Windows 8 on ARM will only support Metro apps…except for a few from Microsoft
[Windows unit President Steven] Sinofsky also said that the Windows-on-ARM machines will come with several Office apps — Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote — that have been tuned to run in a very battery-efficient manner. But Sinofsky said that, although those applications will run in the traditional Windows desktop, they will be the only programs allowed to do so, other than components of Windows itself.
“There are no other compiled dekstop apps that are available,” Sinofsky told AllThingsD. All of the other apps for Windows on ARM will be the new-style “Metro” apps.
Windows 8 for Intel and AMD chips, by contrast, will be able to run all of the kinds of programs that have traditionally run on Windows, inside a Windows 7-like desktop environment. …
Windows on ARM will have the desktop as an option for Internet Explorer, the Office apps and various system functions, such as the control panel, file management and other built-in features of Windows. Sinofsky also said that the version of Internet Explorer for Windows on ARM won’t support plugins such as Adobe Flash, noting the trend in the industry away from supporting Flash on mobile devices.
I’m cool with the no plugins thing. But it also seems to me that Windows 8 is getting weirder and weirder.