Re:Microsoft's ARM blunder: Why Windows RT was DOA
by brudgers on Saturday January 19, 2013 @01:30PM
(#5084182)
[My deleted post was along the lines that if you need IE6, you're SOL with any Microsoft upgrade path, and that their treatment of IE6 might be construed as an advantage - or disadvantage - when it comes to evaluating Microsoft's commitment to B2B customers]
When it comes to legacy application support, Windows RT is not at a disadvantage to iOS or Android. And it's not as if Google Docs is going to handle "macro-encrusted" documents any better.
For continuity, I'll repeat here what I have replied elsewhere. Microsoft could kludge RT to work with Exchange and NT-domain management. Or, they could develop those products robustly to meet a future filled with less powerful computing devices and sandboxed operating systems.
One is - well, a kludge. The other is a long term strategy.
- No application you've written to date will run on it
- No application you're now going to write will run on it without uploading it to the app-store and letting everybody else download it.
- Your active-directory NT-domain user management will not be able to deal with these machines.
- Your own exchange server will not be able to talk to these devices e-mail clients.
- Your host of macro-encrusted MS-Office documents will not work on that devices implementation of office.
In short, nothing you did up to that point works on them.
- It makes porting/supporting these devices extremely cumbersome and expensive
- It demonstrates clearly that Microsoft was willing to break their entire backwards compatibility.