When Microsoft launched Windows 8 in the fall of 2012, its poster child was the Surface RT tablet. The thin, meticulously designed slate was supposed to showcase all that was good about the new touch-friendly version of Windows: dynamic live tiles, full-screen apps and lack of “chrome,” like a start button.
The device failed to attract customers, though, and Microsoft ended up losing nearly $1 billion on the tablet due to unsold inventory. A big part of what stymied the Surface was its operating system: a watered-down version of Windows called Windows RT that couldn’t run traditional desktop apps. It was Windows, just without any of the programs you actually wanted to run. Read more…
