Microsoft Surface - Page 8

I've never seen that before in my life. I have 3 copies of windows 8. Details on what you bought where?

Imagine being able to plug a monitor and keyboard into your phone and using it in the exact same way you'd use your desktop.

It seems to me that this is Microsoft's ultimate goal. The same thing could be possible on Apple's line of products, but it would require painful development hacks because iOS and OS X don't share an API. The .NET framework is more like Java, in that it can be compiled to run, theoretically, anywhere.

Microsoft also decided to share its UI (Metro) across operating systems, which is more than can be said of Apple's products and much more than can be said about Linux/Android/Open webOS.

All Windows users have to do is wait for developers to catch up, which would have happened a long time ago had they eliminated more of the COM and native crap earlier, which they didn't do because too many people would have complained that they couldn't use their old Windows apps. Microsoft has been stuck in this catch-22 and it looks like they're finally trying to make their way out.

It wouldn't surprise me if, 10 years from now, all non-server flavors of Windows run on ARM devices.

I have the window 7.5 phone and it's already kinda like that. Word, excell, outlook all sync and share between my phone and my laptop. I get text messages all the time from my iPhone coworkers asking me to open attachments while they're in the field from corporate that they can't open on their phones.

Windows RT runs on top of a subset of the core native Windows API (called Win32) that was ported to the ARM platform. By sticking with the core Win32 APIs for WinRT, Microsoft did two things -- 1) ensured a relatively broad overlap between the feature set of Win8 and WinRT and 2) prolonged the lifetime of all the "COM and native crap" that you mention above since those rely on the core Win32 APIs. In other words, apps developed for WinRT ultimately rely on the same set of native APIs as classic desktop apps written for Win8. In fact, the more performance that is required for an RT app, the more directly it must use the Win32 APIs rather than rely on some of the higher-level, more abstract WinRT APIs. For example, games that want to take advantage of the Direct3D graphics APIs on WinRT must use the Win32 APIs directly. Apps built on the .NET Framework are no different. The fact that .NET apps can be compiled under different OSs on the x86 platform doesn't mean that they're any closer to be able to run on ARM platforms.

Microsoft made an interesting set of tradeoffs in the design of WinRT. I would say that it's at least as likely that x86 processors reduce their power consumption enough to compete with ARM processors for the mobile device market. And if ARM processors do move up the chain and displace x86 processors, I would expect server platforms would be among the first places they would be used because CPU power consumption and heat dissipation are much bigger concerns for servers than desktops. Given that the WinRT effort took several years and was based on the state of CPU tech at that time, I wonder if MS would make the same choice today given the advances in x86 processor tech (Medfield, Clover Trail, etc) in the last two years.

huh... I had thought that WOA was more along the lines of the .NET compact or micro frameworks, in that it was the CLR and framework compiled for ARM. I guess its the CLR and framework compiled for the Windows API which was compiled for ARM..?

This part is incorrect, though, I think. There are (and have been for a while) versions of .NET that run on embedded (like the .NET micro framework).

Yep, that's basically it. Peter Bright has a pretty good (but long) article on it if you want all the gory details.

The .NET Micro Framework contains only a subset of the .NET APIs and is almost its own operating system targeted to embedded processors. It shares little in the way of technical infrastructure with the WinRT/Win8 editions of .NET. There's definitely some capability for code sharing in .NET between the Win8 and WinRT platforms, but there are lots of places where the vastly more restrictive environment of WinRT (UI, disk access, inter-application sharing, etc.) is going to require substantially different approaches.

But isn't that the rub? The JVM on Android shares little in technical infrastructure with the JVM on Windows, but libraries can be shared between them. Same goes for .NET (EDIT: I should have said CLR here).

Is there any reason that apps written with .NET/XAML or Javascript/HTML won't work in both Pro and RT out-of-the-box? I haven't seen anything to the contrary.
Edited by ken - 12/3/12 at 5:20pm

That's true to the degree that both platforms have full JVM implementations with all the Java APIs. WinRT does not have a full Win32 implementation, only enough of Win32 to provide the pieces that WinRT needs for its heavily-sandboxed subset of Win8 functionality.

Yes, that's true. It's just that those apps will be limited to the more restricted WinRT APIs.

That is exactly what I did in the end. Linux Mint. Everything works and I'm happy.
Edited by MikeDT - 12/30/12 at 4:00pm

This was the problem, I couldn't buy a Windows 8 product activation key, not in China. Seems it's only available here if you buy a new PC. And it's a restricted version as well, like Home Basic or Starter.

Bill Gates (1976) "They're all stealing my BASIC!!"
I assume MS is happy to let the PRC go on it's merry way with 99% software piracy.
Edited by MikeDT - 1/4/13 at 7:34pm

I finally got to play around with a Surface RT tonight and came away fairly impressed with what I saw.

The keyboard case in combination with the built in kickstand felt just as ingenious as I thought it could be when they first announced the concept. In practical use it makes the tablet feel nicer in use then having to latch on a bulky 3rd party keyboard case like one must with the iPad. Saves weight too. If there is anything here that I would like to see the rest of the industry (cough cough, Apple) rip off for their own products, it's this.

Truthfully I did have a few missed keystrokes, but that is to be expected considering how little time I had getting a feel for the new keyboard style.

RT felt lighter then I expected too. While I have concerns about the weight of the impending Pro, I wouldn't worry about it with the RT. As long as you are comfortable with the idea of a table that's a little too heavy for extended one handed use, the weight is fine. The same goes for the iPad 3/4, so this is by no means a deal-breaker for most and if it is you really should be looking for something closer to the iPad Mini.

Screen was beautiful. Probably one of the nicest I have seen on a tablet behind what Apple uses with it's Retina screens. I didn't do any extended reading on the device, but I would expect it to be decent enough if not as comfortable experience as you would get on the newer iPads. If MS can scale that quality as they move to higher resolutions then they should be fine in the long haul.

I continue to be a fan of the "Metro UI" and find it functional, beautiful and clean. Yet I also find myself doubling down on the belief that shoehorning the legacy desktop into this product was an absurd mistake. Had they launched it with a pure "Metro UI" experience with a promise of fully Metro Office apps launching soon, then it would be a whole different ball game.

Admittedly half the apps I launched felt buggy with several crashing on me at launch. What was astonishing to me was the fact that the reps at the MS Store didn't even bother to have all the apps set up to demo. Meaning you could launch some of them and get no further then the "set up" screen. Not a great way to demo your product.

Would I recommend it as a buy to the average user? That's a tough call. On it's own in a vacuum, I would probably say yes. Taking into account the competition? That's a whole other matter as the game still feels like it belongs to the iPad. At the end of the day MS is off to a good start here and they have taken some innovative approaches that have potential to shake up what's still a young industry.

You should really start JrMouse.com and blog about this shit.

I've been told.

No you haven't....until now!

Mouse bait...

http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/2/3829690/microsoft-google-exchange-activesync-debacle