What do Intel Execs Know About Windows 8 Anyway?

[DF Bot]

Yesterday the senior vice president of Intel ‘leaked‘ and I use the term loosely, information about Windows 8, claiming that when running on ARM chips it wouldn’t be able to run legacy apps.

I take issue with this leak for several reasons and not because it may turn out to be factually accurate.* It’s a pretty foolish thing for anyone to say and especially so for a company vice-president at Microsoft’s biggest hardware partner.

So why am I saying this?* Well it’s not for any defending of Microsoft, even though the company has officially rebuked the claims.* It’s simply because we don’t know enough about the product at this point and fanning the flames of speculation such as this could turn out to be exactly the wrong thing to do.

We suspect that Windows 8 will include a virtualisation client, such as XP mode.* Indeed this was one of the things mentioned by Renee James at Intel in her statement.* This isn’t going to be very exciting news for most people as it’s just to be expected.

What will this mean for legacy apps?* It’s not hugely likely that Windows 8 will run merrily with a virtualised*OS also running in the background and apps on top of those on just a low-power ARM processor.* It’s not beyond the realms of possibility however as we already have dual-core low-power processors, quad-core chips should be with us by the time Windows 8 ships and memory is getting cheaper.

Then there’s the fact that Microsoft are also rumoured to be creating an app store.* Should this turn out to be true, again not making any assumptions, then we would expect the company to clamp down on the install anything scenario we currently have.* On a desktop PC this may or may not be welcomed but for a low power device such as a tablet it would be pretty essential to have somewhere for people to go to get apps.* The simple existence of such a store would be the catalyst to get the ball rolling on app development.

Then there’s the interface whatever the tablet version of Windows will have.* Just about everybody has said that every program in Windows would need to be rewritten to take advantage of the new interface anyway, this would imply that it wouldn’t matter in the slightest if you couldn’t use your existing software on an ARM-powered Windows device.

Microsoft should be applauded for moving away from the legacy problems that have haunted them for years and that people are crying foul because they can’t run app X or Y in a scenario that’s not even known to be true is nothing short of alarmist.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again.* It won’t be until we get the technical and public betas of Windows 8 that we will know exactly what is and isn’t included.* With every single edition of Windows some features are dropped during the development cycle and others can be added in at a late stage.* This was the case with XP, Vista and Windows 7 and you will all know of features that you’d have liked to have been in Vista or Windows 7 that weren’t.

The fact that a certain build of Windows 8 that this individual from Intel may or may not have seen might not run standard apps on ARM doesn’t mean that it isn’t going to happen as there are all manner of ways to make this work.* If it doesn’t happen though that also doesn’t mean its a disaster and people should be screaming at Microsoft and waving placards.* This could turn out to be the very thing that the tech community has been crying out for the company to do for many years.

So before any more corporate vice-presidents chip in with their own ten-penneth*worth I wanted to at least try and be the voice of reason.* Let’s just wait and see because I’m certain the future of Windows will be exciting no matter what it turns out to be.

Related posts:[LIST=1][*]Intel to Integrate USB 3.0 into Windows8[*]Windows 8 Gets Windows 7 Mode[*]Windows 8 Leaks: The Argument Against[*]Dell to Have Windows 8 Tablet Ready for Early 2012[*]Windows 8 to support 32, 64 or 128-bit?

[4me2]

Give this man a bag of Brussel sprouts.