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Curiously, I would almost have believed Microsoft to have been the first to make a move like this. They have already been preparing their developer ecosystem fo
by 0x0 14y ago
Curiously, I would almost have believed Microsoft to have been the first to make a move like this. They have already been preparing their developer ecosystem for an architecture independent target for years with .NET and CLR/MSIL. As more software is developed in C#, switching CPU architecture is just a matter of supplying a new .NET VM bundled with the OS, and all your legacy software should continue to run - at full speed, even. (Incredibly, they decided that their ARM version of Windows 8 should be called "Windows RT" and be rather limited! What a missed opportunity!)
Meanwhile, Apple's developer tools are still churning out x86, x86_64, and/or arm assembly from Objective-C, so all existing software would at the very least need a recompile (hope your vendor is still around and has written portable code!) Or they could do another Rosetta, translating x86_64 to ARM. Doesn't sound like an efficient solution, though. And after a few years they'd drop the emulator from the OS anyways :P
- glhaynes 14y agoI might be running more .NET software than I realize, but it seems to me that .NET isn't anywhere close to becoming the majority "instruction set" of software shipped on Windows.
- 0x0 14y agoYou can't blame them for lack of trying to push it though, no? :)
- glhaynes 14y agoAgreed. Although Office staying Win32 sure doesn't send the signal to others that its worth the effort to move software like that to .NET. Anyway, I'm always surprised how few things seem to be .NET, here nearly 11 years after it was introduced.
- wslh 14y agoNo, you need to port Win32, COM and other native libs.
- 0x0 14y agoThat's an easy problem to solve, as Microsoft would be around and able to supply that. As long as 3rd party software is delivered as .NET .exe files they should easily run, probably even when p/invoking, as long as the OS comes with the necessary standard .dlls. Actually I'm quite certain Windows RT already has all this solved under the hood.
- glasshead969 14y agoI think Apple's LLVM architecture is built to handle these type of transitions.
- 0x0 14y agoI'm pretty sure binaries are still compiled down to machine code, so that would require your vendors to stick around and recompile and redistribute updated .app files for your old software.
- Osmium 14y ago> Incredibly, they decided that their ARM version of Windows 8 should be called "Windows RT" and be rather limited! What a missed opportunity! The whole "Windows RT" thing has been horrifically mis-managed. If they're not going to let third-party desktop apps run, they should've used it as an opportunity to ditch the desktop altogether. And talk about bad branding... As if any normal consumer is going to have a clue what that's about.