No need to run x86. So why push x86 into the portable space?
So that you can have x86 apps that work in touch-based mode while away from the desk and switch to mouse-based mode when the user pairs a keyboard and connects an HDMI monitor.
ARM is the defecto standard upon all software that is mobile.
How so? Android apps are written in Java that compiles to Dalvik VM. Free apps that use NDK, such as those on F-Droid, can be recompiled by anyone. Proprietary apps that use NDK can be recompiled by their publisher if the publisher wants sales on the other platform. How big is the remaining set of apps that 1. use NDK, 2. are proprietary, 3. whose publisher is unwilling to take the money from Android/x86 users?
Video games are trivial to get published.
It really depends on the genre because the more locked-down platforms handle some genres better than PCs. Party games, fighting games, and cooperative platformers really need two to four players holding gamepads and looking at one screen. A PC can technically do those, but in practice, desktop or laptop PC's monitor isn't big enough for more than one person, and I'm told few people are aware that they can use virtually any HDTV as a PC monitor. The touch screen that ships with a mobile device makes certain genres hard to control as well, as I discovered when I repeatedly failed to make a certain jump in the demo of Pixeline and the Jungle Treasure on my first-generation Nexus 7 tablet.
ObMicrosoft: Look at the drama surrounding updates to Fez .
And the
That's because the
How badly do you have to fuck up a language runtime library to make it need monthly updates?
The JavaScript runtime (Firefox or Chrome) needs updates as well. And on Ubuntu, I get plenty of updates to various libraries.
I hear that you have not yet tried Metro.
Tried it, didn't like it, got rid of it. Windows 8 has worked fine for me since.
but would it kill them to stick a "details" button on the dumbed-down error popup to make it trivial for a techie to ask the user to click it and read out a more useful message?
Microsoft would probably do it the way it does crash reporting, where the user is given the option to automatically send error reports to Microsoft. The developer can retrieve these crash reports by 1. forming a corporation or LLC, 2. buying a certificate from VeriSign or DigiCert in this company's name, and 3. registering with Windows Dev Center Hardware and Desktop Dashboard (formerly Winqual).
If this was the unix world, they'd be talking about no longer updating 8.1.0 and requiring customers update to 8.1.1.
That would have goaded the popular tech media into making unflattering comparisons to Windows 3.11.
it would also have been hard to represent an RF data connection replacing physical data transfers
A telescoping antenna analogous to those on portable radios would have sufficed for that. For a keyboard, I would have probably used the 4x4 matrix of my Casio calculator watch.
Variables don't; constants aren't.