The locked bootloaders only on ARM have ben confirmed in a mandatory hardware requirements that Microsoft has published a couple of days ago.

http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2012/01/windows-8s-locked-bootloaders-much-ado-about-nothing-or-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it.ars

Load of apps only through official Microsoft Windows Store (ala iOS) was also confirmed several months ago.

The only unofficial rumor is the stripe out of classic Desktop on Windows on ARM. Microsoft is very secretive about that, and the amount of leaks/rumors are so important (has been mentioned in every technological blog) that seems very possible that Intel has reached a hidden agreement with Microsoft in order to block the ARM thread.

Have those things been confirmed officially? Or are those just some rumors on some random blogs?

They will lock boot process on ARM devices, so you can’t dual boot with Ubuntu (Unity is amazing on tablets o set-top boxes form factor) o whatever you like (but Windows 8 boot on x86 will remain open).

They will stripe out classic Desktop on Windows on ARM (last year we all saw MS Office on ARM, that was amazing but now they say we won’t be able to recompile our apps in order to use them under cheap and fast ARM systems).

You won’t be able to sideload apps on ARM devices, you always will be forced to go through their MS Windows Store (like disgusting Apple also does).

I don’t care anymore about Microsoft or Windows 8. 🙁 🙁 🙁

Seriously or slightly, or perfectly stable, it’s understandable that Microsoft does not want their next version of Windows on ARM to be unveiled as an exclusive in a CES backroom, surely Microsoft has big plans for how to unveil it, maybe at Mobile World Congress or later. Google does the same when they unveil new versions of Android, they’d rather unveil it officially at some big event than have a chip maker show it off fully in a poorly lit random trade show room. Also, it might be TI was just running an early demo and not a later more optimized version, maybe something that for now only exists within Microsoft’s Redmond R&D center.