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While Apple's preferred method for introducing customers to new products is with a gala stage event, Microsoft's method has become the doling out of information in carefully timed lumps through corporate blog posts. Today, a rather hefty lump (almost the size of one of my analysis articles) was doled out by Microsoft's Windows Division President Steven Sinofsky, shedding considerable new light on how Windows 8 will work on systems with ARM-based processors.

Remember last year when questions arose about Microsoft's policies on UEFI secure boot on Windows 8? Microsoft's response, or lack thereof, was that "OEMs are free to choose" how or whether to enable turning off secure boot on systems shipping Windows 8. It appears, however, OEMs may not be as free to choose if they're shipping ARM hardware.

Glyn Moody points out a clause from Microsoft's Hardware Certification Requirements for Windows 8 on page 116, that says "Disabling Secure MUST NOT be possible on ARM systems."

There are too many simultaneous permutations of almost the same hardware, forcing developers to build a plethora of native code implementations of the same software, all of which are nearly impossible to keep aligned with one another. No, that's not a complaint about Android. That's a complaint by many Android developers about building for ARM, the adaptable architecture that comprises the majority of today's smartphone platforms, including Qualcomm's Scorpion processor, for the first generation of its Snapdragon architecture.

This morning, ARM is taking a significant step toward ironing out Android's multiple versioning issues that Linus Torvalds himself called a "hodgepodge" earlier this year. It's releasing suites of developers' tools, including a free community edition, of its ARM Developers Studio (DS-5), this time including a graphical debugger that it says will eliminate the need for devs to use a clunky, command-line debugger for tuning native code.

Yesterday we told you about some details about the ARM version of Windows 8 that an Intel manager shared on an investor call. Now The Register, which originally broke the news, reports that Microosoft is denying the accuracy of Intel's claims.

But Redmond isn't saying which parts of Intel's statements are true.

Windows 8 will come in two major varieties: a "traditional" version with legacy application support, and an ARM version that will not support legacy applications. The Windows 8 traditional version will have a "Windows 7" mode for backwards compatibility. The news comes from Intel's Investor Meeting 2011, as reported by The Register.

Update: Microsoft has issued a denial.

Adobe and ARM today announced that they are joining forces to bring Adobe Flash Player 10 and Adobe AIR to ARM powered devices in a move that Adobe hopes will lower power consumption for mobile devices running Flash and AIR content, and make it easier for users to play video on a variety of devices.

According to the statement, the partnership stems from the Open Screen Project, Adobe's industry-wide initiative set to address challenges of Web browsing on a broad range of screens.