back to article Microsoft reveals 'limitations of apps and experiences on Arm' – then deletes from view

Microsoft published a webpage listing Windows 10's "limitations of apps and experiences on Arm," earlier this month – and then mysteriously pulled it. The document appeared at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/porting/apps-on-arm-limitations last on Thursday, February 15. It now redirects to https://docs.microsoft. …

  1. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
    Facepalm

    Just adding Razor Wire

    to the top of their ARM Walled Garden.

    Move along there, nothing of significance to see (or so they hope by doing this over a holiday)

    1. Dan 55 Silver badge

      Re: Just adding Razor Wire

      If anything, removing it.

      Unless marketing found it and decided that it's better to remove the document explaining the limitations and let developers find out for themselves.

      1. Teiwaz

        Re: Just adding Razor Wire

        If anything, removing it.

        Unless marketing found it and decided that it's better to remove the document explaining the limitations and let developers find out for themselves.

        You'd like to think for former....Latter is more believable....Probably replacing the razor wire with concealed spikes and beartraps....

      2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: Just adding Razor Wire

        " let developers find out [the limitations] for themselves."

        BAU

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Is it me, or is this sounding more and more like Windows RT with all its limitations?

      Did Microsoft described the rehashed document as a Windows 'Re-Tweet' or a Windows "ReTreat"?

  2. David Knapman

    2024, if I don't err - not 2019. That's the next time that January 2nd is a Tuesday :-)

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It takes a special person not to re-read your out of office before you set it. To be fair I think I've made that mistake once, which is something you learn from.

    1. Dan 55 Silver badge

      Well, it seems the article isn't free of sin either.

    2. Hans 1

      To be fair I think I've made that mistake once, which is something you learn from.

      Well, it should no longer happen now, because Outlook finally has this dates feature*, you know, the feature that Notes already had a few decades before Outlook, handy that, huh ?

      * "Send this reply between these two dates" or something like that ...

      1. AMBxx Silver badge
        Facepalm

        Even better, if you login to email while you have out of office turned on, it nags you to turn it off.

        Unless MS are still runing Exchange 2003?!

      2. katrinab Silver badge

        You can set the dates the Out of Office runs from, that way, you can have it turn off the night / weekend before you return. However, it doesn't change the text that gets sent out to people who email you while you are away.

        1. Dan 55 Silver badge

          If only someone at MS had the amazing unheard-of idea of allowing you to put tokens into the OOO text which are replaced with the from and to dates that you've previously selected in the calendar boxes above.

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Well, it should no longer happen now, because Outlook finally has this dates feature*, you know, the feature that Notes already had a few decades before Outlook, handy that, huh ?

        * "Send this reply between these two dates" or something like that ...

        I thought Microsoft had a "steal from the best" policy. Why would they be stealing from Lotus Notes?

        1. Steve the Cynic

          I thought Microsoft had a "steal from the best" policy.

          How does Visual SourceSafe fit with that idea?

          Oh, wait, they actually paid money for that, so it wasn't stolen.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      >It takes a special person not to re-read your out of office

      I'm not in the office today because my wife left me for the Amazon delivery driver. We'd been ordering items from the Amazon "adult section" to spice up our humdrum lives and perhaps the wife couldn't wait to try the items out. Maybe I should have spent less time in the office and more time with my wife.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        @AC

        You only need to re-read it once, sorry to hear about your Amazon problems, have you tried asking for a refund?

    4. VinceH

      "It takes a special person not to re-read your out of office before you set it. To be fair I think I've made that mistake once, which is something you learn from."

      Ditto. The solution I've settled on is to change the out of office when I turn it off so that it reads as something more generic. Next time I turn it on, if I'm in a hurry and forget to edit it to add a date, it's still fine.

      1. Terry 6 Silver badge

        Yes. My rule of thumb when gainfully employed was to have a generic message. Very rarely, for something very specific I'd use a special one. But for most uses all people need is a reassurance that you will be back.

        1. Michael Strorm Silver badge

          @Terry 6; "But for most uses all people need is a reassurance that you will be back."

          Is that you, Arnie?

  4. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Unhappy

    Just Microsft maintaining its "Codependent facilitator" relationship with Intel.

    Just BAU MS style.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Facepalm

    Seriously?

    This is the lamest two-minute hate on MSFT I've read. I'm embarrassed for the El Reg hack.

    1. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Meh

      Re: Seriously?

      and I'm not sure how any of this is a problem... it's almost like they're NO LONGER saying that ARM has certain limitations... [did they FIX some broken things on ARM?]

      Worst thing that COULD happen: the limitations in question now apply to x86...

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Seriously?

      I certainly don't consider it HATE at all. I can recall spending days to weeks manually/visually hunting down changes between my MSDN Disc sets. Landmines and bear traps indeed.This is a huge step up in comparison. Too bad it's no longer relevant.

    3. ssharwood

      Re: Seriously?

      WTF? No hate from me. Just poining out what looks to be a rather odd reversal

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Seriously?

      @J J Carter

      Can I helpfully suggest rearranging your bedroom furniture?

      I find that changing the side of the bed I get out of helps in these situations.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Seriously?

        Can I helpfully suggest rearranging your bedroom furniture?

        I find that changing the side of the bed I get out of helps in these situations.

        From reading many of JJC's posts, I don't think they have much choice in the matter - it's down to which side of the bed their MS carer/briefer undoes the straps on first.

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Seriously?

      >>> This is the lamest two-minute hate on MSFT I've read. I'm embarrassed for the El Reg hack.

      Dunno, kind of re-enfoces the position they're in really.

      50% of IT people hate Microsoft because of their unfair business practises back in the 90s and 00s, the other 50% hate Microsoft just because they're shit.

    6. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Seriously?

      Not hating MSFT?

      You're not paying attention to the recent trends of SatNad's Microsoft.

      Also, El Reg makes fun of almost everyone, but obviously the fanboys/shills naturally get upset at their supported brand getting dissed. Call it edgy tribalism or something.

      And you're no exception, J.J Carter.

  6. Richard 12 Silver badge

    The OpenGL bits are odd

    OpenGL 1.1 doesn't actually work on Windows x86/64 anymore either. Hasn't worked properly since Windows 8, and was broken earlier with some drivers/hardware.

    Not surprising since it's been obsolete for fifteen years or more.

    OpenGL ES 2.0 is fully supported on every relevant ARM platform for years, and OpenGL ES 3.0 on most.

    OpenGL 4 is a superset of ES 3 so...

    1. Nick Ryan Silver badge

      Re: The OpenGL bits are odd

      MS has been trying to undermine and destroy OpenGL since they released the beast-sphagetti mess that is DirectX.

      New developments that want any hint of cross platform capability should use Vulkan instead.

      1. Tom 7

        Re: The OpenGL bits are odd

        "MS has been trying to undermine and destroy OpenGL since they released the beast-sphagetti mess that is DirectX."

        Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to incompetence.

        MS dont do things out of malice - it really is a complete inability to code things properly any more.

        1. Terry 6 Silver badge

          Re: The OpenGL bits are odd

          I dunno, some Microsoft decisions seem really spiteful. The new implementation of the start menu feels that way. Making it difficult to manage or group programmes by function, yet allowing software publishers to put folders full of marketing sh*t in it. and loading it with unremovable links to software (3d crap for example) that most users won't ever use. As if they want to get their own back for being forced to bring it back by making it as clumsily rubbish as possible. Or making it impossible to export outlook.com calendars to Outlook (Office) though you can do it the other way seems like they want to punish users of old fashioned non-subscription Office.

        2. Updraft102

          Re: The OpenGL bits are odd

          Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to incompetence.

          Nonsense. Attribute to malice what the preponderance of evidence suggests is malice; attribute to incompetence what the preponderance of evidence suggests is malice. Having something enter pop culture as someone's "razor" doesn't make it true.

          In Microsoft's case, there is ample evidence of malice. When they decided to leverage their monopoly in the OS market to force PC makers to do their bidding on pain of losing the ability to sell preinstalled Windows, that wasn't coding incompetence. Deliberately embedding IE into Windows so they could lie and claim that it can't be removed was not incompetence. Lying before Congress was not incompetence.

          If you'd prefer something more recent... using Windows Update to distribute adware was not incompetence. Not having a "Cancel" button on said malware was not incompetence. The popup that tells people Windows 10 is great and it's compatible with your PC and the upgrade is fully reversible, conveniently leaving out the part where it might brick your PC so be damned sure to make a backup first... that was not coding incompetence. The part where it might brick your PC certainly could qualify, but whitewashing it to make it seem safer than it is in order to maximize the number of victims upgrades is pure malice.

          Changing the function of the GWX buttons after people caught on that the tiny close button was the real "Cancel" button wasn't incompetence. Upgrading people's PCs without consent wasn't incompetence. If you consider either of those in a vacuum, you could begin to believe that this is Redmondian incompetence at work, but if you look at the entire series of events surrounding Windows 10, it's a long chain of very malicious, bad-faith acts by Microsoft, and logic dictates that we examine the rest of the events in that light too.

          There are so many more examples of Microsoft's malice that I would struggle to remember them all. Ever since Nadella came on board, Microsoft has made a hobby of abusing their own customers. If you attribute this to incompetence alone, you're missing the full picture. This is outright aggression by Microsoft toward their own users.

      2. Richard 12 Silver badge

        Re: The OpenGL bits are odd

        Vulkan isn't relevant to most people, and isn't supported on any ARM platform I'm aware of.

        It's designed for multicore CPUs paired with stunningly powerful GPUs. The USP is multithreaded rendering/GPGPU by giving you really low-level access (which should also mean more consistent driver support, which is nice). However that also means a lot of boilerplate and footguns.

        TL;DR: If your GPU feeding is currently CPU-bound or has lots of unavoidable context switches, then Vulkan may be for you.

        If not, then OpenGL ES 3 (or OpenCL) is the truly multiplatform option as they're supported on almost everything you can currently buy - Android, iOS, Linux, Windows, macOS, x86, AMD64, ARM...

  7. Pascal Monett Silver badge
    Coat

    Microsoft has altered a document

    Pray it doesn't alter it further

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Not listed shite performance

    They only seem to have listed stuff that doesn't work at all, but didn't include things that work badly.

    Windows 10 on ARM is just another failed attempt in Microsoft desperation to remain relevant in a world that has left them behind.

    1. jelabarre59

      Re: Not listed shite performance

      They only seem to have listed stuff that doesn't work at all, but didn't include things that work badly.

      That's just presumed to be everything else.

  9. Zippy's Sausage Factory

    Interesting

    I'm guessing MS has been working on these features a while, thinking that they are going to start building more Surface hardware on ARM some time soon. Which is interesting.

    I also think Intel are also going to be very very miffed at losing some of their Windows advantages here and I'm sure they are going to have some tough questions for SatNad about this one...

  10. AndersBreiner

    Not that surprising

    There's nothing all that surprising in that document. Windows on ARM has an emulator in the WOW layer which runs 32 bit code on a 64 bit kernel.

    So you'd expect that it won't run non native drivers or x64 user mode code.

    It's analogous to how Risc machines were limited. They could run 16 bit x86 applications because those run via WOW on a 32 bit kernel. They could not run 32 bit x86 applications and all drivers had to be native.

    Then there are things like

    "

    Apps that customize the Windows experience may not work correctly. Native OS components cannot load non-native components. Examples of apps that commonly do this include some input method editors (IMEs), assistive technologies, and cloud storage apps. IMEs and assistive technologies often to hook into the input stack for much of their app functionality. Cloud storage apps commonly use shell extensions (for example, icons in Explorer and additions to right-click menus); their shell extensions may fail, and if the failure is not handled gracefully, the app itself may not work at all.

    "

    This is obvious too. Emulation is only for a pure x86 process. You can't load x86/x64 plugins into an ARM process or vice versa.

    "

    Apps that assume that all ARM-based devices are running a mobile version of Windows may not work correctly. Apps that make this assumption may appear in the wrong orientation, present unexpected UI layout or rendering, or failing to start altogether when they attempt to invoke mobile-only APIs without first testing the contract availability.

    "

    There were a few Win32 ARM applications that run on Windows Mobile, but not many now since Windows Phone killed off compatibility with them. Now it seems like MS have reversed course and tried to encourage ISVs to build them again.

  11. EveryTime

    Perhaps this is an update that reflect the internal change at Microsoft.

    There was a massive internal political battle in Microsoft. It was really about kingdoms, power, and sabotage. The battle was seen from the outside as Microsoft applications not working with Microsoft platforms. It apparently was impossibly hard for the worlds richest software company to port MS Office to ARM.

    On the platform side, Microsoft was so intent on not allowing another dominant hardware vendor that they hobbled themselves. And they lost the market because of it. nVidia was the only company that could pass the ARM platform certification, in part because they made a major investment with their best people. Rather than reward a loyal partner, Microsoft threw money and PR at other companies (viz the embarrassing promotion of Qualcomm at CES) and repeatedly lowered the criteria for certification.

  12. Graham 32

    So they're ADDING features, right?

    "guts doc on 'Limitations..." means that they're adding features, ie there are now fewer limitations.

    Took me several attempts to work out the story is not comparing and old long list of limitations with a new shorter list of limitations. Perhaps a headline saying "pulls doc" rather than "guts" would have been more appropriate.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Gotta love buzzword bullshit in IT

    Back in tthe 90s and 00s it was all pseudo military wannabe phrasiology such as "mission critical" and DMZs etc. Now the trend seems to be towards legalesing coding:

    "attempt to invoke mobile-only APIs without first testing the contract availability"

    Sorry, its not a "contract", the program didn't sign on the dotted line, its a fecking function that either works or is a stub (or missing altogether) and doesn't.

    (Yes, I know all about the contract pattern which is yet another load of join the dots rubbish for people who can't actually program and need to be shown the coding equivalent of how to tie their shoelaces.)

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