The Windows 10X Workflow Question (Premium)

Modern PC-based operating systems---Windows, macOS, and Chome OS---are all inherently similar in that they provide a desktop, icons for launching apps and opening documents, inter-app communications capabilities, and some form of integration with cloud-based services, especially storage. But it’s the little differences that can really catch you up. And if you followed along with my Living with Chromebook series last Fall, you may remember that the single biggest issue I had using a Chromebook was workflow related.

This isn’t a trivial matter: Each time one trips up using a new system, or encounters something different or more limited than what they were previously used to, the possibility that the new thing can replace the old is diminished. Face enough blockers and it’s over.

But we don’t even really need to include non-Microsoft platforms in this discussion to understand how these problems are so debilitating. Windows RT, Windows 10 S (S mode), and Windows 10 on ARM all failed, or are in the process of failing, specifically because they didn’t (or don’t) so the single most important thing that any product called Windows has to do: Run Windows applications. Not some of them. Not most of them. All of them.

You can argue that that’s a compatibility problem, because it is. But it’s also a workflow problem. When I get a new PC or reset an existing PC, some of the first things I do is configure it to my liking---which should be unnecessary, but Windows 10 only syncs some settings, still---install the applications I need, and get my cloud storage---I use OneDrive---synced up. Over time, however, I begin adding to the PC. I may not have “needed” Visual Studio, or whatever, on day one, for example, but over time I realize that I do need it, and I install it when that happens. Over longer periods of time, my PC is stuffed with things I only need occasionally. And eventually, the cycle repeats.

But the point is, the cycle can repeat. With those previous Windows derivatives, I always ran into problems---blockers---that prevented me from happily using the PC day-to-day. For example, Windows 10 on ARM can’t run Photoshop Elements, which is among the handful of applications I always install immediately on a new or reset PC. So I’ve had to spend time researching alternatives that can work on this limited system, and then be unhappy using them because none are the same. And the performance on ARM is terrible regardless.

Ultimately, Microsoft’s strategy for moving Windows and its user base forward failed because it didn’t respect the past, and the facts of that past: Users need those legacy desktop applications because they rely on them every day. And it insisting that UWP and the Microsoft Store weren’t just the way forward, but the only way forward, explains why these Windows derivatives all failed too.

And now Microsoft is trying again, with Windows 10X. But this thing, things are different. This time, cr...