Legacy desktop on ARM
I told you so internet. Again. After the Silverlight fiasco, people needed something new to overreact to I guess. So, a few months ago, someone with an insider source at Microsoft claimed that Windows 8 for ARM would not include the legacy desktop. Of course, the source didn't want to expose the name or title of the person who leaked the information. But my speculation is that those people tend to be the lower ranking ones. I'm a developer, and I can think we're going one way with a product for months only to find out that the executives have known for over a year that they were going to change focus and go this other path. I would imagine Microsoft is a very similar culture. Any source not near the top, is only made aware of the short term information.
Since that post, there have been a myriad of sites doing everything from simply re-iterating this to outright claiming that Microsoft has confirmed this. And the more such posts there are, the more substance people attribute to the rumour. But the funny thing was that every single one of them was either referencing directly, or indirectly that original rumour (or in a few cases, simply making the claim without specifying a source or any reason to believe them). Anyway, I responded to one of those posts to indicate, that I would actually be surprised if the legacy desktop were omitted and that I had thought that MS was simply keeping hush because the feature was in some way not performing as expected. And my speculation is fueled by something other than rumour. I saw it. There was a video from the //Build/ conference where one of the many managers on the Windows team was demoing an insanely buggy iteration of Metro running the legacy desktop.
So, Paul Thurrot recently offered yet a new rumour. Again this is rumour only, but it is very interesting because it claims that ARM for desktop is pretty much complete for Beta and will be sent to developers shortly. And that is DOES include the legacy desktop. The thing leaving me questionable however is the statement that legacy apps won't run. The insider source seemed uncertain at best on this topic merely stating that he is unaware of any 3rd party applications running. But what does that mean? Are some legacy Microsoft applications running? No doubt, the internet is or will be flooded with claims that MS has confirmed no legacy app support.
To that end, I will make a prediction. I felt MS was keeping hush on legacy desktop not because they were unsure of whether or not they could make the desktop run, but whether or not they would actually be able to run anything on it, so they kept hush on it so they could pull the plug while no one had any hopes for it.
But as I mentioned above, I saw the legacy desktop running before, and when they say it was unstable, it was unstable at running applications. The desktop as a standalone entity doing nothing was solid even during that build demo, but a desktop that does nothing is useless except as a means of showing off your desktop background. I don't think they would bother releasing the legacy desktop unless some reasonable number of existing apps would run. My suspicion is that applications using MSIL only (.Net applications) will run but anything referencing a library compiled to byte code won't. Remember, .Net applications are run on a JIT compiler, meaning your libraries are actually compiled to an intermediate language and not byte code. As long as there is a JIT run-time for WinRT that can read that MSIL, I believe they should be able to make those apps run fine. The thing I think is missing, but would definitely make waves, would be an emulation layer for x86 apps on ARM.
But while I expect the emulation layer won't be there, a part of me thinks that their best move is that if they can't run everything or an insane chunk of everything, that they should lock out desktop on ARM entirely (though that would probably tick off vendors rumoured to be building ARM desktops and laptops for Windows 8). Nothing will piss an end user off more than seeing something they think they know and are familiar with, and being unable to make it do the things they are used to. And the UX changes have already been enough to turn some users off preemptively. So, only time will tell.
Since that post, there have been a myriad of sites doing everything from simply re-iterating this to outright claiming that Microsoft has confirmed this. And the more such posts there are, the more substance people attribute to the rumour. But the funny thing was that every single one of them was either referencing directly, or indirectly that original rumour (or in a few cases, simply making the claim without specifying a source or any reason to believe them). Anyway, I responded to one of those posts to indicate, that I would actually be surprised if the legacy desktop were omitted and that I had thought that MS was simply keeping hush because the feature was in some way not performing as expected. And my speculation is fueled by something other than rumour. I saw it. There was a video from the //Build/ conference where one of the many managers on the Windows team was demoing an insanely buggy iteration of Metro running the legacy desktop.
So, Paul Thurrot recently offered yet a new rumour. Again this is rumour only, but it is very interesting because it claims that ARM for desktop is pretty much complete for Beta and will be sent to developers shortly. And that is DOES include the legacy desktop. The thing leaving me questionable however is the statement that legacy apps won't run. The insider source seemed uncertain at best on this topic merely stating that he is unaware of any 3rd party applications running. But what does that mean? Are some legacy Microsoft applications running? No doubt, the internet is or will be flooded with claims that MS has confirmed no legacy app support.
To that end, I will make a prediction. I felt MS was keeping hush on legacy desktop not because they were unsure of whether or not they could make the desktop run, but whether or not they would actually be able to run anything on it, so they kept hush on it so they could pull the plug while no one had any hopes for it.
But as I mentioned above, I saw the legacy desktop running before, and when they say it was unstable, it was unstable at running applications. The desktop as a standalone entity doing nothing was solid even during that build demo, but a desktop that does nothing is useless except as a means of showing off your desktop background. I don't think they would bother releasing the legacy desktop unless some reasonable number of existing apps would run. My suspicion is that applications using MSIL only (.Net applications) will run but anything referencing a library compiled to byte code won't. Remember, .Net applications are run on a JIT compiler, meaning your libraries are actually compiled to an intermediate language and not byte code. As long as there is a JIT run-time for WinRT that can read that MSIL, I believe they should be able to make those apps run fine. The thing I think is missing, but would definitely make waves, would be an emulation layer for x86 apps on ARM.
But while I expect the emulation layer won't be there, a part of me thinks that their best move is that if they can't run everything or an insane chunk of everything, that they should lock out desktop on ARM entirely (though that would probably tick off vendors rumoured to be building ARM desktops and laptops for Windows 8). Nothing will piss an end user off more than seeing something they think they know and are familiar with, and being unable to make it do the things they are used to. And the UX changes have already been enough to turn some users off preemptively. So, only time will tell.
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