Metro applications...

Sure you could do something like "universal binaries", but boy...

Desktops are supposed to have a solid x86 IMHO and that is just perfect for legacy applications and all that.

Of cause, I bet, there will be methods of getting a desktop ARM machine.

Either by building and hacking or a later introduction.

Glassed Silver:mac

A full ARM desktop would clutter non-Metro applications? I don't really know what you mean by that. Just take the normal desktop we know and love and put an ARM processor in the system. That is what the market is crying out for a new scalable architecture that could open the doors to immense competition. There are a ton of ARM chip manufacturers including Texas Instruments, Samsung, Apple, NVIDIA, Marvell. Just think about how competitive the market could become in only a few years. You need to look at the bigger picture.

Again ARM is not just about Phones and Tablets. It's an architecture that can scale to a desktop or even a super computer. In-fact it's already being used in the latest super computers and HP are currently planning to offer ARM based servers which are considered state of the art. I believe the project is called moonshot.

[Glassed Silver]

[...]

Again ARM is not just about Phones and Tablets. It's an architecture that can scale to a desktop or even a super computer. In-fact it's already being used in the latest super computers and HP are currently planning to offer ARM based servers which are considered state of the art. I believe the project is called moonshot.

I meant the applications written before ARM.

Total clutter...

I'm not going to argue raw power of ARM or anything like that, but you statement is a bit funny, as you could in theory put gazillions of better pocket calculators together and have nice power...

Sorry, I'm the keeper person as in... I want to preserve integrity and backwards compatibility... Unsupported x86 applications would need emulation on ARM, however ARM is not strong enough in the home sector to properly do that, say for games etc...

I'll stick to x86 thanks. Of cause this is just my decision and I'm happy for everyone who falls in love with WOA and ARM on the desktop in general.

I won't say I won't ever use ARM in a desktop, that would be laughable to have that big of a crystal ball, but in the near future it's not going to happen on my desk for me.

Glassed Silver:mac

[Vice]

It will never reach the desktop if Microsoft doesn't support it properly. And they aren't so it wont.

[Glassed Silver]

It will never reach the desktop if Microsoft doesn't support it properly. And they aren't so it wont.

Not yet...

Well... I know I'm being an a** now, but... fingers crossed that if it happens, it's a long time in!

And that it will be graceful and without worries and hassles for everyone.

Glassed Silver:mac

[Zain Adeel]

Microsoft are supporting it.

Its the developers. Tell the game makers to make game ports for ARM processors. Then we will be getting somewhere. Ask photoshop to port to ARM. or other such resource heavy softwares.

Till then MS will be wasting time porting whole of desktop to it. (it actually has) but restricted it.

Also.. I believe we should give a year or 2 to x86 and see if they can compete with ARM. Maybe they can provide such a balance of performance and efficiency that its impossible to resist. Like e.g if Intel comes out with a chipset with a board that allows a tablet made out of it to last 10 hours like the ipad2. If they can do that people wont mind the slightly bulkier sizes or other stuff. Plus it can feature more ports and allow more flexibility.

Let both ARM and x86 work towards the Tablet market. Right now ARM is dominating it.

[Vice]

Microsoft are supporting it.

Its the developers. Tell the game makers to make game ports for ARM processors. Then we will be getting somewhere. Ask photoshop to port to ARM. or other such resource heavy softwares.

Till then MS will be wasting time porting whole of desktop to it. (it actually has) but restricted it.

Also.. I believe we should give a year or 2 to x86 and see if they can compete with ARM. Maybe they can provide such a balance of performance and efficiency that its impossible to resist. Like e.g if Intel comes out with a chipset with a board that allows a tablet made out of it to last 10 hours like the ipad2. If they can do that people wont mind the slightly bulkier sizes or other stuff. Plus it can feature more ports and allow more flexibility.

Let both ARM and x86 work towards the Tablet market. Right now ARM is dominating it.

What you're saying is ridiculous. A company like Adobe will not spend millions of dollars porting to an architecture that has no desktop hardware and where the main producer of desktop software (Microsoft) have already announced their ARM OS will be locked down to Metro for 3rd party developers. That would be a huge mistake.

It's like chicken and the egg. We need Microsoft to make the OS fully open first before the Developers do anything. Uncertainty isn't going to fuel any ports.

And no Microsoft are not supporting ARM on the desktop. They are supporting it on Phones and Tablets. That's all.

I do want to make clear though that regardless of when Intel produce an ARM competitor for low-powered devices what I care about more is a healthy and competitive market. Having only AMD and Intel producing x86 chips (now that VIA has dropped out) has really hurt us in price and innovation. If the market had 6-7 players in it we could have had a low powered x86 chip by now guys.

[Zain Adeel]

How can they support it on desktop right now?

:s

it doesnt make sense. It cannot compare with the performace of desktop PCs. ARM needs to work on it and work on adding better graphics chip or whatever it takes to bring the performance on par with todays mainstream desktops. Only then will MS think over it and rest of the party will be interested aswell.

If u mean MS should Pay ARM money to make a new chip for desktops that can have asmuch power they wish but just give the performance then i dont thinkso MS should do this right now.

let the technology advance on its own pace. It will come to them naturally this way and MS will be ready to open their OS for ARM once the time comes.

[Vice]

How can they support it on desktop right now?

:s

it doesnt make sense. It cannot compare with the performace of desktop PCs. ARM needs to work on it and work on adding better graphics chip or whatever it takes to bring the performance on par with todays mainstream desktops. Only then will MS think over it and rest of the party will be interested aswell.

If u mean MS should Pay ARM money to make a new chip for desktops that can have asmuch power they wish but just give the performance then i dont thinkso MS should do this right now.

let the technology advance on its own pace. It will come to them naturally this way and MS will be ready to open their OS for ARM once the time comes.

I think this is all beyond your understanding. ARM Holdings is a processor designer. They don't manufacture the chips. Other companies take ARM's designs, tweak them and make chips. There are already desktop class ARM chip designs in existence but no applications for them because there is no desktop class software for them. If you want a 2.5GHz Quad Core ARM chip, it exists. If you want a 80 Core ARM chip, it exists. We just need Microsoft to allow 3rd partys to release desktop apps for the ARM architecture and PC's using ARM chips will start to roll off assembly lines. It is just that simple.

And I dunno how many times I've said it already but ARM is not just about Phones and Tablets. There are desktop class chip designs ready and waiting to be manufactured if the software was there to utilise them.

One example is the latest ARMv8 architecture which fully supports 64-bit instructions for beyond 4GB RAM utilisation. ARM specifically targets Desktops, Workstations and Servers with this new core architecture.

[Zain Adeel]

I think this is all beyond your understanding. ARM Holdings is a processor designer. They don't manufacture the chips. Other companies take ARM's designs, tweak them and make chips. There are already desktop class ARM chip designs in existence but no applications for them because there is no desktop class software for them. If you want a 2.5GHz Quad Core ARM chip, it exists. If you want a 80 Core ARM chip, it exists. We just need Microsoft to allow 3rd partys to release desktop apps for the ARM architecture and PC's using ARM chips will start to roll off assembly lines. It is just that simple.

And I dunno how many times I've said it already but ARM is not just about Phones and Tablets. There are desktop class chip designs ready and waiting to be manufactured if the software was there to utilise them.

I know that ARM itself does not manufacture chips. Companies like Nvidia Qualcomm do. So the thing i didnt know was that they already have desktop class designs done. So its all about demand then i guess.

The biggest advantage i know of ARM chips is that they are power efficient. Please educate me if i dont know any other big advantages over x86.

So to my understand. If the device isnt battery powered. It will be easier to just go with x86 because companies already know the structure and have applications for it already. So what would bring ARM to desktops? I mean what would make it necessary for those chips to be produced? How will the demand be created?

[Glassed Silver]

What you're saying is ridiculous. A company like Adobe will not spend millions of dollars porting to an architecture that has no desktop hardware and where the main producer of desktop software (Microsoft) have already announced their ARM OS will be locked down to Metro for 3rd party developers. That would be a huge mistake.

It's like chicken and the egg. We need Microsoft to make the OS fully open first before the Developers do anything. Uncertainty isn't going to fuel any ports.

And no Microsoft are not supporting ARM on the desktop. They are supporting it on Phones and Tablets. That's all.

This.

And this:

(feel free to jump to 2:00)

Also this:

Glassed Silver:mac

[Zain Adeel]

thats what i was talking about.

Intel AMD arent sitting ducks. If they can provide the battery life. Why would we need MS to open its OS to ARM? what i think is. Come 2013 MS will move on to intel chips to power the tablets. And this will allow no compromise performance and flexibility and maybe they make 7inch tablets using ARM chips powered by WP8.

[Vice]

I know that ARM itself does not manufacture chips. Companies like Nvidia Qualcomm do. So the thing i didnt know was that they already have desktop class designs done. So its all about demand then i guess.

The biggest advantage i know of ARM chips is that they are power efficient. Please educate me if i dont know any other big advantages over x86.

So to my understand. If the device isnt battery powered. It will be easier to just go with x86 because companies already know the structure and have applications for it already. So what would bring ARM to desktops? I mean what would make it necessary for those chips to be produced? How will the demand be created?

Well as you know right now we in x86 chips have hit a boundary. 4-6 Cores. With a thermal design power around 130 to 150 watts maximum. ARM with its lower power envelope would allow for 16, 32, 64 or over 100 cores all at 2.0 to 3.0GHz. And as the architecture gets more efficient eventually one ARM core would have the same capability as one Intel core. Already the latest ARM designs have performance parity with Core 2 (Conroe, Kentsfield etc) dies from a few years ago.

The most important thing today with notebooks far outselling desktops is performance per watt. For each watt of power how much performance do you get? And ARM far surpasses Intel in this. We see this today in low-powered devices like Phones and Tablets but that is in sub 1 Watt packages. Now imagine that same ARM architecture in a 35 Watt envelope. That would allow the ARM processors from say an iPhone or a Droid which are already fast enough to do 1080p video, video out, transcoding but 35x faster. That would not only be lower powered than Intels current notebook chips but it would be faster too.

And of course competition. At the moment Intels high end processors are around $1000 each and then the step down from the most exspensive ones are still around the $500 mark. Mid-range is about $300 and then low end around $150. In an ARM future you could get a whole PC for $500 that rivals todays Intel $1000 CPU.

NVIDIA want to produce ARM based desktop chips to compete with Intel. But without an operating system that allows an app ecosystem to develop no one will buy them. We've seen what companies can do with ARM on tablets Apple has passed like what 700,000 apps now. What we need is that same commitment from an OS supplier like Microsoft on the desktop so that ARM can get a foothold in the Notebook and Desktop market.

Having just AMD and Intel competing is bad for the market, it's bad for consumers from an innovation standpoint and a price standpoint. It has limited our choices. If Intel would license x86 further afield (to for example NVIDIA) then I wouldn't care. But they wont do that because they are very happy with their monopoly. Which btw they have been fined for over and over. I'm still angry with them taking away NVIDIA's FSB license by renaming FSB to QPI. It was an obvious label change just to destroy their chipset license that NVIDIA had and it worked NVIDIA had to stop producing chipsets entirely because of that and the net result was P55 P67 Z68 X58 X78 and about 10 other chipsets that Intel were able to shove down consumers throats through their limiting of market options.

I agree with you that going to a new architecture would be costly especially in the software losses. Many legacy apps would not get ported and there would be a rough time where apps were ported. It would be hard I agree but for the market to stay healthy and for consumers to get the best choices possible it just has to happen.

In some of your past posts you spoke about GPU's - At the moment on Phones and Tablets ARM integrates the GPU in to the CPU. But this is no different to the 1155 socket processors Intel sell that have an IGP (Integrated Graphics Processor) inside the CPU package. Just like Intel do it if you don't want to use that IGP you can just plug in a dedicated graphics accelerator in to a PCIe slot. ARM would be no different in that regard. You could use the built in PowerVR or NVIDIA GPU that your ARM processors has or stick in a dedicated card.

In the future I envision ARM would not only come pre-packaged to motherboards utilising a ball grid array like it does today but it would come in LGA and ZIF form factors like Intel and AMD processors where by you pick the CPU and the Motherboard and marry them together yourself. It could happen if the OS support is there and in a few years from now we could be completely transitioned over similar to how Apple made the move from PowerPC to Intel which btw was a decision they had to make because IBM was the only PowerPC chip manufacturer that had any kind of chip Apple could use but because of their monopoly fell behind to AMD and Intel competing with each other. The situation now is that Intel and AMD are no longer at the same batting level. Intel has won and AMD has announced they will no longer be focusing on high performance computing and only on Mobile. The worst is yet to come from the x86 market, mark my words on that.

[Osiris]

I could well be wrong but I just dont think MS have developed ARM Win8 just to run office and a desktop look alike on a tablet...I think we will see plenty of new apps and alot of apps that get redesigned and recompiled to run on ARM.

ARM will finally give users of windows tablets what they have been missing all these years and thats the battery life and the price point (although I still expect these to be higher than an ipad, it wont be as high as win tablets have been previously). Assuming Windows8 takes off, the tablets get the sales and the MetroUI proves popular, there will be no reason for MS to ditch ARM in a cpl of years for intel or amd when they catch up. There will already be a plethora of apps around that have cross platform support between win8/wp8 maybe even xbox...x86 x64 just wont matter to most consumers.

Initially though I expect power users on ARM tablets will probably want to make good use of RDP/vpn till all this comes about :)

[Zain Adeel]

@Vice. Thanks for the knowledgeable post. :) im with ARM then. If the Intel chip lasting weeks on connected standby come out soon then that's great. Thx again for the awesome post.

[PGHammer]

I could well be wrong but I just dont think MS have developed ARM Win8 just to run office and a desktop look alike on a tablet...I think we will see plenty of new apps and alot of apps that get redesigned and recompiled to run on ARM.

ARM will finally give users of windows tablets what they have been missing all these years and thats the battery life and the price point (although I still expect these to be higher than an ipad, it wont be as high as win tablets have been previously). Assuming Windows8 takes off, the tablets get the sales and the MetroUI proves popular, there will be no reason for MS to ditch ARM in a cpl of years for intel or amd when they catch up. There will already be a plethora of apps around that have cross platform support between win8/wp8 maybe even xbox...x86 x64 just wont matter to most consumers.

Initially though I expect power users on ARM tablets will probably want to make good use of RDP/vpn till all this comes about :)

And here's what you all have forgotten - WinRT (ARM's default API) runs on x86/x64 as well, so in the event that ARM flops, that applicaiton investment is not wasted.

In the meantime, it's pointless to port heavy-computing power applicaitons to WinRT - you'd basically be throwing ARM's biggest advantage away.

[PGHammer]

Sorry if I wasn't clear, I was speaking mostly about WOA when talking about limitations. I believe it has been made clear by Microsoft that the only apps for WOA that can run in the desktop are the included apps (which includes some, but not all, of the Office suite). I think that a WOA netbook makes a lot of sense for the reason you stated, but why does Office for WOA need to be a desktop app for you to get full use out of the physical keyboard?

I understand that the main difference below the surface is an API difference. WOA runs WinRT apps, Winx86/64 runs WinRT and Win32 apps. Got it.

What I am proposing is that this be made clear to the user in UI decisions. It is extremely clear when using the Metro/Immersive UI that this is new software and a different ecosystem. This is an important message to communicate to users. I don't think many people are confused that an iPad can't run Mac apps. I think there is potential confusion with WOA if it includes a desktop interface but does not run Win32 apps.

Not that people are stupid, but that most people use technology as a tool to get things done. They do not know nor do they care what Win32 and WinRT are. They do not know nor do they care what ARM and x86 are. They know what Windows desktop apps look like, and with little exception the Windows desktop has had very high application compatibility and legacy support up until WOA.

I just think that the UI is an easy way to communicate to the user the underlying differences in the platforms without having to go into technical details. By including the desktop UI in WOA you have to find a way to communicate the difference in processors and in APIs in a clear way. I think it would be better to avoid that altogether.

And I pointed out a situation (mine) where a WOA-based netbook - as opposed to a tablet or slate - even an x86 or x64 tablet or slate such as the Samsung Series 7 - makes better sense. For richer applications games, etc. - especially gaming - that's what the desktop (which *will* be running Windows 8 when it RTMs, Immersive and all) is for. A netbook - again, for my uses - is all about battery life and mobility. That means e-mail and researching via the Web. Not gaming (except browser-based gaming). Also, netbooks have physical keyboards. (As I stated quite plainly, I loathe virtual keyboards. And as someone that will be entering a crapton of text, a physical keyboard is the sensible move.) And because Office for WinRT is enough like Office 2010 that the transition between them will be minimal - and the UI transition between WOA and Windows 8 on my traditional desktop is zero, there will be *zero* transition fatigue. Throw in the far greater battery life, far cheaper price, and lighter weight, and it's all win and no lose.

[notuptome2004]

What you're saying is ridiculous. A company like Adobe will not spend millions of dollars porting to an architecture that has no desktop hardware and where the main producer of desktop software (Microsoft) have already announced their ARM OS will be locked down to Metro for 3rd party developers. That would be a huge mistake.

It's like chicken and the egg. We need Microsoft to make the OS fully open first before the Developers do anything. Uncertainty isn't going to fuel any ports.

And no Microsoft are not supporting ARM on the desktop. They are supporting it on Phones and Tablets. That's all.

I do want to make clear though that regardless of when Intel produce an ARM competitor for low-powered devices what I care about more is a healthy and competitive market. Having only AMD and Intel producing x86 chips (now that VIA has dropped out) has really hurt us in price and innovation. If the market had 6-7 players in it we could have had a low powered x86 chip by now guys.

http://www.adobe.com/products/touchapps.html they already have Touch Apps for android and soon iOS witch are Arm based deviices so yes they are already spending money to develop for Arm

[PGHammer]

http://www.adobe.com.../touchapps.html they already have Touch Apps for android and soon iOS witch are Arm based deviices so yes they are already spending money to develop for Arm

And what about netbook formfactors for ARM?

There's a simple reason why (until WOA) there haven't been any - all the OS development for ARM has been touch-based. Tablets and slates - not netbooks.

Not everyone that wants a long-life-on-battery device even WANTS a tablet or slate - however, that's been all that's available (unless you go Atom, which is poorer by far on battery life than ARM).

Yet the majority of anti-Immersive (and anti-WOA) noise is about the reason for a desktop on ARM - and the similarity between the WOA UI and the x86/64 UI.

Why the hate for ARM-based netbooks?

[Vice]

http://www.adobe.com.../touchapps.html they already have Touch Apps for android and soon iOS witch are Arm based deviices so yes they are already spending money to develop for Arm

The thing is though these apps they make do not even have 1/100th of the functionality of Photoshop and are completely useless for anything serious.

[DeadEndAccount]

It is a short sighted decision by Microsoft not to provide the desktop and ability to run desktop applications on ARM given that there is a possibility with the development of ARMv8 (64bit ARM) might be a viable desktop and laptop CPU in the future.

If WinRT is the future and win32 has too many x86'isms then why doesn't Microsoft provide WinRT for desktop applications as well? too me so far it appears that Windows hasn't be fully thought through in this belief that 'metro can be everywhere".