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Comment by monkeyfacebag | Hacker News Reader

I'd attribute it to the software. iOS and Android are clearly meant to coexist with and not supplant a more traditional OS. To me, the dangerous precedent is that this new ARM computer comes loaded with "Windows", a label which connotes a more traditional OS, yet it can only run apps from MS's app store and cannot be booted into Linux. Yes, this is a slippery slope argument given that MS also provides the x86 version which can do all of those things, but I think the distinction will be lost on the general public.

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I can't wait to hear all those stories of people who buy a "Windows" RT device and then find out they can't actually run any Windows software on it.

Microsoft has been through this already with the failed Alpha port of Windows. It should be interesting to see what plans they have to mitigate this.

Actually, x86 software ran fine on NT/Alpha; at one point x86 apps ran faster emulated on Alpha than natively on x86. (And emulated 68K on PPC was sometimes faster than native 68K.)

Was there an x86 emulator that shipped with NT/Alpha? I never heard about this before, and Google isn't being helpful.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FX!32

I don't think it is fair to call it a "failed" alpha port. AFAIK WinNT was developed on multiple CPU architectures from the get go to ensure they didn't take any dependencies on one architecture. Alpha was one of those architectures http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT_3.1 (also courtesy of the fact that Dave Cutler and a whole bunch of other guys from DEC were hired by MS to build NT) and continued to be supported for a while. I think Alpha's lack of success in the marketplace eventually killed NT's support for it.

I meant failed in the sense of a commercial failure, not a project failure.

Since everything has to be downloaded from the Windows Store (which can control the experience) and it comes with Office RT, most people probably won't notice. There will be people who will ask where the DVD drive door is...

There is nothing distinguishing Android from a conventional general-purpose computing OS, aside from the fact that it's designed to be used with a finger rather than a mouse. The question you're really asking is whether traditional computing tasks can be performed efficiently with a touch interface.

> There is nothing distinguishing Android from a conventional general-purpose computing OS

Except the expectations of the consumer, which was, you know, the whole point of my post. The touch interface has literally nothing to do with it.

To be totally clear, I agree that Android doesn't carry the same caveats as iOS and Windows RT, but in the eyes of the consumer, Windows and Android mean very different things.

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