"Lynn McGuire" wrote

| TL;DR - Microsoft is rebranding Win RT.
|
| Now that makes sense !
|

I'm not so sure about that. They recently announced the
opposite:

https://www.theverge.com/platform/am...-windows-store

Long story short: "Modern" AKA Metro AKA RT is basically
javascript running in a browser window. Phone apps. But they
have no phone or tablet to speak of. And game companies
were complaining that Metro or even .Net are not adequately
powerful for games. So MS are phasing out Metro and letting
Win32 API come in from the doghouse; and will sell Win32
software (that is, compiled desktop software that uses the
actual Win32 API rather than slow wrappers) in the Windows
store. The feeling seems to be that if they don't then they'll
have little chance of selling anything in their store. Metro was
nonsense from the beginning and still is. They were hoping to
pull an Apple, extorting fees from developers, but they don't
have a phone to make that possible.

That sounds great to me. Win32 is all I write and all I use.
But I worry that it could be a trick -- a plan to start requiring
a license and a kickback from anyone who wants their software
to be allowed on Windows.

As for Thurrott's piece:

It doesn't help that Microsofties struggle with English
literacy. Enablers? Delighters? Their marketing gobbledygook
is barely readable. But what it looks like to me is another
category of product. In other words, not really a new direction
for the basic workhorse PC, but a new, closed system --
basically a kiosk system -- for the so-called Internet of things.
It appears to also include a big dose of Jetsons futurism. They
seem to be talking "vision" at this point more than product.
And Paul Thurrott depends for his living on talking up
whatever marketing drivel comes out of the MS PR dept.
So it's not really surprising. Personally I don't see any of it
as something to be taken seriously: "Microsoft say they're
on the cutting edge and that someday you'll be able to
make a dentist appt while ordering groceries, all by just
looking at your Microsoft FabTab." Big whoop, as the
saying goes.