Windows Embedded's future looks rocky

Ah, Windows Embedded. The Microsoft operating system that millions of devices and machines are running, typically with a custom application or skin running on top of it so that users don't automatically notice the OS. The operating system that underpins hundreds of thousands of medical devices, automatic teller machines, kiosks at airports and other crowded public places, industrial machinery and control planes, set top boxes, game consoles.

Windows Embedded is a relatively unheralded version of Windows whose existence might surprise you. But it seems like Windows Embedded's existence might also surprise a lot of folks up in Redmond. Here, at the Microsoft campus, despite all of the hullabaloo about Windows 10 and device updates -- and the new Creators Update and Redstone versions that will be coming down the pike at an almost breakneck speed -- Windows Embedded suffers from an opposite problem. It appears unfortunately stuck in a place where no future has clearly been laid out for it.

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