Will Microsoft seriously gimp the Surface line or build flash into IE mobile?

[Jas00555]

So I've been thinking about this and I'm not sure which would be the lesser of 2 evils. If Microsoft is suppose to replace RT with WP, what's going to happen to IE for WP. Presumably, since they don't want 3 OSes, they'll just make WP scalable to 10 inch screens like Apple did with iOS 5. That would mean that the IE on our phones would be the same app to run on RT tablets.

That creates a problem. Right now, a huge selling point of the Surface over the iPad is that the Surface has a full browser while the iPad has a mobile browser. Its also how people get by with the lack of apps. If MS basically takes the Surface 3 and puts WP on it, it'll take away a huge selling point, and could hamper sales. Right now, we don't have Sirius XM, Amazon Prime, or HBO GO to name a few apps that would require flash through IE since we don't have them as apps. Plus, until apps get optimized for bigger screens, itll make the RT tablets have even less apps.

What do you guys think? MS would have to a) take away a huge selling point for their tablets, b) give us flash for IE (which I don't care about either way, its dying) or c) unbundle IE from the OS and have a tablet version with flash and a phone version without it.

Thoughts?

 

[Michael Alan Goff]

I want it to be B, but it will more than likely be A.

 

[Jas00555]

Yeah, that's what I'm afraid of

 

[unstoppablekem]

RT has MUCH more potential than any other tablet OS. It sucks that it's very underrated though. So I don't know.

 

[hopmedic]

Flash is in the browser, but websites that are allowed are whitelisted. It's been a long time since I heard the how-to, but if you search I'm sure you can find how to edit the file and white-list the sites you want. I'm thinking I heard it on Windows Weekly, so maybe search Paul Thurrott's blog.

 

[Jack Janik]

I think the third one is very possible. Look at the new Xbox Music and Xbox Video apps. Not built into OS. MS is a little green when it comes to a smartphone experience, but I think they are learning with ATT delaying every update as much as possible. I think anything is possible though.

 

[12Danny123]

I think the third one is very possible. Look at the new Xbox Music and Xbox Video apps. Not built into OS. MS is a little green when it comes to a smartphone experience, but I think they are learning with ATT delaying every update as much as possible. I think anything is possible though.

that's actually smart thinking actually. I guess they'll probably do this for WP8.1 and Windows 8.1 update something

 

[Reflexx]

I think it makes more sense to have RT scale down to phones than to have WP scale up to tablets.

 

[chinesepiratefood]

I guess I don't understand why you assume they can't have both? Just because the "new" os could run both phone & tablet apps, doesn't mean 100% of the code is shared. The IE on tablets could easily have flash support, and it could be disabled on phones.

 

[Jas00555]

I think it makes more sense to have RT scale down to phones than to have WP scale up to tablets.

I think Mary Jo Foley went into why they don't want to do that. She basically said that its much easier and efficient to add features to an OS than strip them away.

 

[Reflexx]

I think Mary Jo Foley went into why they don't want to do that. She basically said that its much easier and efficient to add features to an OS than strip them away.

Well, RT is more robust. So it makes even more sense.

 

[12Danny123]

Well, RT is more robust. So it makes even more sense.

ALMOST all of Windows RT's apps aren't built in the OS. so I don't get why they can't do that for WP8.1. they likely will though.