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it's not just that you have to recompile for ARM; that would be too easy. Third-party apps on Win8 ARM are Metro-only (or whatever Microsoft is calling Metro n
by tmurray 14y ago
it's not just that you have to recompile for ARM; that would be too easy.
Third-party apps on Win8 ARM are Metro-only (or whatever Microsoft is calling Metro now). So okay, port to Metro, you think! Well, you can't use the Win32 API at all in Metro apps. It's simply not available. Instead, you have to use the Win32 replacement, WinRT, which is a somewhat-crippled version of Win32 (want to load a dynamic library at runtime? too bad! static libraries or bust!) which is very different from Win32 in terms of API design.
I can't see Win8 being a serious contender in the tablet space anytime soon. I get the impression that Metro and ARM are being used as an excuse to push WinRT because various groups at Microsoft don't like Win32, but the sudden total lack of applications or backwards compatibility is going to hurt them a lot.
- kristianp 14y agoThere are reasons for the Win RT API. Security (and the lock in) and responsiveness are two that I can think of. It's not just because "groups at Microsoft don't like Win32".
- tedunangst 14y agoiOS does not appear to have suffered from its lack of dynamic library support. It's funny people bring this up, because iOS Cocoa is crippled in exactly the same way.
- vidarh 14y agoBut in this case the issue is that it is one of many things that makes it harder to port existing software, and so the shared lineage with Windows matters a lot less.