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Microsoft's only choice to move forward is to throw the Win32 baby out with the bathwater. And that brings us to the introduction of Windows 10 S.
Windows 10 S is just like the Windows 10 you use now, but the main difference is it can only run apps that have been whitelisted to run in the Windows Store. That means, by and large, existing Win32-based stuff cannot run in Windows 10 S for security reasons.
To bridge the app gap, Microsoft is allowing certain kinds of desktop apps to be "packaged" for use in the Windows Store through a tooling process known as Desktop Bridge or Project Centennial.
The good news is that with Project Centennial, many Desktop Win32 apps can be re-purposed and packaged to take advantage of Windows 10's improved security. However, there are apps that will inevitably be left behind because they violate the sandboxing rules that are needed to make the technology work in a secure fashion.
"A casualty of those sandboxing rules is Google's Chrome browser. For security reasons, Microsoft is not permitting desktop browsers to be ported to the Store."
(Score: 4, Insightful) by kaszz on Thursday May 11 2017, @01:44PM (13 children)
The next move is to lock down UEFI such that you can't escape Microsoft and by extension its store. That way only approved developers can make only approved software.
(Score: 2) by Geezer on Thursday May 11 2017, @02:06PM (4 children)
OTOH, that would open a market niche for a line non-UEFI CPU's and mobos, from AMD perhaps? Gamers and power users will always drive a niche segment.
Whatever happens to general-use office and home machines doesn't bug me much, and the PHB's will still blindly follow the MS piper. Hell, I still game high-end MMO's happily on a patched Win 7 system, and from the looks of things I probably will till I die.*
*Not all that distant, old age and cancer being what they are.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11 2017, @04:05PM (1 child)
My guess is that at that point they may try to push for legislation to make producing such devices illegal.
(Score: 1) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Thursday May 11 2017, @04:52PM
They tried it 10 years ago. Going as far as advocating an "internet license", and having the hardware attest as to who is using the computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11 2017, @04:45PM (1 child)
And what happens when Microsoft drops support for non-UEFI/non-locked down CPU's and mobos? Might still be able to run Linux on them, but "nobody" would buy them, so hardware vendors aren't likely to supply such boards.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday June 03 2017, @06:40AM
The Chinese Longson, Russian made ARM, Europe etc will advance to take a stab at the new market.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11 2017, @02:58PM
I predict they'll lock down the OS in ROM sometime in the future, like my old HP Jornada 820 that had WinCE embedded in ROM.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Thursday May 11 2017, @03:14PM (6 children)
By the time UEFI, and Management Engine, and Advanced Management Platform has locked down PC hardware into a total prison camp, it just won't matter.
There are already more devices in the world using ARM processors, under license but manufactured by different companies. And ARM processors inevitably run Linux. Not that Microsoft hasn't made a failing try to get Windows on it.
I somehow think that Raspberry PIs are only the first "desktop" computers -- even though that isn't their primary purpose. And Chromebooks have outsold Windows laptops on Amazon for years and years now.
Windows really is the past. The prison camp UEFI and management engines just don't matter.
This was true more than a decade ago, but people just didn't realize it: Trying to stop the rise of open source is like trying to stop the incoming tide with your hands.
But . . . Microsoft Loves Linux
Yes, and Sharks Love Fish, and Foxes Love Chickens, etc.
Microsoft will either adapt or end up in the dustbin of history. And I hear IBM may not be doing quite so well as its monopolist fortunes once were. These things don't happen overnight. But they happen.
If a minstrel has musical instruments attached to his bicycle, can it be called a minstrel cycle?
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Thursday May 11 2017, @03:23PM (3 children)
IBM has been taking a very long time to die because of the blind corporate "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM " fanboys. The lock-in, the douche-baggery, the fanboys .... they're truly the original Apple. I hope the downfall of both is painful, as it's deserved. Microsoft is pushing Azure in a *huge* way these days. Unfortunately, the corporate crowd is falling for it again, not realizing the lock-in is inevitable.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday May 11 2017, @03:31PM (2 children)
Speaking of Apple fanboys. I once was one. Apple once was a great company. Sometime about the early 90's BYTE magazine described the history of the microcomputer industry as an effort to keep up with Apple. It was true. Apple fanboys, including myself, were smug. Because we knew what we had was great.
Of course, I didn't have to pay for any of this outrageously expensive equipment myself. I lived in an R&D playground.
When Apple began losing its way by the late 1990's, I moved on. There was this new Linux toy and it was exciting. I had to suddenly learn about PC hardware which I had never needed to use before. It made me appreciate how simple Apple hardware was. But the software was beckoning me to Linux.
I still had fond memories of Apple and wished them well. Then Apple became evil.
If a minstrel has musical instruments attached to his bicycle, can it be called a minstrel cycle?
(Score: 3, Funny) by butthurt on Thursday May 11 2017, @11:55PM (1 child)
> Then Apple became evil.
In my opinion it began when Steve Jobs joined Apple:
In 1997, Apple merged with NeXT. Within a few months of the merger, Jobs became CEO [...]
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs [wikipedia.org]
Bringing in an outsider to run a company is often a recipe for failure.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 12 2017, @03:11AM
I always thought it was when the Apple II was discontinued back in the early-mid 90's. After that it was just the Macintosh, a closed, propriety platform.
Eventually they moved to a BSD-based system, but really that was out of necessity as MacOS was stuck in the late 80's and everyone else was in the 2000's. However, the walled garden remained. Not a whole lot has changed in the Mac would, other than Apple pretty much completely abandoning the Mac as they found it much easier to build a walled garden around a smartphone than a computer.
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Thursday May 11 2017, @03:25PM (1 child)
Windows really is the past.
I have to agree. If it weren't for the fact that Windows is still locked into most businesses, making it familiar, private people would have already abandoned it.
It's not clear to me how the Windows 10 S strategy is going to match up to businesses. No business with brains will leave the App Store available on individual PCs, and essentially all businesses have a pile of legacy applications that require Win32. If Microsoft makes the consumer experience too different from the business experience, then they really will lose the consumer market entirely.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday May 11 2017, @03:34PM
One business that Microsoft could retreat into, and continue to milk for decades is its Enterprise software.
Here's hoping they seriously screw that up. Sacrifice it on the altar of Windows 10 S and locking consumers in.
If a minstrel has musical instruments attached to his bicycle, can it be called a minstrel cycle?