The article talks about Win 8 as if you'll be compiling straight to ARM. I haven't been following the Win8/Metro info very closely, but wouldn't one be essentia

The article talks about Win 8 as if you'll be compiling straight to ARM. I haven't been following the Win8/Metro info very closely, but wouldn't one be essentially targeting a .Net/Metro VM with implementations on ARM for mobile devices and x86 for desktops? So of course you're not going to back translate native x86 apps to ARM. Even if the instruction set/API translation were perfect, the computing power wouldn't map over very well. I've been wondering if Google would make a similar strategic move - i.e. provide a desktop environment that can run Android apps targeted to users on multiple OS's (A polish step beyond simulators/emulators for devs...). That way you can access a much larger installed base of users and make the mobile app themselves more portable. Of course there's the argument that mobile-to-desktop protability would result and all that much usability. However, it's something that I suspect that Apple would have a harder time offering because they don't have a VM strongly involved.