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This is not your fault, bit I think this quote highlights the problems Microsoft face. A desktop app for RT? Why is that different from Metro? How is the same? What about the desktop? Microsoft have confused themselves, let alone us.

This is not your fault, bit I think this quote highlights the problems Microsoft face. A desktop app for RT? Why is that different from Metro? How is the same? What about the desktop? Microsoft have confused themselves, let alone us. "


RT just means its an ARM powered device. Microsoft decided to lock down the desktop of ARM compiled apps for what ever reason, be it SDK/API or something else.
Where as Metro apps work across the platforms without users having to worry if they're x86 or ARM versions to be installed so I can see why they've limited the desktop apps in that sense.

The only thing I can think of is that the Metro UI for all the crital system components is not ready for a true replacement, meaning users would need to fall back to the desktop to fix it still. If this is (and it seems like it), I'd have prefered the desktop when in safe mode or running as Admin with Office as metro app.

Frankly this, this right here, is why MSFT has never had a chance at the mobile space. Remember how they were into smartphones years before Apple ever even thought of an iPhone? what did they do? they tried to tie it into the Windows branding, complete with teeny tiny desktop and start button and of course it bombed.

I'll never forget the article i read a few years ago with the founder of Neversoft and why he walked away from his baby WinAmp while it was still popular: "They just wouldn't listen, they kept trying to force everything to come back to "the product" (AOL dialup) when we could see the market for the product was dying and nobody wanted it,by the end they were forcing us to bundle the entire software suit with every copy of WinAmp!"

And that is MSFT in 2012 in a nutshell, instead of accepting the fact that like IBM with the mainframe while Windows will pretty much own the desktop forever the world simply isn't gonna revolve around desktops like it did in the 90s and thus letting their other divisions to get out from under the Windows legacy and truly innovate they instead keep trying to tie everything back to "the product" that made their fortune back in the day while refusing to see those glory days are past.

I'd love to see Metro app's dominate, but not while the only way to distribute them is via Marketplace.

That would kill off OSS on the Windows platform.

And they will. But Microsoft had to release RT ASAP, they had to release it before Android get a stronghold in the tablet market, otherwise, they would have to face the same uphill battle in the tablet market as in the phone market. But they had to do it with an offering that suit their main cash cow, ie, business people, meaning they had to provide Office. And they could not wait for Office to be a full RT application.

But they want to get ride of the desktop mode and of win32, especially since regulator are going to come and knock at their door and tell them that they have to open the API to everyone.

Microsoft was facing three choices:

1) Release Win RT in 2012, OfficeRT when it is ready late 2013, early 2014 (at best), and lose a compelling selling point for their business customers
2) Release Win RT when Office RT is ready, and face a strong uphill battle with Android
3) Release Win RT in 2012, along with an hybrid Office, and in two years time, release the full RT Office and wipe out the desktop API. And keep the anti-trust regulator at bay for two years.

In light of that, I would argue that 3) was their best option.