Sinofsky said the software won’t be released this fall but left open the possibility it may be available by the holidays, saying it’s usual to have a new Windows release every two to three years and the last release was in October 2009.
Seems a little early. Looks like its geared towards tablets.
I think the move to tablet UI interfaces on desktop computers is a good trend for most people but worrying for those of us who truly use multiple apps at once.
Man, I’m getting too old for this. I just upgraded to Windows 7 last month.
We still have Windows XP on 75% of our computers in my small office.
Why release a new version now? People are still migrating to Windows 7.
edit: Okay, now that I’ve read the article I see the point of finally making Windows fully tablet-capable. Doesn’t sound like there’s any reason for desktop users to upgrade, though.
That’s… probably not the worst thing I could imagine it to be.
That’ll be awesome on my non-touch 24" monitor! Or not . . .
At least that video seems to be pretty clear that this is farther away then that article I linked earlier suggested, since at the end he talks about “over the next year.” Maybe the suggestion in the earlier link about the holidays refers to the upcoming Nokia windows phones, also expected around that time, and maybe tablets.
Great touch interface, but if this guy thinks anyone is actually going to use that interface on a mouse & keyboard PC he’s delusional. This is a touch interface that will suck with a mouse, just as the current Windows desktop interface sucks with a touchscreen. Desktop systems will continue to use applications that are written for mouse & keyboard, not touch applications that have some mouse support.
Yeah, I can’t imagine using that with mouse and keyboard, which is going to be my preference since I type so much.
Is there a reason why they need a one-size-fits-all interface that embraces desktop and touchscreen both? Perhaps there will be an option to flip to a classic interface for desktop users.
At one point in the video the guy needed to swipe about five times in a row to get back to some app. That looked clumsy.
Windows 8: The Future is Netbooks
Mostly seems geared towards phones but since Win 8 is for all platforms that means they’ll release a PC version too.
The ‘classic’ desktop is still in there though. And I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of this goes the same way as the widget system in the previews of Longhorn.
If they deliver anything like what they’re saying, it’s sort of shocking. HTML5/Javascript as the native language? Abandoning to “classic” mode the start menu, taskbar, windows, and icons? Simplifying window management to full scren and side-by-side?
If they actually deliver that, it’s basically a touch-friendly ChromeOS with a classic Windows VM built-in. As someone who believes that the traditional desktop GUI paradigm is hideously broken and needs to be discarded utterly, I am excited; as someone who has watched mainstream reaction to even conservative changes like the Office 2003 to 2007 move, I can’t actually believe that Microsoft would risk their cash cow on something so radical, particularly given the success of the gently iterative Win7.
I’m not so sure. Widgets are more like optional extras; this seems more geared towards coming up with a fundamentally new system for interacting with files and programs. I actually think the tiles concept is a good idea.
So I’m negative about it as other folks here seem to be. It’s a huge departure from past Windows versions, and it’s definitely intended to embrace touch interfaces. I think Microsoft may have seen the writing on the iPad in that respect, and are betting that tablets are the new paradigm that computers are moving towards, at least for the majority of users. I don’t think it’s too crazy to envision a future in which the desktop PC is more of a niche specialty device geared towards specific types of power users (like artists, 3D designers, et al), and most people have computers that are mobile and more appliance-like.
As one of those niche power users, I think it’s worth asking how well an interface so geared towards touch will work with a mouse. That said, I’m not convinced that it need be awful, and it might even work well. People (especially power users) rave about gesture add-ons for browsers; it seems like this could conceivably function as a gesture-based UI for the whole OS.
It reminds me a lot of the Windows Phone UI, which I actually think is quite good. Like mkozlows, I’m cautiously optimistic. The whole Windows UI paradigm is getting really long in the tooth, and I’d like to see what sort of UI might emerge if Micrsoft were really willing to start with a blank slate. Backwards compatibility is an issue, of course, but it seemed pretty easy to pull up an old-style Windows interface in the demo. And I’m sure there are users that would just do that and ignore the new UI, sort of like how some people would immediately go and reset the Vista/W7 control panel windows to their legacy modes. I even did that for a while, but eventually decided to give the new UI a whirl, and then realized that while I was more familiar with the old UI, the new UI was actually better.
One thing that’s kind of funny: their new Windows UI concept seems to be moving away from actually using windows. Time to rename the OS?
Yep, there’s a few shots in there of the standard desktop which looks pretty much exactly like Win7. It’s clear that they’re trying to drum up interest in the tablet market right now though, so it would make sense that they’d focus on showing the touch interface.
It will be interesting to see, that’s for sure. Once you step outside the business world, which is wedded to Office for now, you don’t really need a Microsoft OS. And millions of users have been retrained to use a different OS by using their smartphones as computers.
Characterizing anyone who uses a PC for their job or for writing emails as a “power user” seems a bit much of a stretch.
Until we get direct neural interfaces, physical keyboards are never going away.
I agree. But the keyboard isn’t the tricky part of that UI, and there’s no reason why people couldn’t have wireless physical keyboards as an accessory for home or office tablet use, just as many people who use laptops as a primary computer often use a wireless mouse.
Writing emails, though? A lot of people write email on their phones these days, even in a work context.
