An S Mode Free-for-All is Just the Start (Premium)

You can almost see the light coming on up in Redmond. Windows 10 S is a disaster. And they're finally making changes.

And not just changes, but the right changes.

The first step was to stop pretending that Windows 10 S was yet another Windows 10 product edition and reassign it to its true purpose as a mode. Now, S mode will be something that a PC maker can provide with any mainstream Windows 10 product edition, not just Pro.

The second step was something that I called on Microsoft to do just yesterday on Windows Weekly. Just hours before the software giant, in a bizarre late-night missive, announced that it would do the right thing: Switching out of S mode will no longer incur a fee. You can free yourself from the hell that is S mode for free. On any Windows 10 product edition.

Bravo to that.

But as you probably know, I'm no fan of applauding when Microsoft, or any other company, fixes a problem of its own making. And Windows 10 S---sorry, S mode---is very much a problem. One that Microsoft invented itself.

So it may be instructive to remember why Microsoft invented S mode. Because every time it takes a step back from the cliff that was Windows 10 S, I get a little bit excited. That maybe, just maybe, the software giant will keep making the right decisions. And what we'll arrive at is the thing that S mode should have been to begin with.

A quick refresh.

Over the 2017 New Year holiday, I learned about what was then called Windows 10 Cloud, and I held back on this information until tidbits about this product started leaking and the ill-informed began speculating about its intent. Windows 10 Cloud was never positioned internally at Microsoft as a "Chrome OS alternative." Instead, this new Windows 10 product edition was a renewed attempt to bring Windows more fully into the streamlined, mobile-oriented personal computing future ... for all customers. It was designed to be Windows RT done right.

I've described Windows RT as a "one-way dead-end street," which is a riff on favorite Steven Wright joke. But the point is correct: Windows RT only ran on ARM (not Intel/x86), it looked and worked like Windows 8 but came with major limitations, and there was no escape hatch: There was no way to upgrade from RT to a full-featured Windows version.

But the point behind Windows RT---which I once opined could be seen as the "next Windows NT" had Microsoft just gotten it right---was solid. The point was to modernize Windows and lay the foundation for a new decade of computing that was not bogged down by the performance, reliability, and security issues of its legacy past.

This is a dream that Microsoft---or perhaps I should say "Terry Myerson's Windows organization"---has not given up on. And that makes me very happy.

So in 2016, the firm began plotting a new RT. One that would come with the benefits of that system but remove some of the more egregious limitations. Windows 10 Cloud, as it was originally called, was that n...