When Windows 10 was first announced, one of the first questions was would this upgrade be available for Windows RT devices running on ARM based platforms. The answer was no, but Microsoft said that it would bring some of the functionality of Windows 10 to Windows RT users though an update sometime after Windows 10 shipped. Apparently that day was yesterday, as Microsoft pushed out patch KB3033055 which enables the Windows 10 style Start Menu in Windows RT.
I’m sure my Surface RT is brimming with excitement. In storage. Somewhere. I don’t even know.
They really should’ve just put Windows 10 on the Surface RTs.
They really should have. But, since they aren’t selling new ones, who cares, right?
The entire RT thing seemed like it could not have been mishandled worse deliberately than it has (one assumes) by accident. The hardware (surface, and that nokia tablet) was quite decent, even at being a laptop. In certain businesses ms office (which it had exclusively at the time) counts (like it or not).
And at which even the software was fine (as a tablet) but oh wait.. windows store. There was on 8.0 a jailbreak (of a sort) and recompiled ‘win32’ arm apps that actually worked. I’m not saying that would have been useful for everyone, but fixing that jailbreak in RT8.1 was /not/ useful, except that didn’t push reliance on the oh-so-desirable metro app store. As a fan of wrongness (like win2k on dec-then compaq alpha) and what could in principle have been a pretty weird laptop that situation turning out that way was, disappointing.
And cutting RT off rather than building arm release (like they are still for phones, even if nothing else) is in a purely non-committal word: wasteful.
The winphone 7 decisions? Well those people are still in charge I guess. Who would /willingly/ be an MS customer again? Even when you want to like something they did, you just can’t.
It’d be nice to put android or (even better) something else on but, locked bootloader; we don’t own our devices anymore.
Absolutely agreed. They could have gained a fair bit of goodwill by getting Universal Apps onto RT devices. I’d probably go find an RT 2 on the cheap to tote around.
I would have really liked to see RT devices only have Metro on them with no desktop at all, along with only calling the system and devices Metro. Then I would like to see all Windows systems just keep being like Windows 10 (having Windows and Metro on them). I would also develop the RT Metro for Android devices and give away Metro and Windows 10 completely for free (not this upgrade for Free stuff). Server addons could be purchased separately with the majority of the revenue coming from a newly designed app store.
Is Microsoft unlocking the bootloader so I can install Android on it. The hardware is so good, but the software is pretty much useless..
Hi Thom,
If you’re no longer using your Surface RT, are you going to sell it? I might be interested in using it as a development device.
Thanks! 🙂
Who’s Surface RT?
My girlfriend has an original RT that she bought when looking for computers for school. “So, it runs Office?” “Yes, but–” “That’s all I need for school, I’ll take it.”
She got real frustrated not being able to run an alternate web browser on it at first… but in the end she actually really likes the machine. She doesn’t use it terribly much except for writing papers and the occasional Amazon or Netflix video, but for her, it’s perfect.
I installed the update and made the change just to see it. I like its Start Menu a bit better than Win10’s — especially that the “All Apps” section just maps to the old Start Menu structure, rather than Win10’s new and annoying database. There are a few small tweaks I would’ve made, personally, but it’s perfectly cromulent as-is.
I really wish Microsoft would de-jail their RT devices. Dedicated people recompiled some useful software: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2092348 — if that were available for everyone, then suddenly Windows on ARM becomes a decent OS with support and a nice battery life. I’d have bought a Surface RT at that point.
Here’s hoping that next week’s Surface is a bit cheaper. I’m pretty excited to see what new Intel chips look like in one of these bad boys.