My concerns all began when reviewing the announcements for Windows 10 IoT (a label that inexplicably applies to an entire range, yet is only really relevant to the lowest-cost, headless, license option) and noting the absence of what we’d recognize as a GUI driven “embedded” variant. I’ll look forward to querying about this at Embedded World 2016. Perhaps I’m wrong?

At first this amalgamation seemed logical. The separation in terms of development platforms for embedded and enterprise on the face of it appeared sound, but the reality was an unnecessary resource expenditure on developing the OS itself before you’d even started work on your software.

The componentized (>10,000) XP embedded was simplified into grouped feature packs for WES7 and WES8, but even that simplification arguably constituted wasted effort. Does it really make any difference to Microsoft whether the Tablet PC input panel feature is used or not, which dictates a 20 percent increase in licensing costs? Windows 10 IoT purported to abolish that pettiness, working on purely a license – not a feature – model, but where’s the embedded license? POS and tablets benefit from reduced licensing, but where’s our industrial/embedded license?

It’s disappeared – read more on this from me soon following my findings at Embedded World 2016!