Windows 8: Intel plans to profit from ARM’s inability to run Legacy applications
Posted on 30. Nov, 2011 by Albert Madison in Industry News, Laptops, Laptops, Netbooks, Tablets
It looks like the success of Windows 8 could make or break the PC industry. A lot of companies that have lived big on the success of Windows PCs are really counting on Windows 8 being a smash hit to save/keep their companies. Chipzilla, Intel, is just one company that really need Windows 8 to be a success, and according to the companies CEO they new operating system is the best thing to have ever happended to Intel.
At this time Intel and the PC industry is starting to see ARM powered mobile devices like smartphones and tablets emerging at a dramatic rate, in 2011 mobile device shipments surpassed PCs for the first time. For Intel the rise of ARM is hurting them because they haven’t been able to get smartphone or tablet makers to really put their low-power Intel ATom chips to use at a rate that’s even close to comparable with ARM based processing chips.
Intel needs the market to shift back to the way it was in the past, PCs have to be the mainstay for computing.
Intel is very excited about Windows 8
Intel’s CEO Paul Otellini is very optimistic about Windows 8 and what it means for the future of PCs. While speaking in front of many at Credit Suisse technology conference recently Intel’s Otellini said Windows 8 will bring seemless computing to the tradition PCs (desktops and laptops) as well as tablets through one unified operating system. With Windows 8 Microsoft is going to be introducing the world to the Metro UI, and the Metro interface is a lot more touch friendly and geared toward computing with touchscreens like tablets that use both x86 and ARM processors.
This is the Metro UI home page for Microsoft's Windows 8 operating system. Image: Microsoft
The fact that Windows 8 will have support for ARM and x86 processors has been known for a some time now and some have presumed that the inclusion of ARM support would really worry Intel. On the contrary, Otellini sees the inclusion of ARM as something that is good for his company because the ARM support doesn’t include legacy applications and that is what the x86 chips his company manufacturers supports. Legacy application support will be big starting out for Windows 8 if you’ve grown accustomed to desktop applications from the likes of Adobe and even Microsoft (the full Office suite is filled with legacy applications).
Now in the future we’ll have to see if developers for Windows don’t get ARM supporting variants of their popular legacy software, but for now legacy is only for x86 chips. There is some talk now that Microsoft is working to get Office ready for ARM powered devices like Apple’s popular iPad tablet.
Here is exactly what Intel CEO Paul Otellini said in reference to his views on Windows 8 for Intel:
We are very excited about Windows 8. I think it’s one of the best things that’s ever happened to our Company. And it’s a very good operating system, not just for PCs, but we think also will allow tablets to really get a legitimacy into mainstream computing, particularly in enterprises that they don’t have today. A lot of the enterprise managers are worried about security, they’re worried about the difficulty affording their legacy applications over to an Android tablet or to an iPad.
What Microsoft is doing is making that seamless for them. And they have a new experience, which they call Metro, that’s the interface up there. But for Intel-based machines, there is also one button that basically takes you back to your classic Windows experience and that’s a software button essentially.
So you’re just running one manifestation of the operating system with two different GUIs, if you will, it’s not running on virtual machines, it’s one manifestation. So this gives us, x86, in particular, I think a unique advantage as Windows 8 comes to market, because we can take advantage of all the legacy that was ever written, and all of the fact that all the drivers for the mice and for printers and every other USB device in the world. For example, getting photos off your camera and onto a tablet.
Try that if you don’t have a driver, doesn’t work. On the other hand, if that tablet is running [an extension] of Windows, it’s going to work just like it works with the PC today. So there is a huge advantage built-in that we think we have as the Windows 8 products start launching.
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