The impeccably timed bunch at Microsoft held two Windows 8 first-look events within hours of one another on different sides of the globe on Thursday. First, Windows President Steven Sinofsky took the stage at the D9 conference in California to unveil the new OS, then just a few hours later Microsoft held a partner preview at Computex in Taipei.
To say Windows 8 is a departure from previous versions of the ubiquitous OS would be very true, but also somewhat false. First, the shiny new stuff.
Microsoft has built an entirely new UI for Windows, leaning heavily on the Windows Phone 7 “Metro” design. We’re talking big, chunky panels, bright colours and Helvetica everywhere. The touch input seems to have borrowed a trick or two from the Blackberry Playbook – lots of actions are performed with gestures that use the display’s bezel as well as the screen itself, although Microsoft seem to have refined it somewhat – switching between apps is much more fluid, for example.
Microsoft have a new UI paradigm they’re calling “Snap”. This allows apps to be dragged in from off-screen, and “snapped” into place alongside another running app, meaning you can have two different programmes running simultaneously on-screen – not a common sight on a tablet device. A moveable divider between the two defines the size – for example you could have a browser taking up 75% of the screen real estate with a media player occupying the other 25%. You can see a video demo of the new UI here.
Microsoft also sought to allay fears that legacy Windows software wouldn’t run on the new Windows for ARM by demoing a Word on an ARM-based machine – looks as though Intel was guilty of some scaremongering there.
As far as new apps go, Microsoft is basing Windows 8 app development on HTML5, Javascript and CSS. A smart move, as Microsoft’s Michael Angiulo points out “when Windows 8 ships, hundreds of millions of developers will already know how to develop for it.”
Microsoft demoed lots of other niceties, such as a split keyboard for thumb-typing on 10″ tablets, and hardware-accelerated HTML5 running on devices powered by NVIDIA’s upcoming quad-core chipset.
Unfortunately, Windows 8’s one big weak spot at this point seems to be its heritage. If you’re using a keyboard and mouse-equipped machine, you can switch back to the old-style Windows 7 UI – which is where we can foresee problems.
Microsoft has shown a new touch experience that looks mighty impressive, but doesn’t seem to be applying the UI to any of its popular products. At the Computex event Microsoft demoed Word, but it still had the same old touch-unfriendly UI it’s always had – and we’re guessing the rest of the Office suite will be the same. Internet Explorer has had a touch-friendly makeover, but what about Outlook, or Media Player?
If Microsoft doesn’t force people to use the Metro design for all their software, the new touch interface becomes little more than a skin, and that means comparatively low-power tablet devices still have the entirety of the Windows OS to look after – a lumbering software behemoth compared to the lightweight Android and iOS.
The other elephant in the room is cost. Google provide Android for free to device manufacturers on the basis that it will drive consumers towards their search and advertising products, which is where they make their real money. Apple develop iOS in-house and integrate those costs into the total device price.
A cornerstone of Microsoft’s income has always been the Windows license fee, though. With a copy of Windows 7 Ultimate currently retailing for $275 (although bulk licenses are far cheaper) – more than many cheap Android tablets and just over half the cost of an iPad – can Microsoft drive their costs down enough to make Windows 8 tablets viable? Time will tell.
What Microsoft has shown is incredibly promising – and more competition in the tablet space will never hurt anyone. We just hope they can go all-in with their powerful new touch elements to create a truly integrated experience, and hopefully not another version of Windows that sort of works on tablets.
