Windows 10 Cloud Leaks Online Confirming Universal Windows Platform Walled Garden

For anyone brave enough to try out Windows 10 Cloud, which is available in Windows 10 Build 15019, it is exactly as Mary Jo Foley described in her report. As Foley indicated based on information from her Microsoft insiders, Windows 10 Cloud is only capable of installing Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps from the Windows Store.

In fact, if you even try to install or run a Win32 app, you’ll be greeted with the following message: “The app you’re trying to run isn’t designed for this version of Windows. This version of Windows was made to help protect you and your device by exclusively running Windows Store apps.”

(Image courtesy MSPowerUser)

At first glance, Windows 10 looks like Microsoft’s latest attempt at providing a pared down consumer-based Windows experience with restrictive app support. Microsoft got its feet wet in this realm with Windows RT, which ran exclusively on ARM-based devices. However, that operating system crashed and burned due to a lack of support for legacy x86 apps.

With that being said, we’re still early in the game and things could change between now and when Microsoft eventually does make Windows 10 Cloud available to public (actually, Microsoft could decide to axe the entire project for all we know). However, it does represent a pretty “low effort” approach for Microsoft to take on the growing threat of Chromebook’s running Google’s Chrome OS. Chromebooks have been burning up the sales charts in the low-end segment of the market, and have been kicking ass and taking names in the education sector.

If you’re enough of a daredevil to try out Windows 10 Cloud, the ISO is currently floating around out there on the internet. However, we’d caution that you’ll probably want to install this build in a virtual machine rather than install it on a production machine.