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Martin Brinkmann reports via gHacks
Microsoft is working on a new Windows 10 SKU (Stock Keeping Unit) that the company named Windows 10 Cloud internally.
First signs of Windows 10 Cloud appeared a week or so ago on the Internet, but it was not clear back then what this new edition of Windows 10 would offer. Suggestions ranged from a cloud-based operating system to a subscription-based system similar to Office 365, and a successor of Windows RT.
[...] Windows 10 Cloud [is] a revival of the Windows RT version of Windows.
[...] Windows 10 Cloud [will] only run Windows Store applications and apps that Microsoft made to work with the operating system. Any legacy Windows 32 program [will] not work on systems running Windows 10 Cloud.
[...] Windows 10 Cloud is a work in progress. Things may change along the way before it is released.
Windows 10 Cloud behaves as you would expect it to behave. Cortana walks you through the first steps of setup on first start, and you may notice that quite a few apps are listed in Start after [OS] installation.
Some of these apps are first-party applications or games, while others [are] third-party applications. The selection includes Netflix, Facebook, Twitter, and on the games side, Age of Empires Castle Siege, Asphalt 8, and Royal Revolt, among others.
Most don't appear to be installed though, but merely links to the application's Windows Store entry.
[...] You are stuck with Microsoft Edge or Internet Explorer as the browser, and with Windows Defender as the security solution.
Several comments there mention how this will be competing with Android, iOS, and Chromebooks. Do you see a viable niche for what Redmond is offering? ... or is 420 correct when he says, "a company [...] determined to put themselves out of business"?
Also at Ars Technica.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 05 2017, @08:40PM
people hated [M$] so much they are abandoning the entire desktop to escape them
As the 1st reply notes, you described things quite well here.
...with this exception.
Folks abandoned the desktop because they desire mobility (and low-cost devices).
M$ tried to leverage their monopoly and cram their bloated mess onto portable devices and, as could be expected, got junk that pretty much nobody wanted.
...and trying to charge -anything- for your OS when the competition (Android) costs zero is a business model bound to fail.
An AC above got another piece of the puzzle with "Developers, Developers, Developers".
Just as M$ missed the significance of the internet[1], thinking that the future was them selling CDs (e.g. Encarta), M$ showed up late to mobile with too little to offer.
[1] Gates' silly little book didn't mention the 'Net.
He had to go back and add that in the 2nd printing.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jmorris on Sunday February 05 2017, @11:04PM
Folks abandoned the desktop because they desire mobility (and low-cost devices).
Partially correct. Notice how almost every non-windows platform that wasn't insanely expensive got traction. Note that while the Mac never really took off the popularity of iPhone and iPad and later the cheaper Apple laptops even got volume sales. It was a combination of the popularity of non-PC platforms combined with the inability to offer a non-Microsoft option on Desktop or laptop form factors. Chicken or egg, who knows, who cares, it is what happened. Observe the panic the netbook created until Microsoft successfully convinced the manufacturers to kill it in favor of midsize 11" Windows laptops with cut rate licensing. The one thing that simply couldn't exist was a desktop or laptop preloaded with a non-MS offering. It took Google to eventually blow a hole in that final firewall and look what it took to do it; they had to build laptops without a PC BIOS and a non-standard keyboard, i.e. build machines that couldn't possibly run Windows. And they sell very well. Think about it, there is zero real reason EVERY laptop sold isn't offered in both a Windows and ChromeOS preload configuration, other than an illegal and unofficial bundling deal that has never went away. Or even as a dual boot as a $5 upcharge. The fact that never happens says everything, the invisible hand of the marketplace has an invisible claw upon it.
The problem is Windows is a nightmare for a typical end user. It requires professional administration and is actually harder to administer than a Linux PC. It suffers from more security issues even now than sendmail's worst year. It never had any business on the desktop/laptop of 80% of the people who were forced to buy it because of the monopoly. The second people had a viable option they bolted. Had a laptop or desktop preloaded with an alternative option been allowed the end of Windows could have happened in the 1990's. Had alternatives been allowed, we would have had a crapload of options, all better than Ubuntu's current release by now. Probably a mix of Free and Closed offerings even. Because they were allowed to keep and to leverage an accidental monopoly, Microsoft retarded the development of the computing world by at least fifteen years, probably twenty.
M$ tried to leverage their monopoly and cram their bloated mess onto portable devices and, as could be expected, got junk that pretty much nobody wanted.
I'd just phrase it as "Nobody ever really wanted Microsoft's bloated mess and since they had a choice on devices, unlike the desktop, they didn't buy it." They found that after decades of forcing their crap down their customers throats they only had enemies and slaves, almost zero true fanboys or even loyal customers.
...and trying to charge -anything- for your OS when the competition (Android) costs zero is a business model bound to fail.
Android is not free. How much free do you see in the Play Store? Always look at the big picture. Once they can establish the Windows Store as the only allowed source of apps Windows can be as "free" as Android and the money will flow.
An AC above got another piece of the puzzle with "Developers, Developers, Developers".
There is always a conflict there. You can't allow the 3rd Party devels to wall in your system. Imagine if Microsoft, Apple, etc. never encroached on their 3rd party devels. That would mean no built in browser, no 1st party office suite, no 1st party defragger, virus scanner, etc. But all of the successful platforms do keep the developers in mind, witness the devel tools each of the popular platforms have available.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Monday February 06 2017, @07:09PM
Remember the late 80's/ early 90's? Lets rephrase your quote: Notice how every non-proprietary unix platform that wasn't insanely expensive got traction.
Those were first DOS, then Windows machines running on the cheap open PC platform. What were the alternatives back then? Sun? SGI? HP? DEC? Workstations that cost as much as a car, with varying CPU arch's, and very costly software options like compilers. Today we can easily download source and build many applications on BSD, Linux, Mac. But back then unix vendors were fighting each other for market dominance and you had nearly zero cross platform compatibility unless the vendor built for your platform. The unix vendors shot themselves in the foot by fracturing their platforms.
During this mess, Microsoft was riding the wave of the cheap, open, PC platform. They were at the right place at the right time. They built an open platform on another open platform, and actually united the computing world. We were awash in cheap PC's and software back then. People like my father bought them to run his business using DOS/windows applications like basic CAD and word processing packages. The total cost of our second 486, a Micron, was something like $6000 and the CAD software was only a few hundred bucks. That CAD software also ran on another white box 486 and our older white box 386's (with i387's). We could run any of the interesting and cheap software you found in mom and pop computer stores and magazines on (almost) ANY PC so long as it ran DOS/windows. It didn't matter that Windows was proprietary at its core. It mattered that Windows was open at the developer and user level. The big Unix vendors were stuck in their ancient ways using proprietary everything while selling through VAR's and other vendor channels that joe-sixpack's like us would or could never afford or be bothered with. The PC revolution was off to a great start and MS was right there leading and uniting it. Of course they were going to win.
Though, ironically, they completely missed the mobile train. Just like the big unix vendors of old, they let someone eat their lunch right under their noses. And that was Google and Apple. It got so bad their only hope of getting people onto their mobile platform was to force the desktop to become a mobile platform in hopes of getting people hooked on Windows 8/10 and Metro. Still isn't working for them. The irony.
I used to write software here at work. Mostly in C# and some C++ on windows. Though, today, my safe bet would be to stick with POSIX as much as possible and building against mingw/Cygwin on windows and let people build on Linux, BSD and Mac. You can't go wrong.