Despite its early stage, testers say Windows Cloud 10 lives up to rumors
An early version of Windows 10 Cloud, the rumored new operating system believed to be a resurrected revision of Windows RT, has leaked online and confirmed most of the rumors and suspicions about the still-in-development operating system.
An installable ISO of a Windows 10 Cloud build was leaked by Twitter user @adguard, which you can install. But considering it comes from Russia, I wouldn’t trust it, except maybe on a virtual machine that’s sandboxed and immediately deletable.
It was suspected that Windows 10 Cloud will be a revamped version of Microsoft’s failed Window RT, the ARM-based tablet OS that would only run apps from the Windows Store. It turns out this is indeed the case, only the app option is expanded somewhat to run Universal Windows Platform apps from the Windows Store.
The folks over at MSPowerUser got their hands on a build and tried to install Visual Studio Code, a Win32 app, Windows 10 Cloud rejected it with an alert that said the app “isn’t designed for this version of Windows.” Also, the dialog box states that “this version [Windows 10 Cloud] was made to help protect you and your device by exclusively running Windows Store apps.”
MSPowerUser did discover that some Win32 apps from the Windows Store will run on Windows 10 Cloud if they are from Microsoft’s own Desktop App Converter that allows developers to bring their Win32 apps to the Windows Store, but they are still being executed as a Win32 app.
Windows RT failed for several reasons, not the least of which was a lack of apps. Now that a few years have passed and the selection of apps in the Windows Store has grown, this could be a better time for such an OS. It’s been speculated that Windows 10 Cloud is designed to compete with Chromebooks, which have been quite successful given their low price point.
Upgradeable to full Windows 10?
What makes Windows 10 Cloud different, though, is it might be upgradeable to full Windows 10. Petri reports that it found evidence in the code that it believes shows Windows 10 Cloud can be updated to Windows 10 Pro, the full version of Windows. This would not be unprecedented, as you can upgrade lower versions of Windows 10, like Home, to Pro as well.
And as Petri pointed out, it’s likely just a matter of time before hackers “jailbreak” Windows 10 Cloud to run the full version. Hopefully Microsoft is smarter than that.
