It’s no secret that Microsoft’s Windows RT operating system hasn’t got off to the start that Microsoft has perhaps hoped it would, with poor sales and flak coming from every direction, including the main chip supplier for hardware vendors running the operating system.
In a recent interview with CNET, Microsoft yet again defended its operating system, saying it will “only get better in time”. Most of the flack has come from the lack of compatibility with older Windows applications, compared to that of backward-compatible Windows 8 on Intel-based devices.
But Michael Angiulo, corporate vice president, Windows Planning, Hardware & PC Ecosystem thinks there’s still plenty of reason to stick around with the operating system, telling CNET that:
It was a ton of work for us and we didn’t do the work and endure the disruption for any reason other than the fact that there’s a strategy there that just gets stronger over time. Looking at things now like power performance and standby time and passive [fanless] form factors. When we launched windows 8, it was really competitive with a full-sized iPad. A lot of that was made possible by the ARM [chip] architecture.
And in response to the criticism about apps he said that:
People are talking about legacy desktop software not running, but they don’t think about the customer benefit of only running modern apps. The only apps that you install from the Windows store are the kind, that as a customer, you can manage your rights to.
Let’s say you drop that PC in a pool. Well, you get a new one and then you just redownload [the apps]. That’s the kind of model people are used to with a phone or tablet today. I can maintain all the apps in the [Microsoft] store and reset with a single switch.
So, on Windows RT, the user experience stays consistent over time. That’s a big benefit. And as the number of apps grow in the store, that value promise only gets stronger.
I’m not quite writing off Window’s RT yet, as Windows 8 and the marketplace grows, so will RT and it will become a viable tablet alternative to iOS and Android, providing much of the desktop experience combined with a tablet interface with stellar battery life. The current gen processors on RT tablets lack the grunt needed, but as new chips come out that will soon change, which Anguilo thinks too, saying that “in a year or too there will be some really capable chips. I think it has a very bright future.” When the Windows 8 ecosystems and ARM chips become more powerful, I think that RT will be a big player in the tablet world.
