What if This is the Future of Windows? (Premium)

Even if I weren’t in Hawaii this week, I’d still be suffering from the fog of war, with more and more details about Windows 10 on Snapdragon coming to light each day. But a confluence of discussions with experts has me wondering if Microsoft isn’t secretly plotting a future for Windows that actually makes sense.

To be clear, this is just speculation. But I also think it makes sense.

As you may recall, I’ve noted before that Microsoft intends for Windows 10 S to be the future of Windows. And that, while I understand this direction, the reality of Windows 10 S today makes it untenable for anyone to actually use.

So I’ve recommended that Microsoft take a less hard line approach. That it treat Windows 10 S like the destination, a goal to which it aspires and gets to over time. Short term, I’ve argued, Microsoft should allow Windows 10 S users to install desktop applications and drivers, even if it requires a lot of warnings and prompts. Killing off desktop applications isn’t something that happens overnight.

And then there’s Windows 10 on ARM, or Windows 10 on Snapdragon, as Qualcomm calls it. I assume by now everyone knows that there are not special ARM versions of Windows—no “Windows 10 ARM Edition” or whatever—and that Microsoft will instead provide existing Windows 10 product editions—Home, S, Pro, and Enterprise—on this hardware platform.

Related to this, the versions of Windows 10 that run on ARM can run Windows desktop applications—Win32, .NET, and so on—using emulation software that Microsoft created.

If you put these two things together, you should assume that Windows 10 S on ARM will simply not run desktop applications. That Windows 10 S doesn’t run desktop applications, regardless of platform. Why on earth would Windows 10 S run desktop applications on ARM when you can’t do so on Intel?

Here’s the thing. Microsoft told Mary Jo Foley that this was the case. That Windows 10 S on ARM would, in fact, run Win32/.NET desktop applications out of the box. Surprised by this, or perhaps assuming she misheard, she asked for clarification. And Microsoft told her, again, that, yes, Windows 10 S on ARM can run desktop applications in emulation.

Discussing this with Mary Jo, I told her this could not be correct. But she heard what she heard.

This morning, I received an interesting email from MVP Mike Halsey, who had watched this week’s Windows Weekly, which focused exclusively on the Windows 10 on Snapdragon news.

“I’m wondering, the main and really only difference between [Windows 10 S and Windows 10 Pro on ARM] is the ability to install and run Win32 apps,” he wrote. “Win32 apps will install on ARM-based PCs in a special virtualised environment, thus they won’t and can’t ever install into the traditional \Program Files folder.”

“If the ability to install software into the \Program Files folder is the single difference between Pro and S, and you can never install Win32 apps or ARM without using the new virtualization technology, then why would anybody ever need the ‘potentially’ less secure Windows 10 Pro on an ARM-based PC?”

Why indeed.

So this makes me wonder. I’ve written and said before that Microsoft sees Windows 10 S as the future of Windows. And that this system makes no sense today because of its inability to run desktop applications.

What if the future of Windows is a bit more refined than that? What if Microsoft has, in fact, come up with an intermediate step to this future, as I’ve long called for?

That is, the future of Windows, in this scenario, is Windows 10 S on ARM. Because it can run desktop apps in emulation, which is a safer interim solution. And if users need more performance, for pro apps like Photoshop or whatever, or for games, they can use Windows 10 Pro on Intel. That’s the choice today. The modern, mobile Windows 10 S. Or the more performant and even workstation-like Windows 10 Pro.

This scenario could be extended to include Windows 10 S on Intel, by the way. There’s no reason why desktop apps couldn’t run in some form of virtualization container on that hardware platform, retaining the reliability and security benefits of Windows 10 S while providing the compatibility that users demand. Need more performance on Intel? Upgrade to Windows 10 Pro. Done.

Right?

This week has been a mess. But I will reach out to Microsoft when I get home and see if I can’t get some answers. But in this speculation, I see the seeds of an idea that can work, an idea that balances Microsoft’s desire for the future with its users’ needs for the present.