Will Intel slay or flee fearsome Snapdragon Win 8 tab? In the week that the microprocessor turns 40, its inventor Intel is besieged by ARM-based rivals in the biggest growth market for the chips: mobile devices. Intel's highest hopes rest in the mobile processor's move beyond the cellphone, into larger, more PC-like products that fit more comfortably into Intel's ecosystem. But it …
"You may be thinking about Moto's competitor for the Intel 8086, the 6800."
The 6800 was an 8 bit core. The 8086 was a 16 bit core, and came along some time afterwards. Different sorts of beasts really, and didn't really compete. The commercially relevant competitor to the 8086 was really the 68000, which is what Apple picked.
It's quite noticeable how even back then the 8086 architecture was a problem; only 16bit. The 68000 was a 32bit core, much more future proof as history would show. It took the x86 community something like 15 years to fully make the 32bit switch.
And Atari for their ST
Years before that (during my short stint at Marconi in 1985) I saw a system made by a company called Apollo, it was a Unix(y) Workstation using a 68000.
If that man from IBM had taken the time to see DR Dos running on the 68000, we would have been far better off to today with its derivatives. Then again the man from IBM may not have liked how powerful those machines looked even then - the PC was supposed to be nothing more than an executive toy afterall.
I have a feeling that Windows 8 may be Microsoft's biggest disaster since the "Longhorn" fiasco.
It will suffer from trying to please everybody and pleasing nobody.
The "All tablets are crap unless they can run all my Windows programs" brigade will not be pleased because their vaunted Windows programs will not run on ARM.
The "I want a full desktop experience on my tablet and not some dumbed down Fisher Price crap" folks will also be unhappy because I will bet you dollars to doughnuts that "Windows 8 Super Tablet Pro Ultimate Edition" will end up being more like WinPho7 than the "Full Blown Windows With a Start Menu" that they are demanding.
The people who say "meh, I don't care about that stuff I just want to be able to get fart apps like my friends have" will buy Ipads and Android (depending on what their friends have their fart apps on).
So, who is going to buy Windows 8 on ARM exactly?
..........as long as Win8 sells well. I get the distinct impression that a major reason for compiling for ARM was to force Intel to get their thumb out from whichever orifice they had placed it over the issue of xx86 kit for tabs that does not fall over after 4 hours or so. It is key for Redmond to sell to the enterprise sector and that means Wintel architecture precisely because of the legacy apps issue you mention. As long as it sells well on xx86 they can afford a relaxed attitude to how well it sells on ARM SoCs (as long as sales are not *totally* pony on ARM). What will really screw Redmond is if it does badly on xx86 in the business sector - in that event they would be in deep trouble.
...Goat Jam and Arctic Fox.
Windows 8 for ARM looks absolutely balls. It looks like it's just Windows Phone 7, and added a Windows Phone 7-like "second GUI" to desktop Windows so that they can technically claim the same apps can run on the desktop and the tablet. It isn't giving people what they think they want (running the same apps on the tablet as the desktop).
But, Arctic Fox is also right, I don't know if Microsoft give's an F. If they can't have a market to themselves, they simply try to destroy that market. See netbooks -- after seeing Ubuntu netbooks on the market, they release the Windows 7 crippled edition, despite it running horribly on the Atom CPU. People just blame the netbooks saying they are underpowered, not Windows (where the blame belongs -- Ubuntu runs great on my 1.3ghz Atom-based mini), and netbook sales drop off.
I think they'll do the same thing with tablets -- they'll try to force WIndows 8 on as many as possible, no matter how mediocre. If it's mearly mediocre, people will deal with it "because it's Windows" (even though, essentially, it's not) and if it's less than mediocre, Microsoft will hope those people will eschew tablets alltogether and buy (Windows-running) notebooks instead, instead of buying a tablet with a better OS on it.
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