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Microsoft is taking notes from Apple with windows 8 Microsoft is taking notes from Apple with windows 8
By Salar Golestanian @ 03 Jun 2011 :: Article Rating :: Technology News
 
Boomberg reported that Microsoft is putting some restrictions on makers of processors used to run the coming Windows tablet-computer operating system, Acer Chairman Wang said.  In the process Microsoft is becoming more like Apple by bringing some hardware discipline to Windows 8 tablets, to the annoyance of OEMs who've had decades of freedom.

Pc makers will probably be unhappy with this, and if Microsoft is to clipping the PC peoples' wings, then it would seem that Microsoft is doing for Windows 8 tablets what it previously did for Windows Phone 7: limiting their sizes and the components that make up the new devices. The reason is to ensure there aren't any nasty surprises – or at least not too many on a scale that people will remember – that will taint the reputation of the next version of Windows, and hurt sales.

Microsoft's lack of control in the past helped turn Windows into the dominant desktop-computing platform. Makers love this as it let others do the heavy lifting on building the machines, and freed Microsoft to merely license the operating system. However, Apple traditionally has controlled every facet of hardware since the early days of the Mac right up to the iPad. Only once it tried to free it like Microsoft in late 1980s and it nearly cost Apple chapter 11.

However, tablets and smartphones are different. Apple's set the standard on reliability, performance, and the experience enjoyed by millions of consumers and business users. That paid off in the smartphone market, with a quarter of the US market owned by the iPhone. And after one year, iPad sales are roughly half those of all Macs – a system that's over a quarter century its senior.


Om the mean time webOS-creator Palm, told Qualcomm's Uplinq conference this week: "HP is more than willing to partner with one or two special companies." In other words, HP won't unleash the operating system for anybody who wants to run it on any hardware.


This is bad news for Open Source as Rubinstein also ruled out open sourcing webOS, a move that would potentially cast the operating system's seeds to the four winds. Open source, it seems, is also out of favor with Google, which has not open sourced the Honeycomb incarnation of its Android operating system. Honeycomb runs on Motorola's ARM-based Xoom tablet and is being ported by Intel and MIPS, but Google vice president of engineering Andy Rubin said the reason Google didn't open source Honeycomb after its customary behind-closed-doors development cycle was out of concern for what other people might with to it.

"We felt that open sourcing it at that point would be difficult because people would try to wedge it into phones and create a bad user experience," Rubin said.

It's an interesting twist that after years of being told that open source was the answer to achieving ubiquity, tablet-OS developers have decided that less is more, and that control is the watchword for success. Even Microsoft, whose ecosystem was open – though not open source like Linux – has bought in.

HP's Rubinstein reckons that we're going to see a lot of devices fail. We'll find out very soon whether being more like Apple – meaning more restrictive – works for Microsoft and everybody else. Or whether it works just for Apple. IMHO this looks all following Apple and that would mean that if only one of them or perhaps a newcomer goes Open Source, they will attract a lot of makers that ask for original approach in building their devices.

For now, have a look at this post in TechCrunch that details the first view of Windows 8.

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About General News and BlogTopics by Salar Golestanian
These are various short and long News Articles and Blogs by Salar Golestanian the founder of SalarO.com about the latest topics that interest me. The subject matter are mixed topics from Web Trends, Technology, Software, Science or Current Afair, or whatever that can affect Internet Technology in any shape or form.  I have been told that the best place for these would have been for me to place them on a page at SalarO.com, However, some of these Blogs have less of a commercial or corporate genra, so they are placed here in this personal site. These Blogs help me explain a little more than normally is allowed in the 140 character real-estate of a typical Twitter post. They may also link you to the actual news or site that can expands further on my comments.

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