Microsoft 8... Touch optimized

[Agent Sorchus]

http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/01/micr ... rototypes/

Microsoft unveils Windows 8 (video)
By Sean Hollister posted Jun 1st 2011 7:05PM
Breaking News

We're live from Microsoft Windows president Steven Sinofsky's keynote at D9, and there's something rather exciting on stage -- a pair of experimental Windows 8 dev boards running an OS that looks very much like Windows Phone 7's Metro UI. All Things D actually sat down with the man earlier today and got a sneak peek at what to expect starting with the live tiled screen you see above -- and yes, like Windows Phone 7, this OS is designed for touch.

There'll be two kinds of applications for Windows 8, one that runs in a traditional desktop, and the other pseudo-mobile apps based on HTML5 and Javascript, but both environments -- rather, the entire OS -- have been designed from the ground up for touchscreen use. Keyboard and mouse will still be options for both sets of programs, but there are multiple virtual sets of keys for different form factors, including a split keyboard for vertical slate use. Multitasking is simply a matter of swiping running apps into the center of the screen, and you can pull windows partway to "snap" them in place alongside other windows -- even mixing and matching traditional desktop programs with web apps simultaneously (like Twitter alongside your spreadsheet). There's a new version of Internet Explorer 10 (which runs Silverlight) and an app store built into the touchscreen interface, along with integrated services like Office 365. Microsoft says the new OS will run on laptops, tablets and desktops when it appears -- whenever that might be.

All Things D didn't have any details on when we'll get pricing or availability, but we're looking at some Intel Atom-based demo units on stage right now, and Microsoft says it will have ARM designs (the OS will support NVIDIA, TI and Qualcomm) viewable on the Computex show floor, and more will be revealed at the Build Windows developer conference in September. We should note that "Windows 8" is just a codename for what we're seeing here -- "we'll figure out the real name in due time," Sinofsky told the crowd -- but we don't see much harm in calling it Windows 8 for now.

There is a video at the end of the article, but color me unsurprised that Microsoft is seeing the tablet market explode and without more than a foot in the door they would want to get in as big as possible. I don't see how it'll be a very good system since tablet and traditional systems have such varied needs, but what do I know? (Besides that Vista has been good to me I mean.)

[Ariphaos]

I am predicting this will go over almost as well as Vista did.

[Stark]

Support for tablets = just like a broken OS with no driver support?

Sounds good to me; if it's win7 with knobs on and consistent touch UI with the mobile stuff, who loses?

[Sarevok]

It looks like Microsoft is bringing over Windows Phone 7 aesthetics. Could be good, the old windows has been around too long.

[atg]

From what I've seen it'll have both the "Win7" and touch optimized gui's available, so I put this firmly into the 'meh' category until if and when more details are available.

[Skgoa]

So, once again a new version of Windows will not actually feature anything the competition hasn't done already and it will retain Microsoft's dominant market position mostly due to Microsoft's dominant market position. *yawn*

[Sarevok]

So, once again a new version of Windows will not actually feature anything the competition hasn't done already and it will retain Microsoft's dominant market position mostly due to Microsoft's dominant market position. *yawn*

When you are designing for billions of people you chose to go with the proven. I can't say Microsoft is wrong in this.

[eion]

Metro has been a well-reviewed design asthetic. It was a welcome change from iOS and the android clone of iOS. Metro should work very well on a larger screen.

[Psychic_Sandwich]

Metro has been a well-reviewed design asthetic. It was a welcome change from iOS and the android clone of iOS. Metro should work very well on a larger screen.

Nobody will use it on a desktop - most desktops don't have touchscreens, which makes the metro interface sort of pointless. It's optimised for touch, not mouse and keyboard, so the mouse and keyboard which are the input on most desktops will work better on the traditional desktop display. Not surprising, since that's designed to work with them. I agree that Metro is a nice interface, but it's a nice interface for touchscreen phones and tablets, not for desktops.

Honestly, I really don't know why they've combined both of these things into a single OS. It's pointless cruft on almost every desktop, and since it's to all appearances Windows 7 with an interface swiped from a smartphone, it's going to suck more juice than it would otherwise feeding the pointless bits of OS that nobody will ever use on a tablet or phone anyway.

[Zac Naloen]

Honestly, I really don't know why they've combined both of these things into a single OS. It's pointless cruft on almost every desktop, and since it's to all appearances Windows 7 with an interface swiped from a smartphone, it's going to suck more juice than it would otherwise feeding the pointless bits of OS that nobody will ever use on a tablet or phone anyway.

I can foresee a an application for this for Desktop control.

I have a PC connected to my TV with a dual monitor setup.

I have a Kinect and I can connect my Kinect to my PC.

I don't particularly want to walk over to my computer screen and keyboard/mouse to control my computer when I'm selecting media to watch or browsing a photo gallery or even choosing a video from my youtube subcriptions when I can do it from my sofa, I have downloaded the drivers that give me control, but to be honest... windows 7 isn't particularly well optimised for this type of input.

This GUI will be just as functional as a gesture GUI as it is a touch GUI.



Just a thought.

[Psychic_Sandwich]

Honestly, I really don't know why they've combined both of these things into a single OS. It's pointless cruft on almost every desktop, and since it's to all appearances Windows 7 with an interface swiped from a smartphone, it's going to suck more juice than it would otherwise feeding the pointless bits of OS that nobody will ever use on a tablet or phone anyway.

I can foresee a an application for this for Desktop control.

I have a PC connected to my TV with a dual monitor setup.

I have a Kinect and I can connect my Kinect to my PC.

I don't particularly want to walk over to my computer screen and keyboard/mouse to control my computer when I'm selecting media to watch or browsing a photo gallery or even choosing a video from my youtube subcriptions when I can do it from my sofa, I have downloaded the drivers that give me control, but to be honest... windows 7 isn't particularly well optimised for this type of input.

This GUI will be just as functional as a gesture GUI as it is a touch GUI.



Just a thought.

Yeah, but that's not exactly the normal setup, is it? There are, obviously, ways in which it would be useful, but most people probably won't use them, I suspect. It's not really the desktop bit that's the puzzling one, though; yeah, maybe it'd be a bit annoying to click through the start screen into the desktop, but a whole extra click is hardly the end of the world, and some bits might actually be useful, even if the screen swipes and so forth aren't.

It's running it on tablets that seems to me like it'd be a problem. Yeah, it's got the nifty GUI and all, but it's still a full desktop operating system at heart, intended to do things that tablets at present just don't do, and possibly will never do. iOS is considerably more lightweight than whichever version of OSX is current right now, so far as I'm aware, because it doesn't need all the features OSX does. Yeah, it runs on ARM chips as well, so it's going to have less power draw than an x86 tablet, but it still seems to me that they would have had better results on power consumption by actually designing a tablet OS for tablets from the ground up and then incorporating bits of that into desktop systems for use in situations like you describe, as opposed to trying to get one OS to do both things. It's not like people are going to be using the traditional desktop a lot on their tablets, after all.

[Skgoa]

A couple of things:

- iOS is OSX with the parts that aren't needed on an iDevice taken out. There is actually a number of advantages to this approach, like not having to design, build and support two seperate OSs and the ability to re-use work that has been done. Apple is now bringing many features of iOS "back to the Mac", as they call it.

- Touchscreens are just so damn intuitive. I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to have one in my laptop. Multitouch gestures on the trackpad are a great thing... but very often I just wanted to press on something on the screen with my finger, instead of having to do it indirectly.

- How is "most people don't use it now" any kind of logical argument? Most people DON'T HAVE these features at the moment. Don't you think that maybe people will start to use them, once they are widespread? (I mean, its basicly the same argument as saying the iPad would flop because it wasn't full computer... turns out people really liked it because it wasn't a full computer. )

So, once again a new version of Windows will not actually feature anything the competition hasn't done already and it will retain Microsoft's dominant market position mostly due to Microsoft's dominant market position. *yawn*

When you are designing for billions of people you chose to go with the proven. I can't say Microsoft is wrong in this.

Neither can I. I just don't see whats so noteworthy about these features.

[Psychic_Sandwich]

A couple of things:

- iOS is OSX with the parts that aren't needed on an iDevice taken out. There is actually a number of advantages to this approach, like not having to design, build and support two seperate OSs and the ability to re-use work that has been done. Apple is now bringing many features of iOS "back to the Mac", as they call it.

- Touchscreens are just so damn intuitive. I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to have one in my laptop. Multitouch gestures on the trackpad are a great thing... but very often I just wanted to press on something on the screen with my finger, instead of having to do it indirectly.

- How is "most people don't use it now" any kind of logical argument? Most people DON'T HAVE these features at the moment. Don't you think that maybe people will start to use them, once they are widespread? (I mean, its basicly the same argument as saying the iPad would flop because it wasn't full computer... turns out people really liked it because it wasn't a full computer. )

I conceded that people might indeed find use for the features on a desktop; not now, obviously, because most people don't have/aren't interested in those features, but maybe in the future. All of your points relate to desktops and laptops, though (and yeah, and I could see touchscreen laptops working well). To take what you say about Macs; Apple are using UI elements from iOS and putting them into OSX, yeah, but they're not then insisting on running that version of OSX on phones and tablets. Which is exactly what Microsoft is doing, it seems. I think that's a mistake; mobiles and tablets don't need a full desktop operating system, and it's a pointless power draw. Dropping it would extend battery life and lose the user nothing, because they're not going to be using large chunks of the features in the OS. Those 'full' OS features can't not be included, because the thing is supposed to be both a mobile and desktop OS.

[Skgoa]

How is something supposed to reduce battery life if its not being used? And not only that, but since different GUIs are planned and both chip manufacturers and OS programers have become quite good at inventing and implementing energy saving functionalities (its a whole fucking field of specialization in Computer Science), I really doubt that its going to be any problem at all. Lets keep in mind that the HUGE majority of the "OS" on your hard drive is actually drivers for the myriad of possible hardware combinations, libraries (many of them for legacy support) and seldom used utility applications. Much of that is never ever going to be used on the tablet version, thus can either be left out during installation or (more likely) will just never be loaded into RAM and not cost any energy, ever. CPU usage is a similar situation: the OS itself doesn't actually use that much computational power, its things like the GUI (looking at you, Aero Glass!) and user applications that need fast chips. Both would have to be tuned to the tablet environment, anyways.
So: no, I don't see any problem with developing your next OS with tablets included in the target hardware.

Oh and btw: quite a few people are whining about the iPad's locked down OS. There is a big market for tablets with a "full" OS, indeed before the iPad was around most of them WERE running a (more or less) standard Windows.