21 ms·

Previewing Windows 8 (Video)

364 points by desigooner 15y ago

d2zo 15y ago
I would've thought that the widget/tile implementation technology would be Silverlight, not HTML5/Javascript. Didn't we also see a playing down of Silverlight at MIX11? Has Silverlight fallen out of favor?
- ams6110 15y ago
  Silverlight is dead, Jim
  - malnourish 15y ago
    Netflix still uses Silverlight, correct?
    - aberkowitz 15y ago
      Netflix uses Silverlight because it supports DRM.
  - stonemetal 15y ago
    It is the only way to get an app on their phone that doesn't use their game development APIs. So it might be dead on the web, but it isn't dead yet.
kin 15y ago
i really like the UI. i wonder though what the input would be with a traditional mouse/keyboard setup
james4k 15y ago
That is pretty awesome. Was a little worried about the integration with traditional Windows apps, and I still am, but it looks like they just might be able to pull it off.
Griever 15y ago
I can see this being very nice for tablets, which was demonstrated, but I'm far more curious to see what kind of innovations they throw into a standard desktop version.
ams6110 15y ago
I see opportunity here for someone to make a "Business OS." Microsoft has forgotten who pays their bills. Business users do not want all this crap.
- Mithrandir 15y ago
  MS will probably announce a business (or "Executive") version later.
- Flemlord 15y ago
  I work in financial services and there's been a mad rush to build iPad apps. I think this will be very well received.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
- r00fus 15y ago
  Excel shown for 30 seconds in this video is the elephant in the room. Touch-first OS with Excel? I'd like to see that done right.
- kooshball 15y ago
  7:36PM Is Microsoft worried that enterprise users may see this and think it's too consumer-focused? Not really -- employees are consumers too, and the lines have blurred somewhat. That has definitely been a recurring theme throughout D9, starting with Eric Schmidt's line that traditional IT is dead.
  - Lewisham 15y ago
    I agree, it's the long game that Apple has been playing... when all campus graduates have pretty much used Macs, and they use Macs at home, they start clamoring for them in the office too. I'm fairly sure I saw numbers indicating Macs making headway in enterprise. Consumer != powerless.
- adpowers 15y ago
deleted 15y ago
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Mithrandir 15y ago
Does this mean that the majority of new PCs sold with Win8 will have touchscreens?
- kenjackson 15y ago
  Probably not a majority, but a lot. Think 50-100M the first year.
- blntechie 15y ago
  Yes. Let the touch panel makers be prepared.
giladvdn 15y ago
How will this work for people doing real work on their PCs? Apple (with Lion) and now MS seem to be treating power users as an afterthought after trendier tablet users. Don't get me wrong, I love the new stuff MS is doing on WP7, for example. But I still need a PC (or a Mac) for most of my work. Is it just me?
- r00fus 15y ago
  Apple isn't ditching power users. They still sell Macs and OSX is not touch-based (nor will it be in Lion). Microsoft converting all of it's desktop users to a touch-first OS is going to be... interesting. Perhaps they will settle on multi-touch trackpads like the Apple Magic Trackpad to resolve the gorilla-arm issue?
  - giladvdn 15y ago
    I'm a developer. A touch screen UI doesn't benefit me too much, just like I think it won't most business users. But maybe I'm wrong. We'll have to wait and see :)
    - kenjackson 15y ago
      For businesses its a win if you can get everyone one laptop, rather than an iPad and a laptop.
- kenjackson 15y ago
  They seem pretty clear about keeping the standard desktop.
amirkhella 15y ago
From a UI design perspective, I think this will alienate lots of existing Windows users, which might lead them to sticking with Win7 (XP anyone?) or moving on to OS X Lion (to which Win8 is surprisingly similar). Microsoft is taking their phone UI and scaling it to the desktop, which is a big risk given how many people use that phone. I give them credit for taking a risk, but IMO, this is the last nail in the coffin of Windows.
- desigooner 15y ago
  I'll reserve my judgement about OSX Lion until Monday when Apple talks about it along with iOS5 but I'd take this windows interface over the iOS like Icon Grid in Lion any day.
- giladvdn 15y ago
  Isn't taking a phone UI exactly what Apple is doing with Lion too? The large icon matrix and "full screen apps" are exactly what you see on an iPhone/iPad. Though it does feel more "optional" on the Mac relative to this video.
  - jamesmcintyre 15y ago
    If Apple didn't have large multi-touch trackpads on their macbooks with a slew of natural gestures for navigating things like launchpad and mission control they WOULD be mindlessly scaling the iOS UI to the desktop... but alas, they have discernment and strong design.
  - AllenKids 15y ago
    Yes but Apple does not want you to poke the screen, similar interface cue but different interactivity. Touchpad and touchscreen are comparable but not equal.
- romland 15y ago
  I looked at the video without sound, but from visuals alone I never got the impression that this was intended for the desktop. In the demo when he switched to the "desktop" it looked pretty much like any desktop OS to me.
kogir 15y ago
Did anyone else notice the Store icon on the start screen? I wonder if that will be the primary distribution channel for apps using the new UI. With any luck they'll sandbox apps like they do on Windows Phone 7. No more registry + dll hell. It's also interesting that they only mentioned HTML5 + JS. Right now Silverlight is the only option for non-games on Windows Phone 7. Given how similar the UIs look, it would be a shame to be unable to share code between mobile and desktop versions of the same app.
- Kaizyn 15y ago
  They will likely release a new version of Windows Phone that makes use of the new UI capabilities.
- watty 15y ago
  I'm sure there will be some kind of a store for these dashboard apps. It's really not that different from a new skin on sidebar gadgets, is it? They're developed using HTML+JS and distributed through an online store. This UI looks great though and will definitely be beneficial to tablet/touchscreen computers. There will still be registry+dll hell because the core operating system and applications will be running on the traditional windows environment in the background.
  - darthg0d 15y ago
    I think there was mention of how easy it will be to install/uninstall apps in the All Things D presentation earlier today. Registry+DLL hell might just die with 7.
- jasonlotito 15y ago
  It was reported some time ago (last year, iirc) that Windows 8 will also feature an app store.
mmcconnell1618 15y ago
This looks like the same kind of thing as "Windows Media Player." A skin on top of the OS that hides complexity. First problem, if I'm am app developer why am I going to build for the Win 8 UI and then rebuild again for the other 95% of Windows machines that don't support the new touch interface? I can build for the old standard windows interface and it will work everywhere.
- kenjackson 15y ago
  You'll do it for the same reason you build an iPad app for 20M users and not a Windows app for 1B users.
  - mmcconnell1618 15y ago
    But that's the point. There aren't 1B Win8 users and there won't be for a very long time. With iPad you have to build in Apple's eco system but with Win8 you have the option to build a standard Windows app. How many people are still running Win95 or XP? It will be a long time before Win8 reaches anywhere near 1B users.
GrooveStomp 15y ago
Wow, this looks great! For the first time that I can think of, I'm actually excited about a new version of Windows. Even moreso, I'm actually excited about developing for Windows as a platform. This is huge. Sure, I'm curious how the standard mouse and keyboard interface will work, but I'm not really worried. It looks like the standard Windows 7 interface is still there, just working behind the scenes and collaboratively with the new UI.
- graiz 15y ago
  Agree that it looks good at first blush however it's key that the "OS" is a true OS and not a touch based shell on top of Windows7. HP has shipped a number of computers with these touch-based shells and while they demo well they aren't deep enough for day-to-day use. I do love that they are pushing the desktop platform and creating a product that is clearly different in user experience. I also like the idea of HTML as a rich platform but this was said back in the days of Windows98 so I'm waiting and seeing. (Disclosure I worked on the Windows team during 2000 and we had some similar explorations that never saw the light of day so it's great to see)
  - icefox 15y ago
    "...it's key that the "OS" is a true OS and not a touch based shell on top of Windows7....(Disclosure I worked on the Windows team during 2000 and we had some similar explorations that never saw the light of day so it's great to see)" Do you know something that wasn't shown? It could just a full screen app that runs on top of the existing shell not a replacement shell with a sub process of the old shell. Or by having the quotes around OS when you say "OS" do you just mean a new interface?
- barista 15y ago
  What they showed was primarily the UX though. Nothing about the capabilities of the new "windows 8 apps". Though given that it has a powerful OS underneath it should have all the capabilities that windows provides. It would be exciting to develop for this. Glad I familiarized with the metro look and feel developing for the Windows Phone. I can reuse it.
melvinram 15y ago
It doesn't look bad. In fact, it's nice. How it will work when you're using it to do real work will be where the rubber meets the road but I commend them for doing more than copying Apple. OS competition might now get interesting as it may no longer be an Apple to apples comparison (pun intended heehee.) As an Apple guy, I'm looking forward to what innovations they can bring with W8 and push the industry forward.
- dfj225 15y ago
  > How it will work when you're using it to do real work will be where the rubber meets the road... That's where I wonder how well received this new interface will be. I wonder if this shell will just become something that most people skip past to get to the familiar Windows desktop. Granted, my experience as a power user (read: I'm a developer writing code and using the terminal--not on Windows but on OS X or Linux) is vastly different from that of a normal consumer, but I still think there is a common ground of using the computer to create rather than purely for consumption. Still, very interesting concept. I'm definitely looking forward to seeing this released.
  - melvinram 15y ago
    Yea, it was a thought I had too. It's similar to the Front Row and Media Center experience that most people probably don't use. But I could see this having a different fate if it doesn't feel like a drag on the system and it can be made useful (as I think external developers will make it.)
    - dfj225 15y ago
      Thinking about it a little more, it really seems odd to combine two very different modes of operation -- one touch heavy and probably best for a tablet or some sort of mobile device and the other is the standard Windows UI operated by keyboard and mouse. Having both modes on the same hardware seems like an odd situation. Usually, a device naturally maps to one or the other mode. I suppose hardware manufacturers might build tablet/laptop hybrids or convertibles (they definitely have been trying, but I don't think any are popular) and Windows 8 might be a huge win on these devices. However, aside from this narrow subset of devices, I'm still guessing how this will play out. For instance, the device used in the demo (assuming it has no other mode of operation) seems to me that it would be a nightmare for using Excel. edit: added the last sentence.
huntero 15y ago
This fits well with all the earlier talk about Windows 8 supporting ARM. Microsoft isn't scaling Windows Phone 7 up to the tablet, they are scaling Windows 8 down to the tablet. By the time Windows 8 is released, it might be viable to run this OS on a phone. Will the mobile and desktop OS's merge?
- desigooner 15y ago
  FWIW, Windows 8 won't support legacy apps on ARM platform. And as far as specs go, one of the demo devices was running an Intel Atom processor.
whackedspinach 15y ago
This is great. I've been waiting for a while to see some sort of good desktop UI that got away from the classic icons + sidebar widgets design. While this provides the same functionality, it gives the user a lot more information at a glance, plus it looks nicer (IMO). I really hope that store becomes some sort of primary distribution channel. After using Linux for so long, I've become so used to repositories that it makes me cringe to go find some obscure nagware application when ever I need to get something done on Windows.
- fungi 15y ago
  > UI that got away from the classic icons + sidebar widgets design. Have a play with kde netbook stuff, pretty funky and solid. Also there is meego but i've never used it.
  - whackedspinach 15y ago
    Is it at all similar to the Ubuntu netbook interface? I always liked that. Now I'm using Gnome 3, which I'm happy with.
jamesmcintyre 15y ago
The interface is beautiful but I think it will prove to be nothing more than eye candy veneer for an increasingly out-of-touch piece of software. Let the desktop metaphor evolve respectively until it's no longer needed (by most), do not sap it's identity by tearing users between two very different modes of interaction. Once my brain is working in the desktop metaphor will it want to "zoom-out" to yet another layer of abstraction and back and forth? Surely this is a recipe for experience-degrading cognitive dissonance. When I stand up from working on my mac, pick up my iPad and then read a blog on the couch I have, subconsciously, switched to a drastically different set of interaction-metaphors for iPad use. ("Design dissolving into behavior." - Naoto Fukasawa) If this interface found it's way on sub $100 20"+ smart screens (lcd or laser projected) with kinect-like interaction than you have a compelling product. Put it on Xbox and media center devices/tv's and you potentially have a new interaction ecosystem. This Windows 8 concept is fighting reality and for it's eventual users it won't feel nearly as natural as their smartphones do today.
- dangrossman 15y ago
  If they do it right, Windows 8 would be on the smart screen, on the Xbox, on the netbook, on the tablet, and on the smartphones a few years in our future when they're even faster than they are now. The UI may not be identical but it'd be the unified "Windows Everywhere" type thing Microsoft has seemingly always wanted to do.
  - jamesmcintyre 15y ago
    If Microsoft can retain and gain mindshare you may very well be right, going forward I just doubt Microsoft's ability to "capture people's imaginations" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvskEGWMLp4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvskEGWMLp4).
    - lwat 15y ago
      If you buy a computer in 2012 it's gonna have Windows 8 on it (unless you buy a mac). Microsoft don't need to 'capture imaginations', they have the market share already.
martingordon 15y ago
Looks really nice. I really enjoy Microsoft's 2D designs. It started with Whistler, then Windows Mobile 6 (even if I liked nothing else from it), and continuing on to WP7 and now Windows 8. Even if ARM consumes less power than Intel chips, I hope that the desktop underpinnings of Windows 8 don't bog it down and destroy battery life. I also hope there's an OEM that can build hardware that's up to snuff.
sekou 15y ago
If anyone remembers the Productivity Future Vision (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvA9lA7_5FE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvA9lA7_5FE) video, it looks like Microsoft is staying true to its beliefs about the future of interfaces in computing.
- anigbrowl 15y ago
  Well remembered.
xbryanx 15y ago
I did some quick overlays, and I applaud them for apparently paying attention to color blind users in their interface design. The colorful icons and sidebars all seem to provide contrast to the 8% of us dudes who are color blind.
pama 15y ago
That's one step closer to a keyboard-free future. I wonder how developer tools will evolve.
- watty 15y ago
  I think I'm a forward thinking fellow but I don't see developer tools moving away from traditional keyboard (and usually mouse) environment for a long time. This seems like a slimmed down Windows Media Center layer powered by HTML/JS just like Windows Sidebar gadgets. It'll be great for tablets and touchscreen PCs but I don't see it being too beneficial to business users.
smosher 15y ago
My first thought was "are you serious?" But then I remembered the Win8-on-ARM promise. I'm not sure I'd want to use a desktop (to me 'desktop' means 'workstation') like this, but it's interesting for sure. The more I think about it, the more the seems like a product of MS's unreleased Courier UI work. This reminds me of a recent article about how Linux is inventing the future of the desktop experience. I disagreed immediately, and this UI is an example of why. I do prefer the Linux desktop experience to others, but it is a refinement on a core of existing ideas with a few small but important inventions. So it's more like a limo than a bus, which neither KDE nor Gnome are driving.
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plainOldText 15y ago
Full screen apps look awesome. I can only think of how the web apps will look on Windows 8 devices now. Hopefully there will be no need to learn a new SDK and leveraging the Web technologies for building great apps that will work across all devices will be enough.
niallsmart 15y ago
How do you open Control Panel?
crikli 15y ago
The one thing that really jumped out at me was that "thumbs" keyboard. I would LOVE to have that option on the iPad. The rest of it looks cool enough, better than expected. For me personally I can't imagine going back to any version of Windows. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me...uh, you won't get fooled again. But for those still on Windows this will be an interesting transition.
- atacrawl 15y ago
  The thumbs keyboard was one of the few things that made me think "UX red flag" -- since you can't really type on a touch screen without looking, the user will have to constantly dart their eyes from one side of the screen to the other. That would give me a headache.
  - crikli 15y ago
    Yeah, good point, hadn't thought about that. But would that be different from now where you have to move your eyes from the text area to some point in the lower half of the touchscreen? There's an app that features a similar keyboard, http://radialapp.com http://radialapp.com. I think I'll get it and see if what you're saying holds true in my sample size of one. Edit: so I downloaded the Radial version of the thumb keyboard and it totally sucks. I'm typing this on my iPad keyboard and I don't think I realized that the iPad keyboard is pretty dang easy to type on.
  - statictype 15y ago
    After enough time I think you will be able to type on a touch screen without looking (given a decent autocorrect which is a must for a touch screen anyway). I've owned an iPad for about a month now and just typed this comment without having to look at the keyboard (sans the parenthesis) I think a spit screen keyboard is a win, overall.
    - aaronbrethorst 15y ago
      > After enough time I think you will be able to type on a touch screen without looking...I think a spit screen keyboard is a win, overall. Thanks for the good laugh :)
hussam 15y ago
This actually looks like a great touch UI, and it would make a great tablet UX too given that users will never have to see the standard start menu and icons (at least for tablets). I know it might be fashionable to bash Microsoft, but this demo looks great. While I'm at it, the Metro UI and Windows Phone 7 are actually good. Current market adoption is not equivalent to "goodness". I use it personally and I'm very satisfied .. even as a Linux user and an iPad owner.
light3 15y ago
All this functionality requires a touch screen, thats fine on mobile devices, but what about on a desktop pc - what will be the cost of big touch-screen monitors? I guess a really cool idea is to have a small touchscreen you use for control, in combination with an existing/bigger screen for the actual display.
- kijinbear 15y ago
  I totally agree with your concerns, and I also love your small touchscreen idea. A full touch interface gets really awkward, not to mention expensive, once your screen gets bigger than 10-15 inches. All these full-screen apps with touch functions are optimized for laptops and tablets. Apple did it, Ubuntu did it, and now Microsoft is going to do it. Maybe that's where everyone thinks the future is. But as the proud owner of a 24" widescreen monitor who is always looking for an excuse to upgrade to 30", I am very disappointed with this inspired-by-tablets-but-also-fits-the-desktop nonsense. I don't want full-screen apps, dammit. I bought a big monitor because I want several apps and all of their content to be simultaneously visible at all times. I shudder whenever a member of my family "borrows" my PC for a few minutes and goes on to maximize all the windows without even thinking twice. And I certainly don't want to wave my arms all across the big screen like an idiot. There's a very good reason why we have a small device (mouse) that can be manipulated with the flick of a finger to control an arbitrarily larger interface. I don't know how a small touchscreen might be used in a similar role while retaining the intuitiveness of a touch interface, but we're definitely going to need something like that or our arms will begin to hurt very badly after 10 minutes.
- deleted 15y ago
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atacrawl 15y ago
As someone who said good riddance to the Windows platform about 10 years ago (for Mac OS 9, which ought to tell you how fed up I was), I have to say that I'm genuinely excited to see Microsoft coming up with fresh UI conventions, both with Windows Phone and now with Windows 8. They could have gone the Google route and copied iOS, but they didn't. Likewise, they could have gone the Apple route and rested on making modest changes to their existing desktop OS, but again, it looks like they aren't.
- 9999 15y ago
  I followed a similar path to you (OS 8 was where I joined Apple), and I am also intrigued by some of the ideas presented here (split keyboard for thumbs, good job!). I am a little disappointed that I didn't see any examples of touch interaction on what are traditionally desktop applications though. It's all well and good to champion how tiles improve a weather application, but how will they improve Photoshop or Visual Studio? The premise of an HTML5 and JS based desktop is simultaneously promising and terrifying due to bad memories of the Active Desktop days (and the exploits that brought...).
- deleted 15y ago
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  - recoiledsnake 15y ago
    Huh, not sure I follow. Doesn't this look very much like iOS? http://img.tfd.com/cde/_PROGMAN.GIF http://img.tfd.com/cde/_PROGMAN.GIF It's not just a picture replaced by text, those are LIVE tiles, they can be updated to show timely relevant information. Metro is quite innovative, if it came from Apple, we'd be reading Gruber's fawning over here about how chrome-less UIs are a paradigm shifting move by Apple.
- mattraibert 15y ago
  Android has multi-tasking which is a pretty fundamental difference in how the phone behaves -- it seems odd to call it a copy of iOS. It also doesn't look that similar.
boredguy8 15y ago
I'm pretty sure Julie Larson-Green came from Microsoft Office during the overhaul of that product, which was an amazing leap forward in UI design for Microsoft. The "ribbon" certainly had/has its detractors (and I was one at first), but I soon realized what I didn't like about it was that it wasn't the old, broken system I had learned to use over my lifetime. For nearly everyone I worked with in customer service, approaching the system as an "Office Newbie" was several times easier under the new system. She also led the Win 7 overhaul, for which I'm forever thankful if only because of the changes to how title bars work (being able to drag to maximize or cover 1/2 the screen, for instance). It was so intuitive that one day I was complaining about how Windows DIDN'T do that, but was on a Win7 box and it worked. I know Jobs likes to use the word "magic", but that was the first time I experienced it with a UI. I'm wary of the changes I see outlined here, but I think that might, again, be the consequence of having adapted myself to bad design that's been prevalent. Past experience has me hoping I'm wrong to be wary, and I'll be delighted if I am.
- sigzero 15y ago
  I share those same feelings. I guess we will see in a year(?) when it comes out.
  - kenjackson 15y ago
    My concern is did MS just Osborne itself? I was just thinking my wife's current laptop is 3 years old -- maybe time for a new one. Now I'm thinking I'm waiting until next year and getting a Win8 touch laptop (ideally a really slick convertible).
    - zavulon 15y ago
      Microsoft doesn't sell computers, they sell software. To them, whenever it comes out, it's gonna sell no matter what.
      - Tyrannosaurs 15y ago
        Yes, but they don't want Windows license sales to nose dive between now and the release of Windows 8 do they?
hcurtiss 15y ago
Does this strike anyone else as little more than a shallow skin for Windows 7? HTML5 and javascript? How is this different than my browser? Apps in Windows 8 . . . kind of like apps in Chrome?
- riffraff 15y ago
  it would seem a core differentiator is that apps have means to interact with each other? (the photo thingy in the video)
pazimzadeh 15y ago
It reminds me of Dashboard on Mac OS X, which is composed of HTML and CSS widgets.
- josephcooney 15y ago
  Vista and Windows 7 had sidebar widgets that were/are also HTML + CSS. Before that (Win XP) you could put arbitrary HTML widgets anywhere on the desktop using activedesktop.
mortenjorck 15y ago
No, no, no. The Metro UI is great. The tiles are smart, the apps are beautiful, the solution to multitasking is promising, but this whole new approach cannot coexist with a Windows desktop. I almost fell out of my seat when the demonstrator nonchalantly switched back to the Windows 7-style desktop, complete with start menu, taskbar, and maximized MS Office. This the old curse of Windows backward-compatibility in a new form – not in system-level cruft this time, but in incompatible UIs from completely different worlds. You can't put a new tablet UI and a traditional desktop UI next to each other on the same device and expect users to use them together. It's as if Microsoft is attempting its own "Back to the Mac," only they never actually left. Apple got it right, starting fresh with a new form factor and adapting appropriate elements of it to the desktop. Microsoft is also starting fresh with a new form factor, but then trying to shoehorn the whole thing onto the desktop. Of course, this is just a preview. I'm sure things will change a lot between now and the next preview, let alone the final release. But this isn't starting off on the right foot.
- matwood 15y ago
  I don't know if I'd say he switched back. It looked more like the win7 UI was contained in it's own tile, and only came about because he ran a non-win8 app (Excel). Pretty smart way to maintain backwards compatibility. One thing that did jump out at me was that it seemed to be best suited for a tablet and NOT a desktop computer. Hopefully MS keeps building on it and the new desktop doesn't turn out to be Bob 2.0 :)
- zdw 15y ago
  Absolutely right. There are some really really crufty bits of Windows in there, and they don't ever fix them, or at least do little things to update the interface to current standards. The first thing I try with any new Windows release is to add a font using their interface (not just dragging it into the fonts folder). The "Add font" dialog box is STILL circa Windows NT/3.1 era.
  - Andrex 15y ago
    I was pretty sure they fixed that with Windows 7.
endlessvoid94 15y ago
Holy SHIT. It blows me away that this came out of MS.
losvedir 15y ago
Wow, somewhat offtopic but that page is very well done. I browse in Chrome with Javascript and Plug-Ins turned off (except for a few whitelisted sites), and I think this is the first site that has ever had a working video for me. Usually I have to open the page in another browser or something. Lends a little credence to their claim of incorporating HTML 5 apps.
- MatthewPhillips 15y ago
  Just out of curiosity, why do you browse with js turned off?
rodh257 15y ago
I reckon this UI would lend nicely to being controlled by a Kinect
- rkwz 15y ago
  Kinect for computers, and now an UI like this? I think they're onto something huge here.
ozataman 15y ago
The video does not even have a fullscreen button. These guys really don't pay much attention to detail.
zyb09 15y ago
Meh mixed feelings. First the whole Metro UI seems to run on top of a normal Windows as an alternative glorified launcher. He mentions that Apps are written in some kind of new HTML/Javascript framework - now I don't know exactly how its gonna work but a lot of people were hoping that MS was finally settle on .NET in terms of API design. If this was a spin off of Windows, I'd probably be a lot more happier, but as it stands, I see a lot of Window 8 PCs, where the first thing people (and companys!) will do, is disable the new "MetroUI" and have the usual taskbar/explorer layout with all the "legacy" app(lication)s like .. for example .. Office2010.
- RuadhanMc 15y ago
  If Microsoft abandons .NET... I'm done.
foxhill 15y ago
i'm so glad they've come up with something that can be considered new, and seemingly somewhat intuitive.. but i can't help but see that things aren't how they should be. i suppose this is a very early preview, but ms have got to go a lot further than simply creating an "on top of windows" application that looks pretty. their benchmark for success has got to be the intuitiveness and the usability of OS X, without copying any part directly.. something i feel that has always come second place in windows. time will tell, i suppose.
randomor 15y ago
http://allthingsd.com/20110601/steven-sinofsky-talks-windows-8-and-more-at-d9-video/?p=81774 http://allthingsd.com/20110601/steven-sinofsky-talks-windows... another video on D9 with talk heads
more_original 15y ago
Hm, so it looks like there won't be any windows in Windows anymore.
philthy 15y ago
I can just about guarantee most current touch and tablet devices couldn't process heavy duty dual app/dual screen/ picture in picture/what have you. Yeah sure a twitter feed and word let me see a HD video and adobe illustrator with 10 or 20 apps running in the background on a tablet device...this is ridiculous, its a silly toy. this is like that MSN keyboard for your TV back in like 97. The puny Microsoft ship swirls in the ocean about to be gobbled by Apple, Google, etc
nabaraj 15y ago
looks killer for a tablet not so interesting for PC!
code_duck 15y ago
The 'snap' feature is pretty neat. That reminds me of how you could drag entire program fullscreen windows up and down on an Amiga. Like if you could show parts of your different displays on X11 on the same monitor. I know MS's system is just for different running applications here, but since they're fullscreen it serves a similar function.
emehrkay 15y ago
Maybe I didnt catch this, but the apps are written in html/css/js, do they port over to win phone 7? To me this looks like an official MS skin on top of the Windows desktop. We'll see though
tiles 15y ago
Pre-Windows 8 apps won't fit into the new Windows 8 model without being rewritten for new APIs/style. If we assume Windows compatibility is then no longer what drives Os marketshare for PCs (a big leap, but one Microsoft seems to be making), then this would be the perfect time for Android or WebOS to make the bid for the desktop and business users. Obviously OS X is limited by being Apple-devices only, so where is the next big x86 compatible OS that desktop manufacturers will sublicense? On the interface, I absolutely think Microsoft can have Metro UI conventions and complex applications without compromise, but it seems ill thought-out to believe you can scale a phone interface up without greatly increasing the density of information or ability to interact with data, of which the preview seemed devoid. The "wall-mount problem". What looks great on a wall-mounted monitor is not the best interface for my actual desktop computer.
georgieporgie 15y ago
This looks suspiciously like some sort of Media Center for Apps that's running atop the Windows OS. Honestly, that's fine with me. All I really want them to do is fix all the dysfunctional, inconsistent stuff in Windows 7. If they want to put an app launcher over that, fine by me.
icandoitbetter 15y ago
Oh come on. Media Center all over again. Nobody's going to use this on a desktop computer after the first boot-up. I do like the tiling system implementation though.
hristov 15y ago
Great. Microsoft is going down the same rabbit hole Ubuntu and Gnome went down in by assuming that a mouse driven desktop should have the same UI as a touchpad. I was worried that Ubuntu made a step backward with the Unity failure, but now Microsoft will eagerly follow them, so Ubuntu's failure will not be that bad. In fact if the folks in Canonical overcome their egos and realize their failure soon enough, perhaps they can get ahead of MS.
cageface 15y ago
Ironic that after years of promoting their own complex software UI stacks they're going HTML5 + Javascript for this one. One more reason why JS is quickly becoming the most important programming language.
thirdsun 15y ago
I have to say I'm really impressed. This exactly what i was hoping for after the introduction of the metro UI in windows mobile 7, though i didn't expect microsoft to have the guts to do it. Glad to see they did. One thing though: I really hope they don't keep the explorer in it's original windows 7 style. It breaks the metro experience and i can only assume that this was in the video because of the early developement stage. Well, this won't make me replace my mac, but it looks very promising.
krig 15y ago
This looks great, but isn't this pretty much what Microsoft always does - they decide that a particular technology or feature is THE feature, and they go way, way too far with it. The thing I am thinking of is when they decided that the internet and XML was it, and decided to make everything XML (ie Avalon). Another thing was .NET and the CLR, when they decided to throw their old VS codebase away and start over simply because now, ALL programs released HAVE to be CLR-based. And this time it's touch. Microsoft is like a kid with OCD. Touch! Touch is great! I love touch! Everything is touch! Can I touch this? Then it sucks! Give me touch! More touch! I mean... yeah. Touch is cool, touch interfaces will probably be the main way to use computers eventually.. but as usual, it feels like they are going at it in the wrong way. It doesn't improve Excel to put it in a touch environment. Apple did try that and discovered that it wasn't what people wanted. Then again, this video focuses on the new stuff, so it's hard to tell just how much they've moved things around.
- krig 15y ago
  Also, another part of the video that I instinctively reacted negatively to was the swipe to switch apps. Not even while using a touch interface do I want to pull something in from the left side of the screen without knowing what will pop out from there. To find the app that I want I have to flip through all of them? That seems that the worst possible way of organizing / not organizing different running apps. What makes it even stranger is that they pass by a much better implementation of the same thing in passing while demoing IE 10, where he pulls down to reveal thumbnails of all the open tabs. Something like that in the main interface would have been much better than having to swipe, swipe, swipe, accidentally pausing videos, replacing views and causing all kinds of frustration just to locate the particular app I was looking for.
  - Lewisham 15y ago
    I would be surprised if this functionality is not included at some point. Don't get too hung up on it.
rooshdi 15y ago
I admire Microsoft's attempt to experiment with a different Windows UI, but it will take quite some time for users to get accustomed to this new tile format after accumulating decades of experience with the desktop interface. These informative tiles may be better suited for some sort of screensaver or login screen alternative initially.
Raphael_Amiard 15y ago
I think this is looking really cool. I'm also quite happy that web standards is the new trends at microsoft, even if it will certainly be less ideal than one would picture it. I also find it funny how much this looks like a tile based WM with visual sugar. I hope they dont gloss over features on the split screen view because ultimately that's gonna be a very important thing. And also, they'd probably need a better way to integrate native regular apps than what is shown in the video, provided, for some users, this might represent 90% of the time they spend with the OS.
alinspired 15y ago
Wish I had the same OS and apps for laptop, tablet, phone, especially with the data somewhat synced.. this might be a step towards it
kleiba 15y ago
I think this is a really nice thing they're trying. Yet I'm a bit astonished by the many comments here that say the UI looks beautiful. Because I thought the opposite - when the tiles screen first came on I thought it was a print ad for an insurance company or something like that. It's the kind of image my brain was trained to ignore. I also thought the colors were too much. Don't get me wrong - I really think it's great that they're courageous enough to try something new. They're obviously trying to create a new style and not a Mac OS rip-off, which I think is the right way to go, too. But I'm curious whether the design will undergo major rework before Windows 8 comes to the stores.
ugh 15y ago
It solves one crucial problem of all current tablet UIs (iOS, Android, WebOS): http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2011/03/04/multitasking/ http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2011/03/04/multitasking/ Please, Apple, Google and HP, blatantly copy the ability to see more than one app at once!
kahawe 15y ago
I just love how Microsoft has started to (desperately) embrace all the "cool stuff" that the actual "cool cats" and underdogs have come up with and been doing for a very long time now... and how Microsoft likes to present themselves as a hip, cool company almost like a small software shop... ever since competitors have gotten significantly more successful and Microsoft has been losing market shares. So transparent. I mean, trying to start Windows 7 launch parties around the world?? Posting on reddit to market some product and ask for "feedback"? Non-chalantly talking about "cool stuff"? Please... do you really think people will forget how you dealt with competitors back in the day? Will forget your FUD and zero open standards? Will forget what a humongous multi-billion dollar corp you really are?
ErrantX 15y ago
Ugh. No. That looks like a decent tablet interface, and a good interface for the vast majority of users who will be using the core apps and little else.. But for me it's a bit useless - file browsing looked difficult. - App switching looked painful (when you're switching between a lot of apps at once I really don't want to be doing so in rotation). I realise this is because I am a power user with specific needs... but I really really hope they have a version with a normal desktop.
RuadhanMc 15y ago
Dammit Microsoft. I'm rooting for you but you just don't get it, do you? Someone that tries to please everyone, ends up pleasing no one. Touch + mouse does not compute. It's like mating a horse with a donkey. Do you really want your next product to be a mule?
ThomPete 15y ago
Here is the thing. Either MS with Metro have solved it and it plays across different platforms. I can see it work both with mouse and keyboard, touch and joypad. Or Metro isn't versatile enough and it will mutate into a freakshow of edge case considerations. In any scenario, I give MS props for finally presenting a worthy alternative to to OSx/iOS suite. Now if only the hardware manufactures would follow suit it might be interesting.
tompickles 15y ago
My first thoughts after showing the old windows desktop is... as a PC user (non tablet) that Metro UI is gonna get really irritating with a mouse; so you'll end up just using the Win7 looking part.... what's changed?!
Jeema3000 15y ago
This is pretty exciting, seeing as how it's the first major UI rethink for Windows since Win95. I like the idea of simplification of the UI for the average mom and pop user. For them this will probably be a great fit with the large buttons and having one application that fills up the whole window. It almost allows people to think more abstractly, in terms of activities rather than apps for a lot of things (i.e. 'what do you want to do' vs. 'how do you want to do it'). I do not like the idea of having to switch back and forth between the legacy Windows Shell and this new shell. That, in my opinion, is what I would call as a developer, a 'lazy implementation' - probably easier to implement for the developers, but not the right way when it comes down to usability. I hope they are planning some kind of tighter integration that will make that more seamless...
thadeus_venture 15y ago
I think this isn't necessarily about using a tablet or phone interface on the desktop, it's about using either one depending on what peripherals you are using. One configuration is a separate OS instance per device, but a more interesting configuration is basically a phone that you can hook up to a monitor, keyboard and mouse. So basically you get a mobile interface in one mode, and a desktop interface in another. I'd much rather have a single small device i can lug around everywhere I go instead of separate devices for home, office and mobile. Given how quickly cpu speeds are progressing on mobile devices and the prevalence of cloud hosted applications, this could be a possibility sooner rather than later.. And regardless of that, this is about having a single application platform for all the form factors. This video shows a tablet interface, I don't think they will force you to use it on the desktop, at least as shown here. I think the point was the same apps can run everywhere.
edanm 15y ago
More and more, I realize we're nearing a big crisis in computing - touch vs. non-touch. I really fear seeing the world moving towards a place where you have to either choose one platform/metaphor over the other. Or where you have to port every single application to support all different input types. And the thing is, touch is just so good for so many things, but so impractical for certain kinds of work. Whoever manages to reconcile touch computing with boring old office computers, will have a huge market for them.
smackfu 15y ago
Corporations seem to be only adopting every other Windows version now, so it would be interesting if Microsoft decided to alternate the targets of their Windows versions. Windows 7 was good for enterprise, Windows 8 will be good for consumers.
algoshift 15y ago
Interesting...but I can't see using it for a desktop system. As a heavy user of a number of engineering and software development tools I just can't imagine how this is any good. For example, I don't see using Solidworks or AutoCAD with my fingers. I also don't see using any CAD/EDA packages like Altium Desiger (electronics circuit design) with my thumbs. The same applies to firmware, software and web development tools (Keil compilers, Altera/Xilinx development tools, Dreamweaver, Komodo). For that matter, I can't even see using Photoshop or Illustrator that way. I could rattle off dozens and dozens of applications that would be seriously impaired by touch. It's cute and sexy, but it is the slowest and most cumbersome way to interact with a computer. I don't even see using the Office suite like this. An on-screen keyboard might be the thing to do today...but...and there's only one way to say it...they suck in a big way. Useless for anything non-trivial, even on a tablet. Typing on an iPad with a bluetooth keyboard is orders of magnitude more productive than poking at the screen. Then there's the question of multiple screen behavior. All of our engineering workstations have a minimum of two large (24in or more) high-resolution monitors. A good number of them have three. There are engineering design applications (like Altium Designer) that use multi-screen environments very effectively to greatly enhance productivity. I need to know how this new UI will affect these scenarios. In my not-so-humble opinion I have always thought that MS really needed to fix and enhance XP rather than what they've done with Vista and W7. As a power user there's so much in Vista/W7 that makes you say "really?". They've also just about ruined the Office suite. If you were an expert user of the prior generation of Office and had a code base of routines and tools they pretty much made you look like a complete newbie with the new UI and approach. Productivity with Office definitely took a big hit for most tasks for quite some time. Despite criticism, Windows is a workhorse OS used across thousands of different industries. I really hope MS is very careful about not damaging this user base for the sake of being "trendy". Tablets are great fun, but I don't see doing my day-to-day work on tablets any time soon. Wrong UI.
tree_of_item 15y ago
So is Microsoft abandoning .NET? I really don't see how HTML and Javascript are preferable to that.
pseale 15y ago
A nice fantasy would be that Windows 7 replaces XP as the new "business OS" line for the next decade (XP has served in this role since ~2002). Windows 8/9/onward would then be free to deviate from backwards compatibility in favor of a better consumer (non-business user) experience. But it's hard to say what will happen.
benlang 15y ago
Another fail?

364 points by desigooner 15y ago

d2zo 15y ago

I would've thought that the widget/tile implementation technology would be Silverlight, not HTML5/Javascript. Didn't we also see a playing down of Silverlight at MIX11? Has Silverlight fallen out of favor?

ams6110 15y ago
Silverlight is dead, Jim
- malnourish 15y ago
  Netflix still uses Silverlight, correct?
  - aberkowitz 15y ago
    Netflix uses Silverlight because it supports DRM.
- stonemetal 15y ago
  It is the only way to get an app on their phone that doesn't use their game development APIs. So it might be dead on the web, but it isn't dead yet.

kin 15y ago

i really like the UI. i wonder though what the input would be with a traditional mouse/keyboard setup

james4k 15y ago

That is pretty awesome. Was a little worried about the integration with traditional Windows apps, and I still am, but it looks like they just might be able to pull it off.

Griever 15y ago

I can see this being very nice for tablets, which was demonstrated, but I'm far more curious to see what kind of innovations they throw into a standard desktop version.

ams6110 15y ago

I see opportunity here for someone to make a "Business OS." Microsoft has forgotten who pays their bills. Business users do not want all this crap.

Mithrandir 15y ago
MS will probably announce a business (or "Executive") version later.
Flemlord 15y ago
I work in financial services and there's been a mad rush to build iPad apps. I think this will be very well received.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
r00fus 15y ago
Excel shown for 30 seconds in this video is the elephant in the room. Touch-first OS with Excel? I'd like to see that done right.
kooshball 15y ago
7:36PM Is Microsoft worried that enterprise users may see this and think it's too consumer-focused? Not really -- employees are consumers too, and the lines have blurred somewhat. That has definitely been a recurring theme throughout D9, starting with Eric Schmidt's line that traditional IT is dead.
- Lewisham 15y ago
  I agree, it's the long game that Apple has been playing... when all campus graduates have pretty much used Macs, and they use Macs at home, they start clamoring for them in the office too. I'm fairly sure I saw numbers indicating Macs making headway in enterprise. Consumer != powerless.
adpowers 15y ago

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

Mithrandir 15y ago

Does this mean that the majority of new PCs sold with Win8 will have touchscreens?

kenjackson 15y ago
Probably not a majority, but a lot. Think 50-100M the first year.
blntechie 15y ago
Yes. Let the touch panel makers be prepared.

giladvdn 15y ago

How will this work for people doing real work on their PCs? Apple (with Lion) and now MS seem to be treating power users as an afterthought after trendier tablet users. Don't get me wrong, I love the new stuff MS is doing on WP7, for example. But I still need a PC (or a Mac) for most of my work. Is it just me?

r00fus 15y ago
Apple isn't ditching power users. They still sell Macs and OSX is not touch-based (nor will it be in Lion). Microsoft converting all of it's desktop users to a touch-first OS is going to be... interesting. Perhaps they will settle on multi-touch trackpads like the Apple Magic Trackpad to resolve the gorilla-arm issue?
- giladvdn 15y ago
  I'm a developer. A touch screen UI doesn't benefit me too much, just like I think it won't most business users. But maybe I'm wrong. We'll have to wait and see :)
  - kenjackson 15y ago
    For businesses its a win if you can get everyone one laptop, rather than an iPad and a laptop.
kenjackson 15y ago
They seem pretty clear about keeping the standard desktop.

amirkhella 15y ago

From a UI design perspective, I think this will alienate lots of existing Windows users, which might lead them to sticking with Win7 (XP anyone?) or moving on to OS X Lion (to which Win8 is surprisingly similar). Microsoft is taking their phone UI and scaling it to the desktop, which is a big risk given how many people use that phone. I give them credit for taking a risk, but IMO, this is the last nail in the coffin of Windows.

desigooner 15y ago
I'll reserve my judgement about OSX Lion until Monday when Apple talks about it along with iOS5 but I'd take this windows interface over the iOS like Icon Grid in Lion any day.
giladvdn 15y ago
Isn't taking a phone UI exactly what Apple is doing with Lion too? The large icon matrix and "full screen apps" are exactly what you see on an iPhone/iPad. Though it does feel more "optional" on the Mac relative to this video.
- jamesmcintyre 15y ago
  If Apple didn't have large multi-touch trackpads on their macbooks with a slew of natural gestures for navigating things like launchpad and mission control they WOULD be mindlessly scaling the iOS UI to the desktop... but alas, they have discernment and strong design.
- AllenKids 15y ago
  Yes but Apple does not want you to poke the screen, similar interface cue but different interactivity. Touchpad and touchscreen are comparable but not equal.
romland 15y ago
I looked at the video without sound, but from visuals alone I never got the impression that this was intended for the desktop. In the demo when he switched to the "desktop" it looked pretty much like any desktop OS to me.

kogir 15y ago

Did anyone else notice the Store icon on the start screen? I wonder if that will be the primary distribution channel for apps using the new UI. With any luck they'll sandbox apps like they do on Windows Phone 7. No more registry + dll hell. It's also interesting that they only mentioned HTML5 + JS. Right now Silverlight is the only option for non-games on Windows Phone 7. Given how similar the UIs look, it would be a shame to be unable to share code between mobile and desktop versions of the same app.

Kaizyn 15y ago
They will likely release a new version of Windows Phone that makes use of the new UI capabilities.
watty 15y ago
I'm sure there will be some kind of a store for these dashboard apps. It's really not that different from a new skin on sidebar gadgets, is it? They're developed using HTML+JS and distributed through an online store. This UI looks great though and will definitely be beneficial to tablet/touchscreen computers. There will still be registry+dll hell because the core operating system and applications will be running on the traditional windows environment in the background.
- darthg0d 15y ago
  I think there was mention of how easy it will be to install/uninstall apps in the All Things D presentation earlier today. Registry+DLL hell might just die with 7.
jasonlotito 15y ago
It was reported some time ago (last year, iirc) that Windows 8 will also feature an app store.

mmcconnell1618 15y ago

This looks like the same kind of thing as "Windows Media Player." A skin on top of the OS that hides complexity. First problem, if I'm am app developer why am I going to build for the Win 8 UI and then rebuild again for the other 95% of Windows machines that don't support the new touch interface? I can build for the old standard windows interface and it will work everywhere.

kenjackson 15y ago
You'll do it for the same reason you build an iPad app for 20M users and not a Windows app for 1B users.
- mmcconnell1618 15y ago
  But that's the point. There aren't 1B Win8 users and there won't be for a very long time. With iPad you have to build in Apple's eco system but with Win8 you have the option to build a standard Windows app. How many people are still running Win95 or XP? It will be a long time before Win8 reaches anywhere near 1B users.

GrooveStomp 15y ago

Wow, this looks great! For the first time that I can think of, I'm actually excited about a new version of Windows. Even moreso, I'm actually excited about developing for Windows as a platform. This is huge. Sure, I'm curious how the standard mouse and keyboard interface will work, but I'm not really worried. It looks like the standard Windows 7 interface is still there, just working behind the scenes and collaboratively with the new UI.

graiz 15y ago
Agree that it looks good at first blush however it's key that the "OS" is a true OS and not a touch based shell on top of Windows7. HP has shipped a number of computers with these touch-based shells and while they demo well they aren't deep enough for day-to-day use. I do love that they are pushing the desktop platform and creating a product that is clearly different in user experience. I also like the idea of HTML as a rich platform but this was said back in the days of Windows98 so I'm waiting and seeing. (Disclosure I worked on the Windows team during 2000 and we had some similar explorations that never saw the light of day so it's great to see)
- icefox 15y ago
  "...it's key that the "OS" is a true OS and not a touch based shell on top of Windows7....(Disclosure I worked on the Windows team during 2000 and we had some similar explorations that never saw the light of day so it's great to see)" Do you know something that wasn't shown? It could just a full screen app that runs on top of the existing shell not a replacement shell with a sub process of the old shell. Or by having the quotes around OS when you say "OS" do you just mean a new interface?
barista 15y ago
What they showed was primarily the UX though. Nothing about the capabilities of the new "windows 8 apps". Though given that it has a powerful OS underneath it should have all the capabilities that windows provides. It would be exciting to develop for this. Glad I familiarized with the metro look and feel developing for the Windows Phone. I can reuse it.

melvinram 15y ago

It doesn't look bad. In fact, it's nice. How it will work when you're using it to do real work will be where the rubber meets the road but I commend them for doing more than copying Apple. OS competition might now get interesting as it may no longer be an Apple to apples comparison (pun intended heehee.) As an Apple guy, I'm looking forward to what innovations they can bring with W8 and push the industry forward.

dfj225 15y ago
> How it will work when you're using it to do real work will be where the rubber meets the road... That's where I wonder how well received this new interface will be. I wonder if this shell will just become something that most people skip past to get to the familiar Windows desktop. Granted, my experience as a power user (read: I'm a developer writing code and using the terminal--not on Windows but on OS X or Linux) is vastly different from that of a normal consumer, but I still think there is a common ground of using the computer to create rather than purely for consumption. Still, very interesting concept. I'm definitely looking forward to seeing this released.
- melvinram 15y ago
  Yea, it was a thought I had too. It's similar to the Front Row and Media Center experience that most people probably don't use. But I could see this having a different fate if it doesn't feel like a drag on the system and it can be made useful (as I think external developers will make it.)
  - dfj225 15y ago
    Thinking about it a little more, it really seems odd to combine two very different modes of operation -- one touch heavy and probably best for a tablet or some sort of mobile device and the other is the standard Windows UI operated by keyboard and mouse. Having both modes on the same hardware seems like an odd situation. Usually, a device naturally maps to one or the other mode. I suppose hardware manufacturers might build tablet/laptop hybrids or convertibles (they definitely have been trying, but I don't think any are popular) and Windows 8 might be a huge win on these devices. However, aside from this narrow subset of devices, I'm still guessing how this will play out. For instance, the device used in the demo (assuming it has no other mode of operation) seems to me that it would be a nightmare for using Excel. edit: added the last sentence.

huntero 15y ago

This fits well with all the earlier talk about Windows 8 supporting ARM. Microsoft isn't scaling Windows Phone 7 up to the tablet, they are scaling Windows 8 down to the tablet. By the time Windows 8 is released, it might be viable to run this OS on a phone. Will the mobile and desktop OS's merge?

desigooner 15y ago
FWIW, Windows 8 won't support legacy apps on ARM platform. And as far as specs go, one of the demo devices was running an Intel Atom processor.

whackedspinach 15y ago

This is great. I've been waiting for a while to see some sort of good desktop UI that got away from the classic icons + sidebar widgets design. While this provides the same functionality, it gives the user a lot more information at a glance, plus it looks nicer (IMO). I really hope that store becomes some sort of primary distribution channel. After using Linux for so long, I've become so used to repositories that it makes me cringe to go find some obscure nagware application when ever I need to get something done on Windows.

fungi 15y ago
> UI that got away from the classic icons + sidebar widgets design. Have a play with kde netbook stuff, pretty funky and solid. Also there is meego but i've never used it.
- whackedspinach 15y ago
  Is it at all similar to the Ubuntu netbook interface? I always liked that. Now I'm using Gnome 3, which I'm happy with.

jamesmcintyre 15y ago

The interface is beautiful but I think it will prove to be nothing more than eye candy veneer for an increasingly out-of-touch piece of software. Let the desktop metaphor evolve respectively until it's no longer needed (by most), do not sap it's identity by tearing users between two very different modes of interaction. Once my brain is working in the desktop metaphor will it want to "zoom-out" to yet another layer of abstraction and back and forth? Surely this is a recipe for experience-degrading cognitive dissonance. When I stand up from working on my mac, pick up my iPad and then read a blog on the couch I have, subconsciously, switched to a drastically different set of interaction-metaphors for iPad use. ("Design dissolving into behavior." - Naoto Fukasawa) If this interface found it's way on sub $100 20"+ smart screens (lcd or laser projected) with kinect-like interaction than you have a compelling product. Put it on Xbox and media center devices/tv's and you potentially have a new interaction ecosystem. This Windows 8 concept is fighting reality and for it's eventual users it won't feel nearly as natural as their smartphones do today.

dangrossman 15y ago
If they do it right, Windows 8 would be on the smart screen, on the Xbox, on the netbook, on the tablet, and on the smartphones a few years in our future when they're even faster than they are now. The UI may not be identical but it'd be the unified "Windows Everywhere" type thing Microsoft has seemingly always wanted to do.
- jamesmcintyre 15y ago
  If Microsoft can retain and gain mindshare you may very well be right, going forward I just doubt Microsoft's ability to "capture people's imaginations" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvskEGWMLp4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvskEGWMLp4).
  - lwat 15y ago
    If you buy a computer in 2012 it's gonna have Windows 8 on it (unless you buy a mac). Microsoft don't need to 'capture imaginations', they have the market share already.

martingordon 15y ago

Looks really nice. I really enjoy Microsoft's 2D designs. It started with Whistler, then Windows Mobile 6 (even if I liked nothing else from it), and continuing on to WP7 and now Windows 8. Even if ARM consumes less power than Intel chips, I hope that the desktop underpinnings of Windows 8 don't bog it down and destroy battery life. I also hope there's an OEM that can build hardware that's up to snuff.

sekou 15y ago

If anyone remembers the Productivity Future Vision (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvA9lA7_5FE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvA9lA7_5FE) video, it looks like Microsoft is staying true to its beliefs about the future of interfaces in computing.

anigbrowl 15y ago
Well remembered.

xbryanx 15y ago

I did some quick overlays, and I applaud them for apparently paying attention to color blind users in their interface design. The colorful icons and sidebars all seem to provide contrast to the 8% of us dudes who are color blind.

pama 15y ago

That's one step closer to a keyboard-free future. I wonder how developer tools will evolve.

watty 15y ago
I think I'm a forward thinking fellow but I don't see developer tools moving away from traditional keyboard (and usually mouse) environment for a long time. This seems like a slimmed down Windows Media Center layer powered by HTML/JS just like Windows Sidebar gadgets. It'll be great for tablets and touchscreen PCs but I don't see it being too beneficial to business users.

smosher 15y ago

My first thought was "are you serious?" But then I remembered the Win8-on-ARM promise. I'm not sure I'd want to use a desktop (to me 'desktop' means 'workstation') like this, but it's interesting for sure. The more I think about it, the more the seems like a product of MS's unreleased Courier UI work. This reminds me of a recent article about how Linux is inventing the future of the desktop experience. I disagreed immediately, and this UI is an example of why. I do prefer the Linux desktop experience to others, but it is a refinement on a core of existing ideas with a few small but important inventions. So it's more like a limo than a bus, which neither KDE nor Gnome are driving.

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deleted 15y ago

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plainOldText 15y ago

Full screen apps look awesome. I can only think of how the web apps will look on Windows 8 devices now. Hopefully there will be no need to learn a new SDK and leveraging the Web technologies for building great apps that will work across all devices will be enough.

niallsmart 15y ago

How do you open Control Panel?

crikli 15y ago

The one thing that really jumped out at me was that "thumbs" keyboard. I would LOVE to have that option on the iPad. The rest of it looks cool enough, better than expected. For me personally I can't imagine going back to any version of Windows. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me...uh, you won't get fooled again. But for those still on Windows this will be an interesting transition.

atacrawl 15y ago
The thumbs keyboard was one of the few things that made me think "UX red flag" -- since you can't really type on a touch screen without looking, the user will have to constantly dart their eyes from one side of the screen to the other. That would give me a headache.
- crikli 15y ago
  Yeah, good point, hadn't thought about that. But would that be different from now where you have to move your eyes from the text area to some point in the lower half of the touchscreen? There's an app that features a similar keyboard, http://radialapp.com http://radialapp.com. I think I'll get it and see if what you're saying holds true in my sample size of one. Edit: so I downloaded the Radial version of the thumb keyboard and it totally sucks. I'm typing this on my iPad keyboard and I don't think I realized that the iPad keyboard is pretty dang easy to type on.
- statictype 15y ago
  After enough time I think you will be able to type on a touch screen without looking (given a decent autocorrect which is a must for a touch screen anyway). I've owned an iPad for about a month now and just typed this comment without having to look at the keyboard (sans the parenthesis) I think a spit screen keyboard is a win, overall.
  - aaronbrethorst 15y ago
    > After enough time I think you will be able to type on a touch screen without looking...I think a spit screen keyboard is a win, overall. Thanks for the good laugh :)

hussam 15y ago

This actually looks like a great touch UI, and it would make a great tablet UX too given that users will never have to see the standard start menu and icons (at least for tablets). I know it might be fashionable to bash Microsoft, but this demo looks great. While I'm at it, the Metro UI and Windows Phone 7 are actually good. Current market adoption is not equivalent to "goodness". I use it personally and I'm very satisfied .. even as a Linux user and an iPad owner.

light3 15y ago

All this functionality requires a touch screen, thats fine on mobile devices, but what about on a desktop pc - what will be the cost of big touch-screen monitors? I guess a really cool idea is to have a small touchscreen you use for control, in combination with an existing/bigger screen for the actual display.

kijinbear 15y ago
I totally agree with your concerns, and I also love your small touchscreen idea. A full touch interface gets really awkward, not to mention expensive, once your screen gets bigger than 10-15 inches. All these full-screen apps with touch functions are optimized for laptops and tablets. Apple did it, Ubuntu did it, and now Microsoft is going to do it. Maybe that's where everyone thinks the future is. But as the proud owner of a 24" widescreen monitor who is always looking for an excuse to upgrade to 30", I am very disappointed with this inspired-by-tablets-but-also-fits-the-desktop nonsense. I don't want full-screen apps, dammit. I bought a big monitor because I want several apps and all of their content to be simultaneously visible at all times. I shudder whenever a member of my family "borrows" my PC for a few minutes and goes on to maximize all the windows without even thinking twice. And I certainly don't want to wave my arms all across the big screen like an idiot. There's a very good reason why we have a small device (mouse) that can be manipulated with the flick of a finger to control an arbitrarily larger interface. I don't know how a small touchscreen might be used in a similar role while retaining the intuitiveness of a touch interface, but we're definitely going to need something like that or our arms will begin to hurt very badly after 10 minutes.
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atacrawl 15y ago

As someone who said good riddance to the Windows platform about 10 years ago (for Mac OS 9, which ought to tell you how fed up I was), I have to say that I'm genuinely excited to see Microsoft coming up with fresh UI conventions, both with Windows Phone and now with Windows 8. They could have gone the Google route and copied iOS, but they didn't. Likewise, they could have gone the Apple route and rested on making modest changes to their existing desktop OS, but again, it looks like they aren't.

9999 15y ago
I followed a similar path to you (OS 8 was where I joined Apple), and I am also intrigued by some of the ideas presented here (split keyboard for thumbs, good job!). I am a little disappointed that I didn't see any examples of touch interaction on what are traditionally desktop applications though. It's all well and good to champion how tiles improve a weather application, but how will they improve Photoshop or Visual Studio? The premise of an HTML5 and JS based desktop is simultaneously promising and terrifying due to bad memories of the Active Desktop days (and the exploits that brought...).
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- recoiledsnake 15y ago
  Huh, not sure I follow. Doesn't this look very much like iOS? http://img.tfd.com/cde/_PROGMAN.GIF http://img.tfd.com/cde/_PROGMAN.GIF It's not just a picture replaced by text, those are LIVE tiles, they can be updated to show timely relevant information. Metro is quite innovative, if it came from Apple, we'd be reading Gruber's fawning over here about how chrome-less UIs are a paradigm shifting move by Apple.
mattraibert 15y ago
Android has multi-tasking which is a pretty fundamental difference in how the phone behaves -- it seems odd to call it a copy of iOS. It also doesn't look that similar.

boredguy8 15y ago

I'm pretty sure Julie Larson-Green came from Microsoft Office during the overhaul of that product, which was an amazing leap forward in UI design for Microsoft. The "ribbon" certainly had/has its detractors (and I was one at first), but I soon realized what I didn't like about it was that it wasn't the old, broken system I had learned to use over my lifetime. For nearly everyone I worked with in customer service, approaching the system as an "Office Newbie" was several times easier under the new system. She also led the Win 7 overhaul, for which I'm forever thankful if only because of the changes to how title bars work (being able to drag to maximize or cover 1/2 the screen, for instance). It was so intuitive that one day I was complaining about how Windows DIDN'T do that, but was on a Win7 box and it worked. I know Jobs likes to use the word "magic", but that was the first time I experienced it with a UI. I'm wary of the changes I see outlined here, but I think that might, again, be the consequence of having adapted myself to bad design that's been prevalent. Past experience has me hoping I'm wrong to be wary, and I'll be delighted if I am.

sigzero 15y ago
I share those same feelings. I guess we will see in a year(?) when it comes out.
- kenjackson 15y ago
  My concern is did MS just Osborne itself? I was just thinking my wife's current laptop is 3 years old -- maybe time for a new one. Now I'm thinking I'm waiting until next year and getting a Win8 touch laptop (ideally a really slick convertible).
  - zavulon 15y ago
    Microsoft doesn't sell computers, they sell software. To them, whenever it comes out, it's gonna sell no matter what.
    - Tyrannosaurs 15y ago
      Yes, but they don't want Windows license sales to nose dive between now and the release of Windows 8 do they?

hcurtiss 15y ago

Does this strike anyone else as little more than a shallow skin for Windows 7? HTML5 and javascript? How is this different than my browser? Apps in Windows 8 . . . kind of like apps in Chrome?

riffraff 15y ago
it would seem a core differentiator is that apps have means to interact with each other? (the photo thingy in the video)

pazimzadeh 15y ago

It reminds me of Dashboard on Mac OS X, which is composed of HTML and CSS widgets.

josephcooney 15y ago
Vista and Windows 7 had sidebar widgets that were/are also HTML + CSS. Before that (Win XP) you could put arbitrary HTML widgets anywhere on the desktop using activedesktop.

mortenjorck 15y ago

No, no, no. The Metro UI is great. The tiles are smart, the apps are beautiful, the solution to multitasking is promising, but this whole new approach cannot coexist with a Windows desktop. I almost fell out of my seat when the demonstrator nonchalantly switched back to the Windows 7-style desktop, complete with start menu, taskbar, and maximized MS Office. This the old curse of Windows backward-compatibility in a new form – not in system-level cruft this time, but in incompatible UIs from completely different worlds. You can't put a new tablet UI and a traditional desktop UI next to each other on the same device and expect users to use them together. It's as if Microsoft is attempting its own "Back to the Mac," only they never actually left. Apple got it right, starting fresh with a new form factor and adapting appropriate elements of it to the desktop. Microsoft is also starting fresh with a new form factor, but then trying to shoehorn the whole thing onto the desktop. Of course, this is just a preview. I'm sure things will change a lot between now and the next preview, let alone the final release. But this isn't starting off on the right foot.

matwood 15y ago
I don't know if I'd say he switched back. It looked more like the win7 UI was contained in it's own tile, and only came about because he ran a non-win8 app (Excel). Pretty smart way to maintain backwards compatibility. One thing that did jump out at me was that it seemed to be best suited for a tablet and NOT a desktop computer. Hopefully MS keeps building on it and the new desktop doesn't turn out to be Bob 2.0 :)
zdw 15y ago
Absolutely right. There are some really really crufty bits of Windows in there, and they don't ever fix them, or at least do little things to update the interface to current standards. The first thing I try with any new Windows release is to add a font using their interface (not just dragging it into the fonts folder). The "Add font" dialog box is STILL circa Windows NT/3.1 era.
- Andrex 15y ago
  I was pretty sure they fixed that with Windows 7.

endlessvoid94 15y ago

Holy SHIT. It blows me away that this came out of MS.

losvedir 15y ago

Wow, somewhat offtopic but that page is very well done. I browse in Chrome with Javascript and Plug-Ins turned off (except for a few whitelisted sites), and I think this is the first site that has ever had a working video for me. Usually I have to open the page in another browser or something. Lends a little credence to their claim of incorporating HTML 5 apps.

MatthewPhillips 15y ago
Just out of curiosity, why do you browse with js turned off?

rodh257 15y ago

I reckon this UI would lend nicely to being controlled by a Kinect

rkwz 15y ago
Kinect for computers, and now an UI like this? I think they're onto something huge here.

ozataman 15y ago

The video does not even have a fullscreen button. These guys really don't pay much attention to detail.

zyb09 15y ago

Meh mixed feelings. First the whole Metro UI seems to run on top of a normal Windows as an alternative glorified launcher. He mentions that Apps are written in some kind of new HTML/Javascript framework - now I don't know exactly how its gonna work but a lot of people were hoping that MS was finally settle on .NET in terms of API design. If this was a spin off of Windows, I'd probably be a lot more happier, but as it stands, I see a lot of Window 8 PCs, where the first thing people (and companys!) will do, is disable the new "MetroUI" and have the usual taskbar/explorer layout with all the "legacy" app(lication)s like .. for example .. Office2010.

RuadhanMc 15y ago
If Microsoft abandons .NET... I'm done.

foxhill 15y ago

i'm so glad they've come up with something that can be considered new, and seemingly somewhat intuitive.. but i can't help but see that things aren't how they should be. i suppose this is a very early preview, but ms have got to go a lot further than simply creating an "on top of windows" application that looks pretty. their benchmark for success has got to be the intuitiveness and the usability of OS X, without copying any part directly.. something i feel that has always come second place in windows. time will tell, i suppose.

randomor 15y ago

http://allthingsd.com/20110601/steven-sinofsky-talks-windows-8-and-more-at-d9-video/?p=81774 http://allthingsd.com/20110601/steven-sinofsky-talks-windows... another video on D9 with talk heads

more_original 15y ago

Hm, so it looks like there won't be any windows in Windows anymore.

philthy 15y ago

I can just about guarantee most current touch and tablet devices couldn't process heavy duty dual app/dual screen/ picture in picture/what have you. Yeah sure a twitter feed and word let me see a HD video and adobe illustrator with 10 or 20 apps running in the background on a tablet device...this is ridiculous, its a silly toy. this is like that MSN keyboard for your TV back in like 97. The puny Microsoft ship swirls in the ocean about to be gobbled by Apple, Google, etc

nabaraj 15y ago

looks killer for a tablet not so interesting for PC!

code_duck 15y ago

The 'snap' feature is pretty neat. That reminds me of how you could drag entire program fullscreen windows up and down on an Amiga. Like if you could show parts of your different displays on X11 on the same monitor. I know MS's system is just for different running applications here, but since they're fullscreen it serves a similar function.

emehrkay 15y ago

Maybe I didnt catch this, but the apps are written in html/css/js, do they port over to win phone 7? To me this looks like an official MS skin on top of the Windows desktop. We'll see though

tiles 15y ago

Pre-Windows 8 apps won't fit into the new Windows 8 model without being rewritten for new APIs/style. If we assume Windows compatibility is then no longer what drives Os marketshare for PCs (a big leap, but one Microsoft seems to be making), then this would be the perfect time for Android or WebOS to make the bid for the desktop and business users. Obviously OS X is limited by being Apple-devices only, so where is the next big x86 compatible OS that desktop manufacturers will sublicense? On the interface, I absolutely think Microsoft can have Metro UI conventions and complex applications without compromise, but it seems ill thought-out to believe you can scale a phone interface up without greatly increasing the density of information or ability to interact with data, of which the preview seemed devoid. The "wall-mount problem". What looks great on a wall-mounted monitor is not the best interface for my actual desktop computer.

georgieporgie 15y ago

This looks suspiciously like some sort of Media Center for Apps that's running atop the Windows OS. Honestly, that's fine with me. All I really want them to do is fix all the dysfunctional, inconsistent stuff in Windows 7. If they want to put an app launcher over that, fine by me.

icandoitbetter 15y ago

Oh come on. Media Center all over again. Nobody's going to use this on a desktop computer after the first boot-up. I do like the tiling system implementation though.

hristov 15y ago

Great. Microsoft is going down the same rabbit hole Ubuntu and Gnome went down in by assuming that a mouse driven desktop should have the same UI as a touchpad. I was worried that Ubuntu made a step backward with the Unity failure, but now Microsoft will eagerly follow them, so Ubuntu's failure will not be that bad. In fact if the folks in Canonical overcome their egos and realize their failure soon enough, perhaps they can get ahead of MS.

cageface 15y ago

Ironic that after years of promoting their own complex software UI stacks they're going HTML5 + Javascript for this one. One more reason why JS is quickly becoming the most important programming language.

thirdsun 15y ago

I have to say I'm really impressed. This exactly what i was hoping for after the introduction of the metro UI in windows mobile 7, though i didn't expect microsoft to have the guts to do it. Glad to see they did. One thing though: I really hope they don't keep the explorer in it's original windows 7 style. It breaks the metro experience and i can only assume that this was in the video because of the early developement stage. Well, this won't make me replace my mac, but it looks very promising.

krig 15y ago

This looks great, but isn't this pretty much what Microsoft always does - they decide that a particular technology or feature is THE feature, and they go way, way too far with it. The thing I am thinking of is when they decided that the internet and XML was it, and decided to make everything XML (ie Avalon). Another thing was .NET and the CLR, when they decided to throw their old VS codebase away and start over simply because now, ALL programs released HAVE to be CLR-based. And this time it's touch. Microsoft is like a kid with OCD. Touch! Touch is great! I love touch! Everything is touch! Can I touch this? Then it sucks! Give me touch! More touch! I mean... yeah. Touch is cool, touch interfaces will probably be the main way to use computers eventually.. but as usual, it feels like they are going at it in the wrong way. It doesn't improve Excel to put it in a touch environment. Apple did try that and discovered that it wasn't what people wanted. Then again, this video focuses on the new stuff, so it's hard to tell just how much they've moved things around.

krig 15y ago
Also, another part of the video that I instinctively reacted negatively to was the swipe to switch apps. Not even while using a touch interface do I want to pull something in from the left side of the screen without knowing what will pop out from there. To find the app that I want I have to flip through all of them? That seems that the worst possible way of organizing / not organizing different running apps. What makes it even stranger is that they pass by a much better implementation of the same thing in passing while demoing IE 10, where he pulls down to reveal thumbnails of all the open tabs. Something like that in the main interface would have been much better than having to swipe, swipe, swipe, accidentally pausing videos, replacing views and causing all kinds of frustration just to locate the particular app I was looking for.
- Lewisham 15y ago
  I would be surprised if this functionality is not included at some point. Don't get too hung up on it.

rooshdi 15y ago

I admire Microsoft's attempt to experiment with a different Windows UI, but it will take quite some time for users to get accustomed to this new tile format after accumulating decades of experience with the desktop interface. These informative tiles may be better suited for some sort of screensaver or login screen alternative initially.

Raphael_Amiard 15y ago

I think this is looking really cool. I'm also quite happy that web standards is the new trends at microsoft, even if it will certainly be less ideal than one would picture it. I also find it funny how much this looks like a tile based WM with visual sugar. I hope they dont gloss over features on the split screen view because ultimately that's gonna be a very important thing. And also, they'd probably need a better way to integrate native regular apps than what is shown in the video, provided, for some users, this might represent 90% of the time they spend with the OS.

alinspired 15y ago

Wish I had the same OS and apps for laptop, tablet, phone, especially with the data somewhat synced.. this might be a step towards it

kleiba 15y ago

I think this is a really nice thing they're trying. Yet I'm a bit astonished by the many comments here that say the UI looks beautiful. Because I thought the opposite - when the tiles screen first came on I thought it was a print ad for an insurance company or something like that. It's the kind of image my brain was trained to ignore. I also thought the colors were too much. Don't get me wrong - I really think it's great that they're courageous enough to try something new. They're obviously trying to create a new style and not a Mac OS rip-off, which I think is the right way to go, too. But I'm curious whether the design will undergo major rework before Windows 8 comes to the stores.

ugh 15y ago

It solves one crucial problem of all current tablet UIs (iOS, Android, WebOS): http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2011/03/04/multitasking/ http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2011/03/04/multitasking/ Please, Apple, Google and HP, blatantly copy the ability to see more than one app at once!

kahawe 15y ago

I just love how Microsoft has started to (desperately) embrace all the "cool stuff" that the actual "cool cats" and underdogs have come up with and been doing for a very long time now... and how Microsoft likes to present themselves as a hip, cool company almost like a small software shop... ever since competitors have gotten significantly more successful and Microsoft has been losing market shares. So transparent. I mean, trying to start Windows 7 launch parties around the world?? Posting on reddit to market some product and ask for "feedback"? Non-chalantly talking about "cool stuff"? Please... do you really think people will forget how you dealt with competitors back in the day? Will forget your FUD and zero open standards? Will forget what a humongous multi-billion dollar corp you really are?

ErrantX 15y ago

Ugh. No. That looks like a decent tablet interface, and a good interface for the vast majority of users who will be using the core apps and little else.. But for me it's a bit useless - file browsing looked difficult. - App switching looked painful (when you're switching between a lot of apps at once I really don't want to be doing so in rotation). I realise this is because I am a power user with specific needs... but I really really hope they have a version with a normal desktop.

RuadhanMc 15y ago

Dammit Microsoft. I'm rooting for you but you just don't get it, do you? Someone that tries to please everyone, ends up pleasing no one. Touch + mouse does not compute. It's like mating a horse with a donkey. Do you really want your next product to be a mule?

ThomPete 15y ago

Here is the thing. Either MS with Metro have solved it and it plays across different platforms. I can see it work both with mouse and keyboard, touch and joypad. Or Metro isn't versatile enough and it will mutate into a freakshow of edge case considerations. In any scenario, I give MS props for finally presenting a worthy alternative to to OSx/iOS suite. Now if only the hardware manufactures would follow suit it might be interesting.

tompickles 15y ago

My first thoughts after showing the old windows desktop is... as a PC user (non tablet) that Metro UI is gonna get really irritating with a mouse; so you'll end up just using the Win7 looking part.... what's changed?!

Jeema3000 15y ago

This is pretty exciting, seeing as how it's the first major UI rethink for Windows since Win95. I like the idea of simplification of the UI for the average mom and pop user. For them this will probably be a great fit with the large buttons and having one application that fills up the whole window. It almost allows people to think more abstractly, in terms of activities rather than apps for a lot of things (i.e. 'what do you want to do' vs. 'how do you want to do it'). I do not like the idea of having to switch back and forth between the legacy Windows Shell and this new shell. That, in my opinion, is what I would call as a developer, a 'lazy implementation' - probably easier to implement for the developers, but not the right way when it comes down to usability. I hope they are planning some kind of tighter integration that will make that more seamless...

thadeus_venture 15y ago

I think this isn't necessarily about using a tablet or phone interface on the desktop, it's about using either one depending on what peripherals you are using. One configuration is a separate OS instance per device, but a more interesting configuration is basically a phone that you can hook up to a monitor, keyboard and mouse. So basically you get a mobile interface in one mode, and a desktop interface in another. I'd much rather have a single small device i can lug around everywhere I go instead of separate devices for home, office and mobile. Given how quickly cpu speeds are progressing on mobile devices and the prevalence of cloud hosted applications, this could be a possibility sooner rather than later.. And regardless of that, this is about having a single application platform for all the form factors. This video shows a tablet interface, I don't think they will force you to use it on the desktop, at least as shown here. I think the point was the same apps can run everywhere.

edanm 15y ago

More and more, I realize we're nearing a big crisis in computing - touch vs. non-touch. I really fear seeing the world moving towards a place where you have to either choose one platform/metaphor over the other. Or where you have to port every single application to support all different input types. And the thing is, touch is just so good for so many things, but so impractical for certain kinds of work. Whoever manages to reconcile touch computing with boring old office computers, will have a huge market for them.

smackfu 15y ago

Corporations seem to be only adopting every other Windows version now, so it would be interesting if Microsoft decided to alternate the targets of their Windows versions. Windows 7 was good for enterprise, Windows 8 will be good for consumers.

algoshift 15y ago

Interesting...but I can't see using it for a desktop system. As a heavy user of a number of engineering and software development tools I just can't imagine how this is any good. For example, I don't see using Solidworks or AutoCAD with my fingers. I also don't see using any CAD/EDA packages like Altium Desiger (electronics circuit design) with my thumbs. The same applies to firmware, software and web development tools (Keil compilers, Altera/Xilinx development tools, Dreamweaver, Komodo). For that matter, I can't even see using Photoshop or Illustrator that way. I could rattle off dozens and dozens of applications that would be seriously impaired by touch. It's cute and sexy, but it is the slowest and most cumbersome way to interact with a computer. I don't even see using the Office suite like this. An on-screen keyboard might be the thing to do today...but...and there's only one way to say it...they suck in a big way. Useless for anything non-trivial, even on a tablet. Typing on an iPad with a bluetooth keyboard is orders of magnitude more productive than poking at the screen. Then there's the question of multiple screen behavior. All of our engineering workstations have a minimum of two large (24in or more) high-resolution monitors. A good number of them have three. There are engineering design applications (like Altium Designer) that use multi-screen environments very effectively to greatly enhance productivity. I need to know how this new UI will affect these scenarios. In my not-so-humble opinion I have always thought that MS really needed to fix and enhance XP rather than what they've done with Vista and W7. As a power user there's so much in Vista/W7 that makes you say "really?". They've also just about ruined the Office suite. If you were an expert user of the prior generation of Office and had a code base of routines and tools they pretty much made you look like a complete newbie with the new UI and approach. Productivity with Office definitely took a big hit for most tasks for quite some time. Despite criticism, Windows is a workhorse OS used across thousands of different industries. I really hope MS is very careful about not damaging this user base for the sake of being "trendy". Tablets are great fun, but I don't see doing my day-to-day work on tablets any time soon. Wrong UI.

tree_of_item 15y ago

So is Microsoft abandoning .NET? I really don't see how HTML and Javascript are preferable to that.

pseale 15y ago

A nice fantasy would be that Windows 7 replaces XP as the new "business OS" line for the next decade (XP has served in this role since ~2002). Windows 8/9/onward would then be free to deviate from backwards compatibility in favor of a better consumer (non-business user) experience. But it's hard to say what will happen.

benlang 15y ago

Another fail?