Monday, May 10th 2021
Windows 10X, Microsoft's Ambitious Chrome OS Competitor, Reportedly Cancelled
Windows 10X, an ambitious lightweight PC operating system under development at Microsoft, which was being designed to compete with Google's Chrome OS, has reportedly been shelved. The OS was designed for pretty much the same class of hardware as Chrome OS—entry-level with lightweight specs, with just enough muscle for web-browsing, and web-based applications that leverage cloud storage. The company even bet big on Chromium, the web rendering engine powering Chrome, over to its Edge browser. A new report by Petri states that Windows 10X will not launch in 2021, and that the project is shelved.
The reason behind Microsoft's decision is anyone's guess. Pulling off a second, purpose-built client-segment PC OS entails developing a hardware ecosystem, like Google did with Chrome OS. Secondly, Microsoft has flirted with lightweight versions of its PC operating systems more than once in the past, be it Windows RT or Windows 7 Basic; both of which met with limited success. Thirdly, Chrome OS itself isn't being shown outpacing Windows 10 as it probably was in 2019. The COVID-19 pandemic has reinvigorated the PC landscape, with much of the skilled workforce connecting from home.
Sources:
Petri, The Verge
The reason behind Microsoft's decision is anyone's guess. Pulling off a second, purpose-built client-segment PC OS entails developing a hardware ecosystem, like Google did with Chrome OS. Secondly, Microsoft has flirted with lightweight versions of its PC operating systems more than once in the past, be it Windows RT or Windows 7 Basic; both of which met with limited success. Thirdly, Chrome OS itself isn't being shown outpacing Windows 10 as it probably was in 2019. The COVID-19 pandemic has reinvigorated the PC landscape, with much of the skilled workforce connecting from home.
19 Comments on Windows 10X, Microsoft's Ambitious Chrome OS Competitor, Reportedly Cancelled
“Add to the fact that at launch, the OS was said to lack support for traditional Win32 apps, which again might have worked against the offering.”
www.neowin.net/news/windows-10x-reportedly-delayed-indefinitely-focus-to-shift-to-windows-10/
Part of the reason WindowsRT failed was because people simply aren’t accepting of Windows without strict backward compatibilit. These expectations have been built upon iterations upon iterations of Windows 16bit to 32bit to 64bit. No one wanted to hear about the very real technical limitations switching to ARM from x86 / x64, they just wanted access to the full library of Windows applications since the dawn of time.
That type of thinking was just unrealistic especially on day 1 and on the anemic hardware Windows RT launched on. Some kind of emulation wouldn’t have gone too far amiss but it likely would have been disappointing overall.
Microsoft needs ARM far more then ARM needs Microsoft. Apple can do it, presumabl, but this is a good deal later, they are running their own custom design silicon which is more powerful and the hardware cost a good deal more. Also, and this is key, Apple customers are far more accepting of being cut off from backward compatibilit.
now they try to start it with win 10 x
An example of winning, Microsoft Media Center, which was arguably the best PC DVR / Media Center software in it’s time.
An example of losing, those are numerous. Zune, Windows Phone you name it.
So they dip a toe in to test the waters and eventually get bored and walk away,..... while not good, it’s also not Google dropping services left and right, forcing customers to go scrambling for alternative and attempting to reclaim their data from the cloud,....
Remember that Windows 10 is STILL heavily based on Vista, Microsoft best selling OS, and it's performance drops with each new servicepack.
MS has lost their way, way worse than Intel has.