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Maybe the kernel will be evolutionary, but the userland could be (but maybe not). A modern OS is more than just the kernel, and we haven't seen Windows Phone 8.

"Modern OS" these days seems to be a term for an OS which has had its GUI butchered and mutilated to work especially well with smaller touch screens (ie., phones, tablets), at the expense of traditional desktop users. In some of those cases, it works. In all of those cases where it works, it's running on one of those portable touchscreen-based systems (iOS, Android, etc.). In those cases where it's running on a traditional desktop computer (Ubuntu's Unity, GNOME 3, Windows 8), it fails... miserably.

Sure, being an OS designed for a phone, Windows Phone 8 should probably work out. But I'm not sure that I'd call it a "modern OS" just because, well hey--it's following the recent trend of going all touchscreen! Sure, it's something new, and modern in many ways (ie. the slimmed down and more modular nature of the kernel vs. its CE counterparts), but to me it just yet another OS. Only maybe it'll work better on its native devices (cell phones) than its big brother Windows 8 will work on its native systems (desktops, laptops, netbooks).

Edited 2012-02-03 05:34 UTC

Let me add, or correct myself, since I forgot to in my original post:

"...but to me it is just yet another specialized OS."

We seem to be going from general-purpose and specialized (ie., locked down). I call this a restriction, not a modern feature, and refuse to call an operating system doing this "modern" in any way, shape or form. [And yes, these "mobile" based operating systems seem to all lock down the system quite a bit compared to the traditional OS counterparts.]

Edited 2012-02-03 07:54 UTC

I'm not trying to discuss the merits of a walled garden phone OS over a general purpose OS, or your rather strange definition of "modern" I'm just saying that just because it will use the NT kernel, doesn't mean it couldn't be revolutionary, because an OS is more than just the kernel, it's also the userland, drivers, and built in apps, as well as other many other things.

My thoughts on this is that Windows NT is really used as the basis for Windows releases since 2000.
Almost everything Microsoft has done since 2000 on Windows is NT based.
Really nothing new here.
The only reason we did not see architecture portability was not so much the technical challenges to port it but the Microsoft/Intel alliance.

I propose that the expression "Modern OS" be used to describe an OS whose oldest component's design is less than <insert arbitrary and obviously biased number> years old.

Anything else is just too subjective without extra context information : in some cases, it makes sense to use quite crude and dated OS designs by desktop standards (e.g. no user-mode processes, no multitasking) in order to fulfil some engineering criterion, typically a performance one.

Edited 2012-02-03 17:53 UTC

Actually even farther back for us greybeards, as Dave Cutler originally envisioned WinNT to be a portable modular OS that could be run on whatever arch you desired. for those old enough to remember there was a MIPS and IIRC a Sparc as well as an Alpha WinNT.

The problem which MSFT is seemingly ignoring is NOT the OS, its the apps. Frankly they better have a different enough name for Win 8 Tablet edition or whatever to make sure the consumers know this is NOT Win x86 or you are gonna see these devices returned by the truckload. i should know because last Xmas a local retailer was selling "Windows tablets" which had an OS that looked like WinXP but said in the corner "Windows Compact Edition" but frankly nobody knew what that meant. he got so many returns he ended up having to stick a sticker over the Windows label and sell them as generic tablets for a loss.

MSFT better remember that for 20 years now Windows has been Windows has been Windows. thanks to backwards compatibility folks have been able to keep the vast majority of their favorite programs and when they find their favorite Windows programs won't actually run on windows they'll be taking that sucker back. it'll be great for us geeks though, imagine how many tablets we'll have at TouchPad firesale prices!

There you go: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT_4.0
(and also 3.51 - PowerPC NT has only been around ~15 years; so yeah, you could easily miss it)

Dropping it was a matter of market realities, circumstances. NT was always quite portable (in fact, it didn't start on x86).

1. As others pointed out, NT has already been ported to PPC.
2. As the Xbox link points out, the Xbox doesn't need 'everything', but a surprisingly small subset.
3. MS has been porting 'everything' to ARM recently.

The real challenge in doing this is not the hardware architecture issue, but getting NT to a point where it does not become overly burdensome on a console. Consoles strive to have as low overhead as possible so games can squeeze the most out of the hardware. Phones are quite different, where (currently) many applications are written with heavyweight abstractions (Silverlight, Dalvik, WebKit, ...)

Of note here is how Microsoft does experiment, quite successfully*, with ~"heavyweight abstractions" on their console (also on phones, with essentially the same thing) - in the form of XNA.

*sure, "serious games" don't come out of it - but a) quite a few of those indy ones are still rather nice b) it's much more decent than experiences historically given to indy devs on any other console.

Agreed. People have been speculating on why a lot of analysts have been so bullish on Windows Phone for a few months now. Nokia itself didn't explain it. This is what a lot of them likely knew or suspected.

This leak was MSs way of saying 'This is what they knew. This is why WP8 will kick butt.'

Yeah, that was a joke the real name is

"Windows PocketPC Mobile Phone CE Series 6.53 Ultimate Millenium Edition Serice Pack 3"

Anyways, NOKIA IS SO FUCKED! This new kernel will have even higher hardware requirements (no doubt about that in my mind, way more than the cut down single core CE kernel without a lot of the features)
So Nokia will have to use Symbian for low end smartphones for all eternity (or until they are bought by MS, which is more likely)
Ballmers and Elops evil plan is clear now.

Hardware is not a problem anymore.
The stuff is becoming dirt cheap.
In October Sitara ARM® Cortex™-A8 started to sell at $5
http://www.ti.com/lsds/ti/dsp/platform/sitara/whats_new.page?DCMP=d...

Ok it's not a dual core or quad core but it gives you a market trend.
Not unrealistic to predict quad core Arm chips going for $15-$20 in one years time.

Edited 2012-02-03 12:49 UTC

"Even higher" ...WP7 is basically on the lower end of (so called "smartphone" at least) hardware, and still its performance (in UX) is praised.

They'll be fine, NT itself isn't really that heavy (and userland will be tailored to phones after all); how "light" CE is comes from, after all, the same thing how DOS is light (yes, an extreme analogy, but you get the idea) ...and it maybe makes some technical approaches more awkward (perhaps even resulting in "slower"), not so easily doable as with NT.
(also, Symbian appears to improve decently nowadays)

I preferred the Windows PalmPC CE Enterprise Mobility Plus Edition - it had a better look and feel.

With such major underlying OS change, I kinda doubt present handsets will get an update...

...OTOH MS kept the hardware very homogeneous, so it shouldn't be much of an issue and they will be supporting native code applications (which might somewhat help with performance) and there aren't too many WP devices around - which means they wouldn't lose that much sales but they would earn large amount of positive attention.
Oh well, time will tell.

I don't really blame them, if we're going by the quality of the Skype client on Windows / Linux .. the code had to be damn near undecipherable when it got into the hands of MSFT after the acquisition.

I imagine that Skype's code is indecipherable by design. I saw a presentation that showed the methods skype uses to prevent any tampering:

http://www.secdev.org/conf/skype_BHEU06.handout.pdf

And I am sure the carriers will be thrilled by the news, and push WP8 a lot.

NOT!

I'd say because the changes required were only just completed in the last couple of years. It would be interesting though to see what has been 'left out' when it comes to the Windows NT core - what actually makes up that core when compared to a traditional Windows build.

Although this is an interesting move from Microsoft, I doubt this will change much for Windows Phone's popularity. First WP7 was going to be the game changer. Then they said WP7.5 was really going to be the OS that could make a dent in the competition. And now it's WP8 that's really REALLy going to be the one to change it all? It's always the next version.

Would you prefer instead to live with the crap forever?

Actually I'm doing just fine without it. (-;) The low quality hasn't impacted me.

The issue with Windows Phone 7 has less to do with the software and more to do with the horrible hardware specifications - I mean come on, selling 16GB phones when you can buy up to 64GB iPhones? the fact that phone vendors only launch in 5-6 markets and here I am stuck at the bottom of the world still waiting for the Lumia 800 to come to New Zealand. What Microsoft needs is to exert more pressure on the phone vendors to ship globally on day one and if need be to ship directly to the customer or work through retailers rather than directly with carriers.

It really is pathetic that here I am in New Zealand, Lumia launched in October 2011 and yet we won't get it here until March - in other words it took 5 months for a phone to finally appear in New Zealand. I'll just clue Microsoft in here for a second - if the end user can't get it NOW they're going to go for Android or iPhone no matter how much the virtues of Windows Phone 7 is promoted.