The Surface RT failed because of the lack of apps available. At least that’s what I heard.

Why didn’t Microsoft make a x86 compatibility emulator like Apple did when they were moving away from the PowerPC architecture?

Sure x86 apps would be slower, but if they distributed the ARM version of windows as well, made it available for the Raspberry Pi and all sorts of devices, I fell that would be a huge drive from ARM based processors.

The DirectX, Windows forms..etc. libraries could be recompiled by Microsoft, which would make graphically intensive programs run faster too. Did Microsoft just not think of a compatibility layer? Or is there some obvious reason I’m missing?