Microsoft Officially announces that Windows 10X is dead

[Bratstech]

Microsoft Officially announces that Windows 10X is dead

 

Summary

After not knowing what to do with Windows 10X, Microsoft has officially announced that Windows 10X is dead. Windows 10X will no longer be receiving any updates for security or features. Microsoft doesn't want 10X to die in vain though as it is reported that they will be reusing some of the technology developed for the operating system for other things. 

 

Quotes

Quote

“Instead of bringing a product called Windows 10X to market in 2021 like we originally intended, we are leveraging learnings from our journey thus far and accelerating the integration of key foundational 10X technology into other parts of Windows and products at the company...”  -John Cable

 

My thoughts

 To be honest I never really knew what Windows 10X was. At first I was told that it was just a lighter version of regular windows 10 then I was told that it was basically Chrome OS then I was told that it was going to be a phone OS. RIP though and hopefully some good things will come out of this

 

Sources

Microsoft confirms Windows 10X is dead - The Verge

Microsoft kills Windows 10X, will bring some features into Windows 10 (msn.com)

Microsoft officially acknowledges Windows 10X isn't happening (msn.com) 

[DrMacintosh]

Every derivative of Windows has died. Microsoft is a victim of their own success. They have such a market presence with full blown Windows 10 that they can't create anything different and they can't force giant changes in the industry. 

[tim0901]

I guess this is the death of the Surface Neo as well then.

 

Shame. While I never would have wanted one (as a first-gen product), I thought it was a very interesting concept.

[GoodBytes]

13 hours ago, Bratstech said:

 To be honest I never really knew what Windows 10X was. At first I was told that it was just a lighter version of regular windows 10 then I was told that it was basically Chrome OS then I was told that it was going to be a phone OS. RIP though and hopefully some good things will come out of this

"Light version of Windows 10" or "ChromeOS alternative" was more of a side effect. Windows 10X (this is the internal code name of the OS) was basically Windows 10, without any legacy code. Even the interface that you interact with, has been scrapped and re-coded new. Has a lot of back-end improvements as a result, making the OS far lighter on system ressources. As a result, Microsoft found that they could use this OS to compete against low-cost ChromeBooks devices.

 

There was a miss-conception that Windows 10X could not run Win32 programs as a result of dropping everything legacy. This was not entirely true. The OS has the ability to start a sandboxed environment where it would load all the legacy stuff, to be able to load a Win32 program when one is launched. Microsoft did release an early build of Windows 10X to the public for devs. I tried this feature. Worked fine. It had 2 known limitations: The first: system tweak utilities would not work (obviously... different OS), second, no notification tray icon support, but that was because Windows 10X no longer had one.

 

Windows 10X had no plans to replace Windows 10. 

It was really for special devices, like the Surface Neo, and low-powered devices like ChromeBooks.

Fun fact, the Surface Laptop Go was supposed to have Windows 10X. This is why it's display has rounded corners (The OS interface had rounded corners on its windows, message box, panels, and so on. Was part of the GUI language). Good news, is that these rounded corners, is something that Microsoft is working on bringing to normal Windows 10, in the coming update at the end of the year.

 

With the massive growth in PC sales with work from home, Microsoft choose to cancel Windows 10X, and focus its energy on Windows 10. 

[suicidalfranco]

Excellent

Now do the same with 10S

[Ashleyyyy]

good, normal Windows 10 isn't perfect by any means but it's a hell of a lot better than breaking most app compatibility... 

[LAwLz]

Good. It was a shitty idea to begin with.

Near the end it basically turned into "ChromeOS but even more limited", and I don't see how that is appealing to anybody.

 

 

 

5 hours ago, Bratstech said:

To be honest I never really knew what Windows 10X was.

Seems like Microsoft didn't know what it was either.

First it was for dual screen devices like the Duo, for mobile devices.

Then it was for single screen devices.

Then it could run Win32 but not really. Then it couldn't.

Then it was a ChromeOS competitor.

Now it's dead...

 

 

 

 

 

4 hours ago, GoodBytes said:

There was a miss-conception that Windows 10X could not run Win32 programs as a result of dropping everything legacy. This was not entirely true. The OS has the ability to start a sandboxed environment where it would load inside it, all the legacy stuff, to load Win32 program, when one is launched. Microsoft did release an early build of Windows 10X to the public for devs. I tried this feature. Worked fine. It had 2 known limitations: The first: system tweak utilities would not work (obviously... different OS), second, no notification tray icon support. This is because Windows 10X no longer had one.

This is not what I have heard or experienced.

My understanding is that Microsoft said it would work, but it was broken in the builds that anyone outside of Microsoft got a hold of. 

Here is one example of such reports, but there are plenty more.

Quote

The settings option reveals a page for the container technology and the developer only toggle, which includes the Win32 app’s testing. At the moment, the feature does not work, although, that might only be the case for the leaked build of the OS.

Here is another report about it:

Quote

VAIL, the technology Microsoft uses to virtualize legacy Win32 programs on Windows 10X via containers, has been removed from the latest internal builds of the OS. I'm told that this is a deliberate change as the company moves to reposition Windows 10X as a platform designed to compete at the low-end, head-to-head with Chromebooks with web apps front and center.

 

-snip-

 

Microsoft's local Win32 app layer will not be present when these low-cost PCs launch with Windows 10X next year. Users will be able to run UWP apps and web apps powered by Microsoft Edge, but not legacy Win32 programs. Web apps will be the driving factor for app availability on Windows 10X, just like Chrome OS.

I have so far not been able to find anyone who got the win32 container feature to work. 

The only thing I've found about the feature even working at all are reports like these which says internal builds of Windows 10X used at Microsoft were broken and barely functioned at all:

Quote

According to sources familiar with the development, Microsoft is not satisfied with the performance of a number of Win32 apps when virtualized on 10X. When in the background, these apps are struggling to perform basic tasks such as screen sharing, sending notifications when they’re minimized(via Windowslatest). What is even worse is the fact that some legacy apps are facing compatibility issues.

 

 

4 hours ago, GoodBytes said:

With the massive growth in PC sales with work from home, Microsoft choose to cancel Windows 10X, and focus its energy on Windows 10. 

Got an official source on that statement? Or is it something you are guessing? Because it doesn't make sense to me and just sounds like handwaving to not admit a fuckup from Microsoft.

In fact, speculation from other people (which I think makes far more sense) suggests the exact opposite.

COVID hit, everyone suddenly wants new computers, Chromebook sales go through the roof (source) and Microsoft want in on the action and thus shift focus from "Windows 10X is for phones and dual screen devices" to "Windows 10X is a Chromebook competitor".

 

It's not like COVID hit and they shifted focus right away. They were still developing Windows 10X just a couple of months ago. It's not like development of Windows 10 has sped up either from what I can tell. The latest update which has been in the work during the entire COVID period is very, very late.

So development of Windows 10X didn't stop when COVID hit, nor did it stop until very recently.

 

So to summarize.

1) Windows 10X development didn't stop during the pandemic.

2) Windows 10X shifted focus during the pandemic to focus on being a Chromebook competitor.

3) Development of regular Windows 10 doesn't seem to have sped up at all. If anything we are getting updates less frequently now, and the updates are smaller compared to before the pandemic.

 

I don't see how anyone can interpret these events as "Microsoft's reaction to the pandemic was to cancel Windows 10X and focus on the regular version of Windows instead". If you ask me, I think it is very clear that the pandemic caused Microsoft to focus on Windows 10X and put less focus on regular Windows. Then they realized what a mess Windows 10X was because they never got it working properly and now they scrapped it.

If the pandemic was the reason for the cancelation of Windows 10X then why did the development of Window 10X keep on going up until just now, when the pandemic is (hopefully) almost over? Why did they decide to change major ideas regarding Windows 10X during the pandemic (from dual screen devices to a ChromeOS competitor) if the plan was to cancel it all along?

[suicidalfranco]

Why doesn't Microsoft just take the resources on these waste projects and put them up to do something actually productive, like going down history lane and attempt to fully document every bit of legacy code that is still present in Windows.

Once everything is well documented, restructure windows in a monolithic way and actually lay down some solid foundations to that spaghetti code

[Doobeedoo]

Kinda for the better probably. It was supposed to be a lower barrier entry for Windows OS more focused on cloud use though really they're better of just improving the general Windows OS and adapting it for various devices.

[LAwLz]

4 hours ago, suicidalfranco said:

Why doesn't Microsoft just take the resources on these waste projects and put them up to do something actually productive, like going down history lane and attempt to fully document every bit of legacy code that is still present in Windows.

Once everything is well documented, restructure windows in a monolithic way and actually lay down some solid foundations to that spaghetti code

Because fixing that doesn't generate any new revenue.

Why polish something that sells well when you can reinvent the wheel and sell it to already existing customers?

[StDragon]

Windows 10x may be dead, but it won't be a complete waste of effort. MS learned something from this, and I'm sure some future version of Windows will build upon this as this platform will be necroed in some form.

[Commodus]

Like was mentioned earlier, this might just kill the Surface Neo.

 

And this is why you don't announce products too far in advance, especially if they're supposed to be pushing boundaries like the Neo was. A lot can happen in a year (and now, year-plus). Real artists ship, and all that.

[GoodBytes]

7 hours ago, LAwLz said:

This is not what I have heard or experienced.

Picture of Steam and HWMonitor running on my side pictured in this thread (in the first post):

 

 

7 hours ago, LAwLz said:

So to summarize.

1) Windows 10X development didn't stop during the pandemic.

2) Windows 10X shifted focus during the pandemic to focus on being a Chromebook competitor.

3) Development of regular Windows 10 doesn't seem to have sped up at all. If anything we are getting updates less frequently now, and the updates are smaller compared to before the pandemic.

Windows 10 development has pretty much slowed down to a crawl in the last could of updates, before Microsoft was pulling ressource away from Windows 10, and putting them into Windows 10X due to numerous delays. Microsoft took the decision to not ship Windows 10X without ensure a good polish (I guess they learned from Windows 10 Mobile and Windows 10)

 

7 hours ago, LAwLz said:

I don't see how anyone can interpret these events as "Microsoft's reaction to the pandemic was to cancel Windows 10X and focus on the regular version of Windows instead". If you ask me, I think it is very clear that the pandemic caused Microsoft to focus on Windows 10X and put less focus on regular Windows. Then they realized what a mess Windows 10X was because they never got it working properly and now they scrapped it.

If the pandemic was the reason for the cancelation of Windows 10X then why did the development of Window 10X keep on going up until just now, when the pandemic is (hopefully) almost over? Why did they decide to change major ideas regarding Windows 10X during the pandemic (from dual screen devices to a ChromeOS competitor) if the plan was to cancel it all along?

Well, leaks suggested that Windows 10X stopped development (no more builds made) since sometime in Feb of 2020. And as reports of PC sales increased, a Microsoft spokesperson said that they are now re-investing / have renewed focused in Windows 10.

 

I don't know their initial plans. Maybe they thought that foldable screen laptops and pocket dual screen computers would be a thing with consumers... I just don't know. Clearly, the technology isn't here today, and what we have cost a fortune or two for most people. Or maybe, Microsoft was trying to split (as in a long-term plan) consumer version of Windows like in the old days, where Win9x was for home, and WinNT was for the office. I just don't know.... your guess is as good as mine. Clearly, this current event has made Microsoft realize that the way forward is 1 Windows that pleases both home consumers and office, and it would make no sense to have 2 different experiences for people to have between their home PC and work PC, especially that now, a great number of companies (based on my observations) seem to focus on providing a hybrid model post-pandemic for those jobs that can.

 

[lostcattears]

That didn't last long at all, I got a feeling their surface line up is dying as well... Even though it was soo good they didn't push hard enough to keep up.

[pythonmegapixel]

13 hours ago, suicidalfranco said:

Excellent

Now do the same with 10S

And then the full version of 10 please!

 

Seriously, imagine how amazing Microsoft could make Wine if they focused the Windows development team on contributing to that instead. (Of course, they won't do that as it would be an awful business decision, but you get the gist)

[Bratstech]

8 minutes ago, lostcattears said:

That didn't last long at all, I got a feeling their surface line up is dying as well... Even though it was soo good they didn't push hard enough to keep up.

If anything they are going to just focus their efforts on microsoft on arm. They should focus their efforts on x86 application emulation. they need to make it about as good as the way that apple does it

[GoodBytes]

39 minutes ago, lostcattears said:

That didn't last long at all, I got a feeling their surface line up is dying as well... Even though it was soo good they didn't push hard enough to keep up.

Going by their financial statements, Surface is doing very well. I believe, going by memory, they have have increased sales year over year.

[GoodBytes]

2 hours ago, Bratstech said:

If anything they are going to just focus their efforts on microsoft on arm. They should focus their efforts on x86 application emulation. they need to make it about as good as the way that apple does it

I think they should make their own SoC, because Qualcomm doesn't seem to really care (feels like they are the Intel of ARM). Sadly, an actual custom SoC isn't guarantee success and it requires a high level of expertise which is only available by a handful of people already working at other CPU/SoC manufacturers. Also, takes many years to make.

 

Now, maybe Microsoft has some add-on tech that they have Qualcomm put in for their own SoC that boost performance for this specific role, that is possibility. But the overall chip performance would probably still be behind the M1.

[LAwLz]

15 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

Going by their financial statements, Surface is doing very well. I believe, going by memory, they have have increased sales year over year.

It depends on how you look at it. Sales were up, but not anywhere near as much as other vendors. I think it was 3% year over year during the pandemic. I think other vendors had like a 25% growth on average. 

 

If you grow 3% and your competitors grow 25% then you're still losing marketshare. 

[Bratstech]

42 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

I think they should make their own SoC, because Qualcomm doesn't seem to really care (feels like they are the Intel of ARM). Sadly, an actual custom SoC isn't guarantee success, it requires a high level of expertise which is only available by a handful of people already working at other CPU/SoC manufacturers. Also, takes many years to make.

 

Now maybe Microsoft has some add-on tech that they have Qualcomm put in for their own SoC that boost performance for this specific role, that is possible. 

I totally agree about the statement with Qualcomm being the intel of arm. speaking of Intel I wonder if and when they are going start making arm chips. AMD for that matter too. If they aren't working on it now then they might get left in the dust by companies like Microsoft and Apple.

[Donut417]

2 hours ago, Bratstech said:

AMD for that matter too.

I heard AMD is already on this. 

3 hours ago, GoodBytes said:

I think they should make their own SoC,

A lot of people think because the success of M1 that anyone can do this. The thing is Apple has at least a decade under its belt building ARM chips. Its not like Apple out of the blue just started making them. They have had a decade to gain experience and figure out what they needed to do to be successful. Id assume that M1 could have been a long term goal when they started this journey. 

 

Microsofts issue is it doesnt have cult status like Apple. I mean Apple killed 32bit support with Catalina, did you hear Mac users crying up a storm? Not really, Im sure there were a few. IF Microsoft did this there would be a congressional hearing on the matter. The thing that makes Windows great is also the thing that makes it suck. Legacy support. Yeah its great to be able to run software from forevers ago. But it also means we have an OS that is just blended together in the hopes that it works. As stated above if they were able to give up Legacy support the OS would probably just be better. Run better and probably have less bugs. 

[GoodBytes]

1 hour ago, Donut417 said:

A lot of people think because the success of M1 that anyone can do this. The thing is Apple has at least a decade under its belt building ARM chips. Its not like Apple out of the blue just started making them. They have had a decade to gain experience and figure out what they needed to do to be successful. Id assume that M1 could have been a long term goal when they started this journey. 

Oh yea, for sure. And again, you have 0 ensured success. You could spend a fortune and only end up with the performance of a mid-range MediaTek SoC because of a/some screw ups. But I said this, more for the fact that Qualcomm isn't pushing the industry. Their focus is just to be the fastest Android SoC, that is all. Their "laptop" chips, seems to be just their mobile one, with small tweaks to make it allow to consume a bit more power, and that is about it. Not much innovation put into it to really shine. Not to mention price... looking at ARM based laptops running Windows 10 on ARM, it's clear that Qualcomm is probably charging a premium, I won't be surprised if they are selling those chips nearly as much as AMD/Intel.... at least not cheap enough to compensate for the lower production runs of those devices. But when you have the monopoly, you can do whatever you want,

 

Quote

Microsofts issue is it doesnt have cult status like Apple. I mean Apple killed 32bit support with Catalina, did you hear Mac users crying up a storm? Not really, Im sure there were a few. IF Microsoft did this there would be a congressional hearing on the matter. The thing that makes Windows great is also the thing that makes it suck. Legacy support. Yeah its great to be able to run software from forevers ago. But it also means we have an OS that is just blended together in the hopes that it works. As stated above if they were able to give up Legacy support the OS would probably just be better. Run better and probably have less bugs. 

Maybe that was Microsoft Windows 10X plans. Start small, target low powered devices where the user expects to be limited in software chooses regardless, and cover the basic popular apps, and cover specialized devices where you need adapted apps in any case. Then, slowly, increase market share from there, pushing slowly devs for support. But, with the current market, I guess Microsoft saw that this would really not work, not even in small amount, because consumers now, already have a new capable PC running Windows 10. To be clear, I don't know what MS plan were... I am just guessing here.

[Donut417]

8 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

o be clear, I don't know what MS plan were... I am just guessing here.

Its pretty clear to me. Microsoft has tried Windows on ARM multiple times. They REALLY want it to work. Great. Id love to have a Windows Computer that has mega battery life. The issue is like you said Qualcomm doesnt care. The only hope for Windows on ARM devices is probably in the hands of AMD or Nvidia. AMD is currently working on an ARM chip and they do have experience designing CPUs, so maybe they will be a bit more successful than if Microsoft does it. But to me Nvidia really could have an opportunity here. Seeing how the Tegra powers the Nintendo Switch. Plus Nvidia has boatloads of cash they could sink in to R&D. Plus they are a pretty innovative company. I just dont think Microsoft could pull this off. I mean Apple has a desktop class ARM chip now, which they spent 10 years perfecting with all their mobile devices. Microsoft doesnt have a decade to figure things out, they would need an SOC now in order to compete. 

[Bratstech]

23 hours ago, Bratstech said:

Microsoft Officially announces that Windows 10X is dead

 

Summary

After not knowing what to do with Windows 10X, Microsoft has officially announced that Windows 10X is dead. Windows 10X will no longer be receiving any updates for security or features. Microsoft doesn't want 10X to die in vain though as it is reported that they will be reusing some of the technology developed for the operating system for other things. 

 

Quotes

 

My thoughts

 To be honest I never really knew what Windows 10X was. At first I was told that it was just a lighter version of regular windows 10 then I was told that it was basically Chrome OS then I was told that it was going to be a phone OS. RIP though and hopefully some good things will come out of this

 

Sources

Microsoft confirms Windows 10X is dead - The Verge

Microsoft kills Windows 10X, will bring some features into Windows 10 (msn.com)

Microsoft officially acknowledges Windows 10X isn't happening (msn.com) 

I MADE IT INTO THE TECH NEWS!!!!

[Nowak]

Man, and all the reviews of that folding tablet Lenovo made said "just wait for Windows 10X" because Windows 10 on it sucked ass

 

Guess not