Intel Corp (INTC)

[wbmw]

Nothing in here about any specific Intel effort to get Wintel apps running on non-Windows OS.

What do you think "port of choice" means? Are you still arguing that it means Windows... On Windows?

Remember, my first post on this subject was about how, when using one of these non-Wintel level-playing-field alternative platforms, the Wintel-codebase-advantage disappears.

Again, this answers your question. Any ISV can take their Windows apps and use the Intel tool set to have an easy port to Meego or Android.

Try to think beyond the highest profile heavy-weight apps like Adobe CS5 or Office 2010. Those need more aggressive overhauls in order to be usable in a handheld platform.

Instead, think about Canon printer software, or software that goes to any of the 100s of USB based devices that would be useful to hook up directly to a smart phone. My smartphone comes with a low profile USB connection already. Would be nice to hook up printers, cameras, or external drives.

Think about utilities like virus/malware checks, networking status monitors, photo organizers, etc. There are 1000s of downloadable apps off of Internet sites like download.com or twocows.com, and probably 100s out of those that would be useful as smartphones evolve to become more PC-like.

Intel's strategy has obviously been to leverage this by providing the tools for developers to easily port their apps across the various Atom platforms. That's something that ARM has not announced any plans to do, and is presumably more difficult due to their architectural barriers and the broad range of ARM SOCs, each of which require software tweaking for compatibility.

Intel has an argument for effort vs. reward. They are asking ISVs to spend some time on their architecture, and with a simple toolset, be able to have software that's compatible across all Atom based devices. The alternative being to spend more time porting to ARM, and having to retweak the software for each of the ARM SOCs they want to target.