Very interest post by Allen Bauer on the problems Delphi is facing in supporting WinRT... or, as he puts it, "Windows 8 Little Dirty Secret". This is a very interesting reading. And yes, this is somehow similar to the problems with browsers: IE is allowed to do operations third party WinRT browsers cannot. Which is a bit undari and likley to cause some stirs in Europe (you might remember I blogged about Microsoft "forgetting" to follow the agreed EU antitrust requests for browsers).

The original post is here: https://forums.embarcadero.com/message.jspa?messageID=484319#484319

A good summary is at: http://delphitools.info/2012/08/23/why-no-native-winrt-support-in-delphi-xe3/

Another summary is at: http://www.itwriting.com/blog/6347-third-party-compilers-locked-out-of-windows-runtime-development.html

With my (imprecise) comment and David Heffernan correction:

Marco Cantu ( August 23, 2012 at 9:02 am)

"If Microsoft cannot relax the restrictions, so why is it letting Visual C++ developers use those “forbidden” APIs? The issue at stake is that Visual C++ and C++Builder (or Delphi) should have the same rights! More or less like Internet Explorer and Chrome…"

David Heffernan ( August 23, 2012 at 9:41 am):

"VC++ devs can’t use the forbidden apps either. But the VC++ runtime can. At the moment Emba’s runtime cannot call them. That’s the iniquity."