Windows 10 IoT Core is a new edition for Windows targeted towards small, embedded devices that may or may not have screens. For devices with screens, Windows 10 IoT Core does not have a Windows shell experience; instead you can write a Universal Windows app that is the interface and “personality” for your device. IoT core designed to have a low barrier to entry and make it easy to build professional grade devices. It’s designed to work with a variety of open source languages and works well with Visual Studio.
Internet of Things, coming to you from a proud tradition of the tech industry being horrible at coming up with decent names.
Let’s have a naming contest!
Smart devices
Connected home
Chatty stuff
Better than you could remember what’s in your fridge
touchy feely home
Dumbed down people
Only Metro Apps Edition?
(as virtually only ‘universal’ metro apps are available and the customer should know that before buying! See also Surface RT!)
security fuck-up
Shame they didn’t go with “Microsoft Zombie Apocalypse of Smart Devices”
Microsoft is already doing better than the people that toss Linux/BusyBox and an open telnet port on their IoT device.
How do you figure? While someone may break in, at least it isnt actively spying on you.
Prove that Windows for IoT is spying, or shut the hell up. I’m dead serious. I know that Windows on the desktop has always reported back to the mothership, but I want to see proof that the IoT build does the same thing before I’ll believe it. If you don’t know it does for sure, you’re spreading FUD.
I say that because Microsoft is specifically targeting the maker/hacker community with this, and it would be suicidal for them to include telemetry and monitoring in Windows for IoT, especially for constrained devices. It would be a matter of minutes for word to get out and the whole project would be dropped like a hot rock.
Lets examine history. Android and apps – spy on you. iOS and apps – spy on you. Windows 10 – spies on you. Even if the actual OS IoT doesn’t spy on you, you can bet the manufacturer will add spying technology. EVERY voice service, including those from Microsoft, are combed for information. How do you think Microsoft’s directed advertising would work if it didn’t spy on you?
EDIT: So after checking out how this works, IoT is basically a mini OS that you run from Windows 10. Since its Windows 10 based and we know Windows 10 reports back to Microsoft, we know that the possibility is there for spying. But seeing as this looks like its mainly aimed at kids and hobbyists, who knows if you will ever see this in a commercial device.
Edited 2015-08-11 22:59 UTC
I think you’re missing my point. Shoehorning telemetry and tracking into an OS designed for hobbyists to use on low-resource embedded systems would defeat the purpose. Combine that with the fact that any maker/hacker worth her salt would discover it almost immediately and spread the word, and all you are left with are your own paranoid ramblings. I challenge you again: Back up your FUD with proof.
But this is, according to the blurb, also going to be used in professional devices. What capabilities will it have for them? Amazon’s echo could be built with this, and look at what it tells Amazon about you.
Lets not forget that the original post I replied with was directed at a non specific IoT device. You really can’t trust any closed source item like this because they all pretty much spy on you.
Edited 2015-08-12 00:33 UTC
That makes no sense. What Amazon decides to add to their device has nothing to do with the core operating system.
Look, I get it: You don’t trust Microsoft. Neither do I, but you are claiming facts you have no way of knowing as fact, and that’s misleading to anyone who reads your posts. That’s what I’m calling out here.
I just started using Win 10 ioT at work and it’s pretty cool. File system, web server, TCPIP commands…everything is really easy to do in c# with it. I thought that it was weird that it has a monitor output with a XAML front end, but this front end has become really useful for debugging as you can click on buttons and show text, which can sometimes be hard to do on a normal ARM development environment. With normal parts, you are really relegated to the debugger or an I/O pin to see what is going on. One downfall initially, is that I had to throw out most of my .NET desktop experience and shift to the Universal app thing which uses a bunch of different namespaces that work completely differently than a desktop app, but I am getting over this quickly and the Universal app offers easier multithreading capabilities with the new “Await” command.