4 ms·
> It had a special version of Windows, and almost nothing would run on it, as very few applications are compiled for Windows on ARM. That wasn't the reason. It
by DaiPlusPlus 9y ago
> It had a special version of Windows, and almost nothing would run on it, as very few applications are compiled for Windows on ARM.
That wasn't the reason. It was because Windows RT was artificially locked-down to only allow sandboxed "apps" from the Windows App Store to run. There's not much of a use-case for only glorified web-service clients on a machine with a desktop UI regardless of the ISA they're compiled for.
Had MS allowed arbitrary ARM code to run on the Surface RT, free of sandbox restrictions, I think the platform would still be alive today - probably as a successor to Windows CE for kiosk applications.
(Though there is now finally a non-locked-down version of Windows 10 for ARM... so let's see...)
- TazeTSchnitzel 9y agoYeah, it required the Windows Store, and additionally at that time it could only have WinRT (unrelated to Windows RT; basically the old name for UWP) apps. These days you can put Win32 apps on the store. If Microsoft allowed Win32 ARM apps on the store, maybe Windows RT would have succeeded. Maybe. Software publishers probably wouldn't have wanted to lose that control.
- justavoice 9y agoAnd now we have 10S that... requires the app store. Will it meet the same fate? One can only hope.