By Anna Schmidt
With the forthcoming release of Windows 8 being seen as a crucial step in Microsoft’s ongoing dominance of the operating systems market, some details of the company’s product are being leaked.
Renee James, Senior Vice President at Intel, was one of the people providing tiny morsels of information about the OS which has made so much money for so many companies, not least Microsoft and Intel.
Ms James said that the ARM version will not run legacy Windows applications, which were originally designed to run only on Intel’s x86 range of processors.
She also revealed that Microsoft would release no less than four versions of Windows for ARM processors, none of which would run software for the other versions.
Microsoft is not confirming or denying any rumours about WIndows 8
“There will be four Windows 8 SoCs for ARM. Each one will run for that specific ARM environment, and they will run new applications or cloud-based applications.
“They are neither forward- nor backward-compatible between their own architecture – different generations of a single vendor – nor are they compatible across different vendors. Each one is a unique stack.”
Reports on the web claim that Microsoft was not happy about Ms James’ “indiscretions”. Windows President Steven Sinofsky is reported to be extremely protective of information about the company’s developments, even firing some people who had been found to be leaking any details of anything the company does.
But Ms James works for Intel, and Microsoft cannot fire her, and it can’t exactly fire Intel.
In fact, the partnership between the two companies – which became commonly referred to as “Wintel” – was so successful, it was famously the subject of much comment and legal action over its monopolistic practices.
These days, however, there is much less panic about the two giants of information technology and there respective positions in the market, despite the fact that they are probably bigger now than they’ve ever been.
The main reason for the absence of intense worry about any strong-arm tactics by either company may well be because other companies have grown and emerged to become targets for accusations of monopolistic practices.
These companies include Google and Apple, both of whom now vie for the top spot on “most valuable global brands” lists.
