Today, at Microsoft’s BUILD conference in Anaheim, California, Microsoft unveiled the biggest overhaul of Windows since Windows 95. The venue was not coincidental; in the same city, in 1993, during the first Professional Developers Conference, Microsoft unveiled Windows 95 for the first time. Steven Sinofsky, supported by an army of Microsoft executives, demonstrated a whole boatload of things for Windows 8, and make no mistake, they had a lot to show. Two important notes: the Windows 8 Developer Preview will be free to download later today (no activation, will be updated regularly, and includes the new interface), and Win32 is the past.
Developing for Windows 8
There is so much to tell, I don’t really know which items are the most important. I do think, though, that there’s one thing that the developers among you will find most important: the development environment, APIs, and languages you can use to develop for Windows 8. Let’s start with the most important conclusion from Sinofsky’s keynote: Win32 is the past.
Windows 8 allows for two kinds of applications: Desktop (legacy) and Metro applications. The desktop stack consists of HTML/JavaScript+Internet Explorer, C++/C+Win32, and C#/VB+.NET. The new Metro stack consists of the same set of languages (with XAML added for layout), but they are now all tied together at the API level, in something Microsoft calls the WinRT APIs. The below slide illustrates what this looks like.
As you can see, this is a pretty radical overhaul of the lower levels of Windows, which allows for all sorts of things developers have been asking for for a long time. Win32 and .NET never really got along, and on stage, Sinofsky acknowledged that the interactions (or lack thereof) between the various elements in what is now the Desktop stack weren’t optimal. In the new Metro stack, it doesn’t matter which languages you use, since they all tie into the same WinRT APIs.
Existing code can be used for Metro applications as well, with some minor modifications. On stage, one of Microsoft’s own developers took a set of existing Silverlight code samples, made a few small changes – live – and compiled them into a working Metro application.
On top of that, one codebase covers several devices. You can write a Metro application for Windows 8, and compile it for Windows Phone with minimal changes, and have it work there – the Microsoft developer demonstrated this with the same set of code samples. All Metro applications work on both x86 (32bit and 64bit) and ARM. Native code will be cross-compiled for both x86 and ARM. In addition, Metro applications will suspend themselves automatically when not visible, consuming zero processor power.
In other words, the stack you know from Windows XP, Vista, and 7 today is on its way out. It’s still there in Windows 8, and all your existing applications will run, but it was clearly regarded as legacy, as the past. I obviously don’t know how long it will take, but Win32 has just been put in the hot seat.
Metro on Windows 8
We already know quite a lot about Windows 8’s Metro user interface, but Microsoft didn’t hold back today, unveiling everything. Everything has been Metrofied, and you can, indeed, run in Metro all the time, without ever seeing the legacy desktop. Even the Control Panel has been rewritten in Metro, and looks absolutely nothing like what we have today.
I think other websites – who actually have people present on the show floor – are far better equipped to talk about the new Windows interface than I am. Ars Technica, for instance, concludes that “the core UI works, and it works well. It’s fast and fluid, and it’s very well thought-out. Multitasking, personalization, and interconnections between applications are all at your fingertips, and the Metro look-and-feel ties everything together”.
Engadget, too, is full of praise, despite the developer preview status. “With the introduction of OS X Lion, Apple gave us a glimpse at what a post-PC operating system might look like, and now Microsoft’s gone and pushed that idea to the limit,” states Engadget’s Christopher Trout, “If Cupertino’s latest was a tease, than Windows 8 is full frontal. And we have to admit, we like what we see. Sure this may not be the final build, or anywhere near it, but for whatever flaws it may have, the UI being offered in this developer preview is really something special.”
This Is My Next found that the user experience was schizophrenic – which honestly shouldn’t come as a surprise. “Whenever you want to get down and dirty with a traditional program, it’s back to the traditional desktop interface. There are two Control Panels, two versions of IE, and core apps are nowhere to be found (i.e. Mail, a camera app, etc.) Meanwhile, if you want to do anything with the desktop interface (save things you’ve actually planted on your desktop) you’ll probably find yourself thrown back to Metro since the traditional Start menu is gone. The whole user experience feels schizophrenic, with users having to jump back and forth between the two paradigms, each of which seem like they might be better off on their own.”
This is my fear as well – Metro looks awesome, but the duality between the two interfaces just feels jarring, if not downright confusing. I have no idea what it’s going to be like actually using the final product (I’ll of course be downloading and installing the preview build tomorrow), but for now, it doesn’t instill me with confidence.
There is one thing Microsoft unveiled which made me – and I’m sure, many of you – very happy: how Windows 8 works with traditional keyboard and mouse input.
Keyboard, mouse, and power users
When Microsoft first unveiled Windows 8’s Metro user interface, my biggest worry wasn’t the dichotomy between legacy and Metro – no, it was how well the Metro interface would cope with keyboard and mouse. Well, Sinofsky devoted a large part of the keynote to this very subject, and I must say, my worries have been addressed.
As soon as a mouse and keyboard are connected, a scrollbar appears on the Start screen so you can navigate more easily. Every touch gesture can be done with a mouse, and can be done with the keyboard. In fact – everything in the interface can be done without ever moving your hands away from the keyboard; everything is mapped to keyboard shortcuts and regular keys. Additional benefits are that as you start typing on the Start screen, it’s turned into a search, so you can easily launch applications.
There’s more for use power users, such as vastly improved multimonitor support. The thing that made me very, very happy: you can have the traditional desktop on one monitor, and the Metro Start screen on the other (and switch them around). I’m already pondering buying a second 24″ display to put next to my current one, and have the traditional desktop on the left for work, and Metro on the right one for at-a-glance information.
Multi-monitor support for the legacy desktop has been improved as well. You can now (finally!) have one wallpaper extend two or three monitors, but this is only a small change. The taskbar can now be configured in such a way that each monitor gets its own taskbar; a window displayed on monitor 2 will only show up in that monitor’s taskbar. Dragging that same window to monitor 1 will move the icon to taskbar 1 as well. This is pretty damn awesome, since I always found it remarkably annoying to manage both my monitors from the main one. It’s confusing.
The Task Manager in the legacy desktop has been completely overhauled as well, and looks infinitely more useful. It provides more information, and includes the ability to properly control startup applications and such – previously something done through additional tools.
I’m not sure if this fits in the power user department, but I kind of think that it does. Unlike most other tablet operating systems, Windows 8 includes full pen and ink support with handwriting recognition. You can switch between the regular keyboard, split keyboard, and pen/ink support. The Samsung developer tablets handed out by Microsoft included a digitiser, and according to people who tried it, the handwriting recognition worked very well.
Conclusion
From what we’ve seen today, it’s become clear that Microsoft has crossed the Rubicon. There’s no way back now. Windows is going full-on Metro, and in what is surely one of the biggest ironies of the current technology landscape, it means Microsoft is the one to truly take this post-PC thing head-on.
iPads and Android tablets are clearly separate devices, something you buy alongside your existing desktop and laptop. They have a traditional desktop interface – yes – shoehorned into a touch device. I like my iPad, but you can’t honestly do any serious work on that thing; even typing a comment on a website is an exercise in frustration, let alone doing something akin to Word or Excel. iWork for the iPad looks all nice and fancy, but it’s a confusing and frustrating joke compared to office suites on real computers.
And this is where Microsoft takes a different approach. There is no reason why you shouldn’t be able to plug a monitor, keyboad, and mouse into a tablet and use it like any other PC – the devices are capable enough, and it requires far less hassle and fiddle than switching between a tablet and a real computer all the time. Windows 8 makes tablets PCs, instead of glorified €500 web browsers.
Still, this is all theory. Windows 8 has a long time to go still, and I’m simply not sure the dichotomy between the legacy desktop and Metro as it stands now is optimal. On top of that, there’s no word yet on a Metrofied Office – and even if they do announce it, will Metrofied Office be like iWork for the iPad (too dumbed down and cumbersome to be even remotely useful), or will it actually be just as useful and feature-rich as Office 2010 is today? If the latter – great, Microsoft has demonstrated the true potential of Metro. If the former… Then Metro will always be something for Twitter and Facebook. I.e., useless for actual real work.
Office must be Metrofied without losing features. Then, and only then, can Metro be taken seriously as a replacement for the traditional desktop. If Office doesn’t follow suit, Win32 and the legacy desktop will remain with Windows forever.
I’ll be downloading and installing the crap out of the developer preview tomorrow (I took a week off this week, can you believe it!), and hopefully I’ll be better able to understand Microsoft’s vision then.
Thom, seriously man – overviews like this is why I read OSNews! While everyone is playing the “first out of the gate” game, y’all wait until the dust has settled & give me something useful to read at night!
While I’m not a “power user” (though I could be/have been) I share your sentiments on Tablets, etc. So when it comes to new developments like Win8, I’m interested, but entirely distrusting of M$. I’d love to trust ’em, but I just can’t yet. Everyone else is glowing about Metro, but somewhere deep inside me, I can’t believe the hype. Indeed, we shall see.
Thanks man.
Screenshots of some Office vNext apps leaked in March/April:
http://www.liveside.net/2011/04/15/full-metro-ui-shown-in-office-15…
http://microsoft-news.com/brand-new-office-15-application-revealed-…
Earlier M1 Build – Minor changes, but moving towards Metro.
http://www.neowin.net/news/office-15-image-leaks-out
Cool. Microsoft always seems to come out with some new API every 5+ years, but the way you know they’re serious about something is when Internet Explorer, MS Office, and/or Visual Studio gets rewritten with the new APIs. With Office, it looks like they’re on their way.
I haven’t finished watching the Build keynote yet (I’m about halfway through), but I wonder just how robust this WinRT API is. With .NET and C#, I found that it is necessary to use pinvoke/Win32 for quite a few things such as clipboard monitoring and MIDI. Hopefully, we won’t have a situation where Metro developers are having to ‘dip into’ the .NET or Win32 APIs to get work done.
As for Win32 itself, as many corporations are still stuck on IE6, you know Win32 is going to be around for at LEAST the next 10 years. Who knows about .NET.
One other thought – when they were showing off that you could have legacy apps in the Windows Store, the one they were showing (can’t remember which), it said ‘download from developers website), so I wonder if Metro apps will be the only ones you can actually download from the store?
It was Quicken or QuickBooks.
Sinofsky said the store would act as a listing service for non-Metro apps.
From the info from people who’ve dug into the Milestone builds, WinRT basically offers unified access to the system whether from .NET, Javascript, or unmanaged code. It’ll be nice to see how much is surfaced at this point — also nice to see if any PowerShell enhancements are included in this build (and how WinRT helps make it easier to interact with the system from PowerShell).
I’m sure the details will be on MSDN shortly ( http://dev.windows.com/ ) but until then, this article may answer some questions (of course, you can also download the SDK from dev.windows.com.
http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2011/06/windows-8-for-softwar…
So they’re going to host Metro apps, but simply link to non-Metro apps? Well, THAT certainly won’t confuse end users
🙂 APIs are up
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/br211369
So when they say Metro can be programmed in C++, they mean managed C++, not regular C++.
That is a great disappointment for us that hate Microsoft APIs with a passion.
I’ve gone through the API, and it’s horribly complex. Most UI components, for example, inherit from more than 5 interfaces, and have tens of properties and methods, most with cryptic names.
The new style Metro UI is a real anathema for us real time application programmers. It means that we can no longer write our code with Qt, since the Metro UI means the code must be written with .NET. If our clients request Metro UI applications, then we will have to stop supporting Linux and other Unix-based OSes, because the Metro UI is exclusive to Microsoft from all sides (libraries and programming languages).
Microsoft has done it again. Instead of embracing standards, they created yet another vendor lock-in solution.
^FALSE.
Please watch this session, it explains a lot. A lot.
http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/BUILD/BUILD2011/BPS-1005
It’s XAML + *NATIVE* C++ (compiles straight into x86).
(Also, according to presenter: “We have reimplemented XAML in native code.”)
Edited 2011-09-14 15:38 UTC
Managed C++ still compiles straight into x86.
Based on the examples given for C++, it looks to be a mangled manged C++ with .NET integrated. See “Object” – the based class: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/system.object
It directly invokes .NET in the description. Perhaps that is just a fluke, but goes to show where it’s going.
EDIT: The C++ side also seems to require the /clr option as the C++ examples use the ‘sealed’ keywords, (see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/windows.ui.cor…) which means its Managed C++ at best, not Standard C++ but Microsoft’s hacked C++ instead.
Edited 2011-09-14 17:55 UTC
Again, watch the session I linked in my previous post.
WinRT is implemented using native C++. Yes, WinRT objects have metadata, why not? It does not show at all that it is going .NET way. Quite the opposite, they went the other way and implemented WinRT and reimplemented XAML using native code.
Yes, there is “sealed” keyword and also “ref” I think. Still, don’t see why that is an issue.
C++/XAML Metro apps do not run on top of .NET.
Edited 2011-09-14 18:55 UTC
You are obviously missing the main point that while they may be using Native C++, they are doing so using the /CLR switch to VC++’s CL compiler, which is required for the “sealed” keyword to work.
That means it’s not really Native C++ but Managed C++, which is still considered native as it is kind of a hybrid between C# and C++ that compilers to normal code but builds in a bunch of the .NET stuff (like a garbage collector).
Well.. I don’t know about that. Do you have a link to prove that (garbage collector thing, etc)?
/clr switch may be used for other reasons (to understand WinRT metadata (UTS), etc).
Again, this C++/XAML/WinRT is NOT running on top of .NET. (And inclusion of “sealed” does not make it managed).
Edited 2011-09-14 20:06 UTC
See:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms235639%28v=vs.80%…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Managed_Extensions_for_C%2B%2B
Now they get away with calling it “Native” because they standardized it at C++/CLI (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%2B%2B/CLI) but it is still Managed C++ just under another name, and does the same thing.
Sigh. C++/CLI is dead and this is not C++/CLI.
From that page you linked:
“The Visual C++ compiler generates an .exe that contains MSIL code rather than machine executable instructions.”
Well guess what? This C++ they showed DOES NOT produce MSIL. It does produces native x86 code. In that session I linked, they even put a break point in C++ and then show x86 code, etc. No MSIL. Nobody ever said a fucking word about .NET or MSIL, quite the opposite, they alway emphasize that it is all native code (for performance reasons).
Anyway, I am getting tired of this and there are some BUILD sessions (Herb and others) coming online today or tomorrow, related to C++/XAML/WinRT, so I suggest you take a look.
And yet the documentation they put up directly requires C++/CLI.
So? It may require it for various reasons, but the fact remains: it does produce native code. Native code != managed code. As simple as that.
This Visual C++ 2011 contains some new language extensions, but that does not make it managed C++. Not at all.
Here is something for you:
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/winappswithnativecode…
Is it C++ or C++/CLI
…
If you are familiar with C++/CLI, you will notice that the Component Extensions look very similar to C++/CLI syntax. However, in a Metro style app or Windows Runtime component, all the C++ code is native.
Basically, we re-used the C++/CLI “syntax” in the C++ Compiler FrontEnd, but all the generated code is now native.
Herb’s session today (Using the Windows Runtime from C++) is the right session to attend to get a bunch of questions answered. 🙂
@Johnb1122: yep, you are still using C++. You use the “extension” to interact with WinRT, but for everything else, do use your normal C++ code. For example, you can create a std::vector<Platform::Object^>. It’s all native code: All the way until the end.
HTH,
Ale Contenti
Visual C++ Dev Manager
And.. if that was not enough, how about this:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh454076
..
This means you can create high-performance components in native C++ and consume themdirectly from one of these other languages. It also means you can consume Windows Runtime types directly in native C++, without having to interop with a managed layer as when you consume .NET Framework types.
…
If you are familiar with C++/CLI, you will notice that the Component Extensions look very similar to C++/CLI syntax. However, in a Metro style app or Windows Runtime component, all the C++ code is native. The /Zw compiler option causes the Component Extensions to be compiled for Windows Runtime. The /cli compiler option causes them to be compiled for C++/CLI. Currently, C++/CLI is not supported for Metro style apps
It’s not.
It doesn’t matter whether it’s managed or unmanaged. Everything other than the current foreground app is suspended, so it gets the whole CPU all to itself. It will fly, even if its written in Javascript.
Windows 8- progress from preemptive multitasking to task switching in one easy step.
That’s simply not true. Windows 8’s scheduler maintains a a “back stack” of running applications that aren’t suspended, so the current foreground app doesn’t have the CPU all to itself. Look at the demos, if you don’t believe me. An app playing videos is swapped in from the background, and it’s clearly running even when it isn’t foreground.
I suggest you watch the developer videos (not the keynotes) they go into this in detail. There are three modes for a Metro app:
1) In the Foreground. In this mode the app has 100% of the CPU not being used by “classic” apps
2) 10sec after navigating away from a app, the app is suspended. That is, it no longer receives processor time at all. If you want to write a music app, you have to do the same things that you have to do in iOS. That is, tell the OS, “when I’m suspended, continue to play this stream”.
3) when the system runs low on memory it will tombstone your app, you must serialize your state and then exit.
What you see with the animated tiles on the front page is actually an illusion of a running app. Updates to that screen are scheduled by the OS. So you can say, “after 10 sec, perform this operation”.
No, wrong. Standard C++.
Those sort of organisations wouldn’t upgrade to Win8 let alone Win9 (or whatever follows on) anyway.
While we’re on the topic though:
I’m I the only person that sees this whole drive towards offline HTML apps as completely retarded?
We shouldn’t be dumbing down application development further for people who can’t be bothered to learn a proper development framework.
Maybe I’m just oldskool, but we should be encouraging the use non-crappy pseudo-languages for doing real development work.
Edited 2011-09-14 12:19 UTC
On one hand, I agree with you. On the other hand, I think it’s time to put C++ out to pasture and find (or invent) something else to write native code with.
Laurence,
“I’m I the only person that sees this whole drive towards offline HTML apps as completely retarded?”
No you are not. We ought to be moving to technologies which enable fat apps to be portable and provisioned/migrated transparently. Instead the trend is going to thin apps, which can’t make good use of local resources and are dependent on third parties with more modes of failure and higher latency. This downgradeds the user experience.
Some might argue that HTML/JS can be overhauled to fix it’s shortcomings, but it’s already in such sloppy shape that web developers are cursing it every day. It’s just extremely poor at a lot of things. Take vector graphics…terrible support for that, now we’re dependent upon the server to render simple shapes. Want to add audio feedback for something, can’t do it reliably without a plugin. Want the webapp to inherit the look and feel of a native application, forget it. Making things work in all browsers is a major undertaking, even for a site with a simple layout. One of the most common web layouts is columnar, which is exceedingly difficult to get right using CSS, often times resulting in hanging text syndrome.
HTML was cool at document markup, but as a platform to replace desktop applications, it sucks.
Well, there is Java.
I am actually impressed by how fast Java 7 can run Minecraft. It seems to be a good improvement over Java 6.
It is still a bit ridiculous that I have to give it a full 1 GB RAM to avoid stuttering, but it does run very well.
I’m personally excited about the upcoming changes. I think the more classic interface will be around for a while, as I think it’ll be a while before touchscreens are standard on more than 50% of new PCs.
My only hope is that they keep a regular start menu for Windows 8, as I know it’ll be some time before I have a touch screen, and the over-sized, finger-friendly buttons spread across a large screen is annoying for mousing.
Get em while they’re hot:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/home/
Thank You!
let’s hope it will only be sold on tablets and other appliances…
Stupid Microsoft. If I wanted a phone, I’d buy one. I don’t want a smart phone interface on my desktop.
Try being more imaginative.
You replied to the wrong person. You must of meant to reply to Microsoft/article.
This move to a new UI isn’t anything new. Anyone who has been around a while probably experienced a sense of deja vu when Microsoft announced that Metro will be the new default UI in Windows 8.
Remember back in the mid-90s when Microsoft ignored the Internet until it started getting ubiquitous and then panicked and tried to make everything look and work like a browser?
Fast forward 15 years and Microsoft is way behind iOS and Android in the smartphone market, hence they panic again and overreact and try to make everything look like a smartphone, whether it makes any sense or not.
That’s not how I remember things.
Windows didn’t look look and work like a web-browser until the birth of IE4, which came out a couple of years after Win95 had.
Windows 95 before IE4 still felt very “offline” – like a stand alone computer. However it did still have some core APIs there already and some stuff was already subtly exposed to the users (eg run and file open dialogs could accept ‘http://‘ URI’s).
So my problem with your post isn’t the “over-reaction” of the IE4/Win98 layout (which actually I did like). It was that you stated MS “panicked when the started getting ubiquitous“. From what I saw of the ground work in Win95, Microsoft were always heading that way. It wasn’t a knee-jerk reaction, it was a staged strategy as the jump from 3.1->95 was massive enough already.
I’m sure as early back as the early 90s I had read an interview with Bill Gates where he stated he wanted to move towards web-driven software which was licensed rather than bought. I can’t for the life of my find the source, so who knows if I made it u or not.
Tell that to Google and Apple. Both of whom run phone OSes on their tablets.
You do know a desktop computer is different from a tablet, right? Here’s some links for education
Desktop: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desktop_computer
Tablet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tablet_personal_computer
I just installed the 32bits version of the developer preview on an older Dell: Pentium IV HT, 2.5GB of memory with two monitors on a Radeon 2400.
First thing I noticed: it works well and smoothly.
Second thing: the whole start menu has been replaced by the Metro UI. This is extremely confusing especially for mouse use. I know that’s not even a beta so I’m sure they’ll improve on this.
Oh and by the way, after many years of waiting, there is finally a taskbar on the second monitor!
I find it bit odd that legacy apps get relegated to the desktop interface only. Why can’t they be run full screen and switched between with the metro gestures?
There are a lot of apps that create multiple windows. Think about opening up a message in Outlook or a conversation window in an IM client. I suspect Microsoft concluded it was better to go with a solution that would behave predictably for all legacy apps, even if it wasn’t optimal in some cases.
Then you can make a full screen wrapper for those apps, that just shows that app’s windows. Popups are also a bit of an issue, but you can host them inside the same full screen canvas of the parent app.
I realize it might be a bit difficult, and has the possibility of breaking some things, but it allows you to use all of your apps within the same shell and with the same usage model. I’d actually find it to be pretty usable and conceptually consistent.
Alternatively, just entirely separate the legacy and the new. Make legacy it’s own little Win7-like bubble, with it’s own start menu where apps and settings affect only that environment.
Those apps are written under the assumption that they’re running on the “classic” desktop. For example, maybe there’s an app that relies on data being drag-dropped from other apps onto it before it can actually do anything (that’s just an off the top of my head example of an app that would require the classic desktop).
I think it’s better to have a clean separation between the two environments then try to guess what a classic desktop app might need and try to simulate it in the metro environment.
So some legacy apps break or don’t work, or need a new release to fix issues.
I’m confident this is good under the hood. But the GUI is typical insaneo modern Microsoft. Whatever schizoid is currently in power has thrown out the start menu. Awesome. Sorry guys, we went down the wrong path… for 10 years.
On small screens, like palmtops, netbooks, tablets, etc (really anything under 1366×768 and 13″), the app menu metaphor doesn’t work. Even with a mouse.
Not sure how well a combined ‘start screen’ and widget display thingy will work on a desktop. But icon-based ‘start screens’ like KDE’s plasma-netbook work extremely well, where the ‘desktop’ IS the app menu.
GNOME-Shell, I believe, also does something similar, although not nearly as well.
Granted, for 20″+ screens with giant resolutions and great DPI, the app menu still works. I still use plasma-desktop on my 19″ disolays, but plasma-netbook everywhere else (HTPC, laptop, netbook). Wouldn’t dream of going back to an app menu on them.
I’m sorry I wasn’t clear. I’m not talking about Metro or small screens.
I’m talking about the Windows 8 Desktop, where the Start Menu has been replaced with a list of 4 items: “Settings, Devices, Share, Search.” It even uses the new Google art style: “White Text On Black Background.” In the business we have a name for this: “Fucking Retarded.”
With Windows 8, it looks like Microsoft is trying to commit financial suicide. Especially since most of their income comes from businesses.
People said the same about gnome shell and I agree with them. why suddenly change a direction that was working?
I haven’t really followed Windows development for a while (I’m a Linux user), and so far I’ve only read this article and the one over at Ars. I’m seriously impressed.
MS seem to have gotten the whole “convergence” idea down pretty good. I share Mr.Holwerda’s opinion on tablets being absolutely bollocks for serious work, which is why I haven’t taken the plunge, but this might change the game.
I was just talking to a mate, discussing how, maybe 3-4 years from now, the tablet might replace the laptop and mobile smartphone. Imagine a thin 10″ device I could use on the go as a tablet to check mail, read the paper, play games…etc, connected wirelessly to a fancy bluetooth mini-phone (maybe similar in size to the smallest 2G phones we had some years ago, maybe even with the ability to slot into the tablet somewhere like you do with a stylus), or fancy headset with LCDs and such (single sim card still in the tablet) for me to make calls with while the tablet was in the backpack, and then I could head home and do some basic computing with it hooked up to a keyboard-dock-thingy.
Something like that (but more refined than my bollocks-primitive prediction) wouldn’t fully replace my “serious work” desktop, but will probably render my current netbook or ultraportable-laptop useless.
Of course, W8 is still in development, but I hope the others are watching this, especially Google and the Linux community. They need to buck up. Ice-Cream-Sundae running on an Asus Transformer simply isn’t going to stand a chance against this.
I’m waiting for the ultimate in portable convergence:
* a smartphone that slides into the back of a screen to create a “tablet” (where the “tablet” is just a battery and a screen)
* the “tablet” screen includes a port to attach to a keyboard (where the keyboard includes a battery and maybe some extra CPU/GPU/RAM?)
* with an option to slide the phone into the front of the keyboard to use the phone screen as the touchpad
Basically, the phone is the heart of the laptop/tablet, with all the storage, CPU, GPU, RAM, etc. And the add-ons provide extra battery power and possibly CPU/GPU/RAM.
But the way the Motorola Atrix works is just dumb. The touchscreen on the phone is wasted when docked, and the OS on the phone is not used, etc.
Basically, take the eeePC Transformer and add a smartphone dock in both the keyboard and the screen.
Unlikely IMHO. Your vision reminded me the prophecies about what was supposed to happen with home computers in the 80s, using the then-widespread computer technology & UIs; one central home computer which can control pretty much everything else.
It didn’t end up that way of course. It turned out that the “computer” / microprocessor part of the equation is really no big deal and almost the only one which dramatically drops in cost over time – now, most of the devices have their own computer integrated, typically at least comparable or very much surpassing the microcomputers of the 70s/80s era. Inexpensive connections between them were a larger issue. Or even, really, giving this pursuit some meaningful purpose.
Your “tablet” part would be probably pretty quickly at least as expensive as full tablets, while being less handy and limited in form factor by the need to have a standard slot for (similarly limited) standard smartphone. SoC is not such a big part of the costs (“tablet” would need quite a bit of electronic junk anyway, probably most easily implemented by… some standard SoC); but you would add a need (and cost) for a reliable, high speed connector.
IMHO only such keyboard (just a simple keyboard, NFC or BT, & battery option) maybe has some future… maybe with a holder for smartphone (but a relatively independent one, wireless synch with & control of the rest)
Great comments. I’m not sure that a tablet will ever really replace a phone — since the phone has some obvious advantages with form factor that allow you to shove it in your pocket easily. That is, unless you wear “mom jeans” with huge front pockets. LOL. ;-p
It seems Windows is presenting a wily moving target for ReactOS and WINE. By the time ReactOS is finally ‘done’, 95% of Windows apps will be written to the new API.
Actually I think it’s a good news for them.
It means MS is ultimately going to freeze developement of win32. That will allow Wine/Reactos to finally catch up become usefull in real scenarios and occupy a nice niche of providing legacy windows compatibility forever.
ReactOs developer should now pledge some VC to get his milion euro to get “ReactOs 99%” ready to demonstrate on the timeframe of Win8 premiere to all disgrunted corporate users of Windows. A “window” of opportunity indeed
.
Think of them as FreeDos next generation. It would be ironic if in future Linux became a primary desination for legacy windows apps.
Edited 2011-09-14 10:12 UTC
Interesting analogy, and I think you are right – unless this transition to a new API fails entirely – in which case ReactOS could be like AMD64 to Intel’s Itanium architecture.
There are ordinary people and businesses in China, South Korea, and Japan that still use Windows XP. And ReactOS will be a great thing for those individuals. I can’t really complain.
I just finished watching this really detailed and interesting presentation from Build about metro apps:
http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/BUILD/BUILD2011/BPS-1004
It’s geared to developers but it has really good information about things like the tiles, search, sharing between apps, etc…
I only watched about 1/3 of it, but not a fan of what I’m seeing so far… as in, “Hey, let’s remove all the controls and idiot-proof the interface.” Take a look at the RSS example around the 5 minute mark; in the ‘chrome’ example they show, there’s far more information on the screen at once, which I very much prefer.
And it seems like MS can’t make up their mind. On one hand, they’re like, “Let’s create this new Metro interface and remove all the buttons and controls”, and then they go and add the ribbon to Windows Explorer. Isn’t the ribbon sort of a direct contradiction to the simplistic and minimalistic design of Metro?
Edited 2011-09-14 05:30 UTC
no.
Applications that are more complex in function than an RSS reader require a more complex interface…the Ribbon provides access to the more complex features of an application with out cluttering up the UI.
….was Windows 8, my idea too? I must have been on drugs whilst imagining the metro interface. Gotta lay off the cat tranquilizers next time.
@thom you mentioned that iPad and Android have shoehorned the desktop UI to tablet. How does the Metro UI solve this? Does the UI have url bars below like in one of the examples you had mentioned?
I don’t have a iPhone, but several Android apps seemed to to be designed from a desktop perspective rather then mobile/tablet.
Grand API revolution ? Check
New UI requiring software rewrites to work well ? Check
New programming languages and UI paradigms in a vital part of the UX ? Check
Microsoft involvement ? Check
I’m sure that by the time Windows 9 or 10 is released this will become very good, but I feel bad for all people who will be beta-testing Windows 8 RTM… And don’t feel like joining them.
Let’s just hope that this time, they finally have taken lessons from the past as far as future-proofing is concerned. But this “we only allow some forms of tiling because it makes software development easier” does not give me high hopes.
if history repeats itself windows 8 will be like vista where a whole bunch of changes were made and it will claim the title of vista2 or something like that. windows 9 will be like windows 7, a damage control release just before they break everything again with windows 10.
I don’t think there’s such a clear pattern in Microsoft Windows releases. Win-DOS was pretty much bad, bad, bad, decent (3.1); Win95 series good, good, shit (ME), NT series pretty good except XP and Vista really needing a service pack or two.
After Windows 7, they really need to start breaking things again, or they’ll be stuck with it for another 10 years.
Yeah. Because Windows 95 was so good and Windows XP so bad?
Playing the devil’s advocate…
Compared to its predecessors in the Windows 3.x family, Windows 95 was a huge leap forward. Compared to Windows 2000 which is its technical predecessor, XP was much more of a “meh” release.
Windows 2000 wasn’t a consumer release. I never even saw a Windows 2000 computer in my life. XP was the first NT consumer release, and that makes it major; it’s not a “meh”.
Edited 2011-09-14 21:24 UTC
I bought a Sony Vaio ultra compact (for the time) with Windows 2000 pre-installed.
Yes it was.
2000 was not marketed as a consumer release, sold on everyone’s computer, etc. But having used it at work like I would have used an XP box, one year ago… XP really was a mixed bag as compared to it, not big of an improvement and a bit of a regression.
Except for USB. USB support was a huge improvement in XP over 2000.
I wonder if PC games will suffer performance issues when ported to this platform.
Going to reserve judgement until I’ve got the dev preview running (hopefully it’ll ‘just work’ in Virtualbox) but I’m not expecting to have many good things to say about it.
Played with the Windows 8 dev preview.
If you expect to be able to close applications, keep applications open, or arrange them on your screen, Windows 8 isn’t for you.
If you’re one of those people who never felt like they had any control over what their computer did in the first place, I’m sure you’ll love it.
Couldn’t get snap to work, possibly because no widescreen resolutions were available on my VM. Using the mouse was fatiguing (so much dragging). When you eventually figure out what’s a button and what’s just text, clicking said button can have any number of effects, none of which are predictable: easy example being the little Win+C/hot corner menu in the bottom left corner of the screen, it’s items, once clicked, opening up a sidebar on the far right side of the screen.
one good thing i can say about it is that you can install bblean and have it as the default shell just as on windows 7 and all that metro stuff is gone for good (doesn’t even autostart or anything, metro apps don’t start up either probably because the runtime is not loaded and doesn’t load automatically)
Good to know. Hopefully Metro will piss enough people off as to reinvigorate the alt shell community.
I tried the 32bit preview ISO.
On startup, I get past the spash screen but it ultimately crashes with the following error.
http://www.pictureshoster.com/files/g2k5eprxa3jq6ur0otic.png
(qemu-kvm-0.11.0)
I don’t have any other virtualization software to try at the moment, but I’ve never had a problem with other operating systems.
yeah, I was tempted to try it on VMs, but I don’t have much time right now. I did notice that it requires a direct x 9 compatible video card. I don’t think any of my vms on my linux box can provide that.
Annoying, I know, but its http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/profile/steven%20sinofsky/
Interesting what will be the Apple response to the ( eventual) success of Win8 tablet/pc hibrid.
With iOS on tablet they are rather stuck in consuption device area.
If win8 manages to deliver a set of compeling entertainment apps while being easily convertible to conventional laptop Apple is in trouble. They will probably bring OSX and iOS closer but the api split will hurt them eventually.
Of course if Google doesn’t show some real magic in IceCream release they are doomed on the tablet. All the troubled PC producers will jump ship Win8 in a heartbeat to protect their diminishing laptop business.
So far Android failed to deliver on that form factor so I wouldn’t count on any sort of loyality.
The question is would that also translate to WP? Looks like MS has now a winning SDK hands down.
you assume a unified paradigm is the right way to do it. while I appreciate how small devices have emphasized the need to simplify application interfaces in general, I frankly don’t see a way to create a unified interface for completely different devices with completely different uses. right now it sounds like windows 8 is ui wise a cluster. Apple and Google made the obvious choice to treat different devices as different and work on synchronization.
<sarcasm>
itunes will BE the OS.
</sarcasm>
Yes, this is exactly the same UI as the smashing success that is Windows Phone 7 which is crushing those pitiful, archaic icon based offerings from Google and Apple.
Clearly, everyone should just pack up and go home, Microsoft conquers all!
Not to thrilled by that metro ui from the screenshots, but hey – it’s free, i’ll try it
I wonder if they are planning to make visual studio in metro ui? Or any other complex application for that matter? Right now i just don’t see it but i’ve yet to play with this DP release.
I installed the full dev. prev. in a virtual win7_64. All in all, might look ok for someone who likes the new interface design idea (I don’t), but the UI feels fairly schizophrenic when you also have “outsider” apps (I dropped in firefox, chrome, netbeans, putty, a few others) and it keeps swithing to-and-fro. Also, I didn’t find a way to add apps to the new “start” screen (the metro UI), how does one do that (I mean, like, add a new rectangle as a link to a non-metro app, as there is e.g. for vsexpress11)? Also, if your “rectangles” become a crowd of rectangles, let’s say 50, will you get a large “pile” of rectangles for each app? Gosh.
Also, if one installs a multitude of non-metro apps (e.g. a dev. machine, dozens of dev- and nondev-related apps), there’s no “old” start menu for them, how the hell do you access them besides placing desktop icons for dozens of apps onto the oldstyle desktop, or using win+R to launch everything?
Weirdness, I can live with that. Usability and usefullness, that’s what has to be convincing.
As in Vista and 7, press the Start button, then start typing to search for your desired app.
To pin an app, either swipe up or down on the app’s tile, or right-click on it. A check mark will appear on the top-right corner of the tile, and an app bar will appear at the bottom of the screen. Click the Pin button. When you pin the app, its tile will be added to the end of the list.
Not in the Dev Pre build, but in the future, you’ll also be able to create named tile groups to organize large numbers of tiles if you choose to keep many on your Start screen. See Julie Larsen-Green’s demo in the Day 1 BUILD Keynote.
Thanks for the info!
If I understand correcly, only Metro UI apps will be able to use WinRT, while apps for classic desktop, the ones that we actually know as desktop applications will be neglected as a “legacy” C++/win32 or .NET (without being updated)?
If so, I am disappointed that they want to get rid of windowed interfaces (by forcing developers to migrate to new UI through providing them relevant API only in that mode), which is a step back in UI evolution.
The thinking disease comes from tablets and phones which are consumer devices, like gaming consoles (and it makes sense for small phone screens), but forcing it on PC crowd wich has higher expectation and needs is a mistake. It looks MS is ready to sacrifice the almost universal windowed desktop paradigm, just to have more chances of being successful in Tablet market. No thanks.
they actually did some work on win32 as well with the new task manager/explorer (that’s the obvious work obviously), I wonder what else they did.
If win32 apps continue to function as they do in windows 7 I might switch as I use bblean as my window manager anyway and it does work in the dev preview (there ARE start menu shortcuts, there’s just no start menu opening from the start button, so bblean loads those just fine)
That’s correct.
Nobody is forcing you to get rid of your code; especially if you already factored your code — like many people — so that there’s a separation between how you render/composite your UI and how you get the bits to the screen. Most games will port with practically no issues at all. You can still use common languages (C/C++, C#) and new ones (HTML/JavaScript), as well. UI has to evolve.
THe windowing paradigm is still present. You can still access the desktop, and it works pretty much exactly the same except for the Start Menu. You don’t have to use Metro or run any Metro apps if you don’t want to.
One of my biggest grips with modern OSes is how functionality is introduced to the users. I think MS may have figured it out. Integration with services just like on WP7 = WINNER. And 3rd party clouds too like Flickr.
Oh and it seems that fullscreen computing and resolution independence have finally come of age.
And system wide spellcheck.
PS: I still hate the tiles. Looks like something I’d see on a TV or PoS terminal. It looks so out of place on WP7 too.
Now I think I understand why Microsoft was so silent about the languages that could be used to write metro applications.
Its not that c# and all of the other dotNet languages are forbidden, its that the api is different. Maybe no more winforms and the traditional api isn’t being used. So some of the dot net developers skills will be retained ( language syntax) and some will not ( api familiarity). That sort of sucks for them.
I wonder what will become of mono. I think Migeul would like metro, but does his now independent company have the resources to support a whole new and completely different api that makes radical assumptions about the gui, while continuing to try to catch up with everything else that’s in dot net?
They just bolted that other stuff on. Sure you can build Metro UI’s in C++ but why the fuck would you want to. Metro is basically made for Javascript/HTML/CSS development. Their just throwing a bone to their base.
Yup. It sort of makes you wonder if they scrambled to do something dot net related after all of the complaints.
Thom, when are you going to stop perpetuating this “Win32 is dead” nonsense? Metro is blatently a shell running on the same old gui. Did you even bother reading the developer overview? Metro apps can be made using the Win32 api http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/br205757 Not only that, every single demo that we’ve seen so far has clearly shown a typical Windows setup with the Metro UI running as an application full screen, and when you run a normal native app it pops up in the old shell, right behind metro.
I want to see a true break from the aging Win32 api as much as anyone else, but the stuff you’ve been saying is still fantasy.
I didn’t say it was dead. Did you read at all? I said it was on its way out.
No, it’s not.
Read that link again, and focus on what it actually says, okay?
Someone clearly hasn’t been paying attention. It’s the other way around.
MS has been busy lying again. Read my other post about what they promise and what they deliver.
Interesting link. It doesn’t mean that metros can be created *completely* with win32 api. It means that metros can be created with *some* win32 apis in addition to the metro api.
Why do they allow that?
From the article:
Yeah, they didn’t finish the metro api. It can’t completely replace win32 in all scenarios. That’s less than a clean break. They’ll have to keep support for those win 32 api calls now for a lot longer than they would have otherwise.
Edited 2011-09-15 14:02 UTC
Heh. Yeah.
It’s my opinion that Microsoft never wants to completely replace the Win32 API. If they did, if they made it possible to really write pure CLR applications it would make projects like Mono able to replace Windows.
No, they want to keep people dependent on P/Invoke for as long as possible, although with the new ARM support they are shooting themselves in the foot by requiring developers to recompile.
Developers can write pure .NET applications. They just can’t use a lot of useful Windows features.
My particular feature was memory mapped files. It took them four versions of .NET before they got that in there.
I really wish I could understand why you keep saying these things. Watch Brad Linder’s demo video on the Eee PC. Try the developer build yourself. OPEN YOUR EYES. This is BLATANTLY the same old win32 gui with Metro running as a 3d OVERLAY. The Metro style start button hovers over the area where the old start button was, and when you launch metro apps it just brings up the rest of the overlay.
Go back to the initial showing of any M$ OS and see how much they promised and then check off what they actually delivered.
Based on past history quite a few things won’t make it to production because they won’t be ready in time.
Based on past history 40% of what they announced will never make it to production.
Based on past history, about 20% of it will make it to production but will be a lot less then what they “promised”.
So … expect about 40% of what they demoed to make it into Windows 8 before Windows 9 is released. Based on past history.
is there anyway to disable this metro tablet crap or do i have to wait for Win 8 based Server? this useless tablet UI on PC is the reason why i moved from Gnome3/Unity.
http://webtrickz.com/how-to-get-back-old-start-menu-in-windows-8/
this is very good, and what you’d expect to see if they still plan to sell this to businesses. it remains to be seen how much of this bridge they’ll burn before release.
Edited 2011-09-14 18:55 UTC
Sometimes I wonder if Microsoft is truly trying to commit suicide in the market. Check this list of APIs that are now gone:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh464945
What does this mean? It means that *every* application that doesn’t use the very latest Microsoft-only technology now needs to be ported to this new platform.
Vista took a huge beating in the market partly because it ran awfully itself, and partly because the few security changes they did broke countless applications. And those security changes were actually just simple minor adjustments. Now they expect the entire world to port all their applications to effectively a new platform.
Good luck with that.
I’ve been playing with it for about an hour and I have to say that I find the transition from Metro to the desktop and back jarring.
There should be two options for the user to select from:
1. “Full on tablet” – Metro is the shell, all apps are launched full screen, and “legacy” apps get some sort of metro proxy wrapper to make them function as part of the new UI. This could break some legacy stuff, but so be it.
2. “Corporate/Workstation” – Windows desktop is the shell, “legacy” apps launch as expected, and WinRT apps launch in a window with some restrictions on their functionality.
The compromise solution just is not working for me, and it’s going to be damned confusing to normal every day desktop/laptop users with legacy apps.
Honestly I am still shell-shocked that they think it is a good idea. What user interface textbook says you should regularly shuttle users between two COMPLETELY DIFFERENT IN EVERY WAY user interfaces. *zips back to Metro* Find that book for me. *zips back to Desktop* I dare you. *zips back to Metro* As a user I can tell you this is jarring *zips back to Desktop* like Where’s Waldo projected onto my eyeballs with a strobe light. *zips back to Metro*
Edited 2011-09-14 18:52 UTC
I think it’s ok to have two environents if you must, – but not the way this is done.
There are several ways this is commonly done today:
– The compatibility environment is a walled off bubble within the host. Settings within the guest environment do not propagate to the host, and integration is minimal (cut/paste and file sharing). The guess manages it’s own windows and creates it’s own desktop.
– Apps within the compatibility environment are re-parented (at least visually) within the host’s shell. For example VMWare’s “Unity” functionality. Still integration is only visual, and settings and configuration done using guest apps don’t affect the host.
– The legacy binary is run via an API wrapper that maps API calls to the native equivalents and provides a graphic canvas to the app within the host environment, managed by the host’s window manager. Wine is an example of this. A similar approach, requiring a recompile, is a compile time wrapper that maps legacy APIs to the new APIs (Apple’s Carbon).
So this suggests some possible approaches for Windows 8:
– Semi-virtual environment for legacy apps with their own OS images and file system. Desktop is a separate app, and integrated only via copy/paste and file shares. Metro is entirely legacy free and totally un-aware of Win32 or the desktop.
– Same as the previous, but do away with the desktop entirely. Create a metro-ized wrapper for legacy apps that runs the apps within the Metro shell.
– Unified OS installation, no virtual environment, legacy applications are run via a modified win32 API that makes the apps “look” at least more native and makes them function properly within the Metro shell.
My preference would be the second. It keeps the legacy cruft walled away, but at least allows the apps to function within the native Metro shell as peers.
I see from the developer preview of Windows 8 that Microsoft, too, is jumping on the smart phone interface as a desktop interface bandwagon. First Gnome, then Canonical, then Mac OS X (to a much lesser and smarter extent) and now Microsoft. Ironically, the only big name DE that maintain a “normal” interface is KDE. (I realize XFCE and LXDE offer traditional desktops too, but they’re not quite as full featured, yet, as KDE.) I’ve been a computer geek for years (primarily a Linux user) and from everything I read on tech sites far and wide, the majority of desktop users dislike this direction in desktop interfaces. So my question is, why are all the developers headed this way? I don’t have a problem with Micorosft’s new interface because it will be easy to revert to a more traditional “desktop” paradigm. Canonical and Gnome 3, however do not offer this ability anymore. Most people do not use netbooks or tablets as their primary computer. For those who do, the touchscreen favorable interface should be an option THEY choose, not an interface that desktop users have to hack in order to turn off or worse, un-install their favorite OS in order to find a suitable more traditional alternative. I wish developers would stop self-aggrandizing and simply listen to what users want, even if what users want is less “cool” than what they can do.
Hope it is more like BeOS.
Haiku OS is what you want, every other desktop is leaving Tracker and basic OS minimalism further and further behind (sad in my opinion). Haiku with a few more improvements in Tracker like variable sized picture/content view like say ThumbsPlus and a few dozen apps would be enough to rock my world. We’ll see.
Well I am gobsmacked by the changes.
Thank goodness I have two monitors to keep my sanity. With only one monitor you will all surely go schizoid!!
The left monitor shows the new desktop which has more than enough changes to last for a while, looks like it has some promise. I will now try and install my usual set of Win32 apps so I can get back to work on my own portable spatial desktop.
The right monitor in Metro mode is a total joke, a Noddy world for applets that would be better handled inside any browser. The apps can then be cloud based or JS or whatever is the current craze but it would just be crap inside of a webpage you can get the heck away from and don’t need to have in your OS install.
I am using the 32b version on a old HD without the new developer tools, it used almost 13GB. The 64b version with the tools is too big to fit on a regular DVD, needs a DVD9 or maybe a Flash stick and a 4.8GB download. Will try that later.
I wonder how long the trial release will last?
For me this is awesome news I can use my existing HTML/JS and C# skills to develop Applications.
This pretty much means I can do Win Phone apps, Desktop apps and webapps now which helps with my employability.
😀
Edited 2011-09-14 20:25 UTC
that hates the new ui for a desktop?
I often have tons of open windows. I often have a couple of visual studio projects open. 3-4 skype chats (1 or 2 blinking waiting for me to respond), 5-6 notepad notes ff,ie and chrome,2-3 remote desktop sessions, outlook and maybe a couple of opned mails and 2 SQL server management studios. how can i go between them quickly by swiping? The taskbar was ms’s greatest invention and they are throwing it away. The only exciting news was that you can now have the taskbar on every monitor and it will show only those apps on that monitor. Even during the presentation they would go to Desktop mode to show stats on file transfer in one window while dragging files between usb drives in explorer. Imagining a day in the future with only metro is
Edited 2011-09-14 21:21 UTC
No, you’re definitely not the only one…
So I got myself the VMware Workstation 8.0 upgrade and installed the Developer Preview.
After tinkering around with it for several hours – together with some friends and colleges – and resisting the urge to throw my PC against the wall…
From my/our point of view Metro perfectly aligns itself with Gnome 3, Canonical’s Unity 2D/3D and KDE 4 in its current shape and form. It’s sooo utterly useless for getting work done(TM) or managing your PC that I’m/we’re out of words. (@possible critics: Yes, I/we keep in mind that this is a unfinished Developer Preview which can/will change on the way to RTM – that’s actually what I’m/we’re hoping for)
A “classic desktop” containing the start menu as we know it from Vista/Windows 7 simply HAS to be added, otherwise power users and admins won’t touch it even with a 10 foot stick.
Just my two cents on what we see at this moment.
So, all the desktop makers are committing suicide at the same time. nice. Didn’t they ever hear of “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”
You also write…
Maybe it is broke? Now, perhaps not to you …but then a) from the description of your desktop, you don’t seem as a very typical user b) we did hear not entirely dissimilar wailing also when abandoning, say, paradigms of DOS era ;p (heck, or when going from 9x-style to Luna)
But, from numerous problems many people face with “computers” it seems they’re nowhere near optimal for most of them. As for us?… I think we’ll get through fine one way or another, we’ll see (maybe partly a reintroduction of workstation concept? Hopefully not the price)
Edited 2011-09-21 00:03 UTC
What Microsoft fails to understand (and Apple does): you can’t use a laptop the same way you use iPad-like devices. Even if it’s called *lap*top, keeping it on you lap while trying to do anything serious, simply isn’t gonna make it. And furthermore, laptop like device needs a touch screen less than a fish needs an umbrella.
I think it was Steve Jobs who made it clear. Two different kinds of devices, too different purposes. Bringing the elements of slate OS into laptop OS is OK. Bringing the whole paradigm of slate OS into laptop OS is stupid. While iPad can be thought of as an oversides iPhone, laptop clearly isn’t. So now Microsoft aggressively promoting the slate-like OS paradigm for Windows 8 which is expected to run primarily on laptops. I’m not amused.
In fact, the major reason I run Windows at all is the wealth of applications written for Windows. Nothing beats that. Not even Linux. I have quite a few applications I simply can’t find Linux-equivalent. And WINE is still iffy. So, if, as somebody pointed out, we end up having Linux as a platform for legacy Windows applications (and assuming, of course, the absolute transparency, WINE or whatever, I don’t care), I’ll be switching to Linux without a second thought. My attitude about any OS is pragmatic and utilitarian, and certainly not religious. So, if, thanks to Microsoft, the year Windows 8 appears will become the “Year of Linux” — well, so be it.
Trying to watch the keynote but I just hit a hicup when Steven Sinofsky said…
“The device you use and the hardware that it has and the operating system you run on, do matter to web browsing.”
… and yet it shouldn’t. Stupid shit like Silverlight made it that way. You’re saying it matters because you made it matter. What a load. Don’t know if I can watch much more of this propaganda.
In this past year I’ve seen GNOME, Apple, and now Microsoft calling the “desktop” interface a legacy.
While these new touch screen interfaces may be productive for the less skilled, what about power users, developers, or even business users?
These new interfaces become very difficult to use for these type of usage cases where the classic desktop metaphor has worked so well.
Why are developers introducing artificial limits in computing?
credit where credit is due Thom; please keep this type of stuff coming