On Tuesday , Microsoft offer many more details about its next - contemporaries operating system , Windows 8 , to an interview of developers and receive medium at its Build conference in Anaheim , California . I was present at the initial Windows 8 unveiling a few month ago , and come away impressed but disappointed .
The root of my disappointment is this : I think Microsoft has , for the first prison term in a long time , created a product that is in truth innovative . It ’s Windows Phone 7 , which does not finger like an iOS photocopy ( as opposed to Android and WebOS , which are very clearly inspired by the iPhone ’s user interface ) . Windows Phone 7 ’s port excogitation , “ Metro , ” offers a fundamentally different approach to a touch interface . Microsoft went its own way with Windows Phone 7 ( although sadly not with its name ) and it made me enthusiastic about the possible innovations that user interface could offer on tablet devices .
But with Windows 8 , Microsoft has embraced Metro while rejecting the concept that touch devices and PCs are unlike course of products . There will be no “ pad edition ” of Windows Phone 7,there will just be Windows 8 — whether you run it on a tab or a desktop microcomputer or something in between .
Perhaps it should come as no surprise that this means Apple and Microsoft are seemingly claim entirely opposite approaches to the future of personal engineering science .
Views of the future
There are a couple cistron at bid in Microsoft ’s decisiveness to create a individual operating system for tablet and PCs . First and foremost , this is Microsoft . The company does not conceive in a post - PC world , which you might await from the folks whose package run on most PCs . Microsoft has a real , line of work reason to try and keep everyone in the Windows ecosystem , where it command , rather than a mobile ecosystem where it ’s right smart behind .
As someone who covers Apple and is used to that company killing its hit merchandise for transition to something even dependable — and as someone who works in an manufacture with its own challenge — I am predisposed to apprize businesses that embrace the new rather than opting to squash as much money out of the sure-enough thing as potential before turn off the lights perpetually . So yes , my inherent aptitude is to dislike Microsoft ’s personal computer - centric attack . I understand it , but it feels like denial .
But what if it ’s not abnegation ? lease ’s give Microsoft the welfare of the doubt here , because the company may also be betting on the fact that novel applied science will make the distinction between personal computer and earphone and tablets completely irrelevant . possibly Microsoft did miss the smartphone and tablet wave , but there ’s a third wave coming and they ’re going to try out to surf that one . The company is protecting the past while making a bet on the future .
In this succeeding earth , you may use your gadget in many different ways . If you want to move with a tab but also need to run a Windows app , Microsoft will compel : stop up in a keyboard and mouse and your touchscreen tablet interface vanishes , put back by old - school day Windows . dribble a tablet with you for reading a account book on the bus in the morn , then plug it in to a point of view at the business office and it becomes your personal computer . Maybe even something as small as your smartphone is actually your intact computer , docking to a tablet screen , TV set , or traditional desktop setup as needed . Microsoft is also counting on millions of PC exploiter running Windows 8 on their desktop PCs and then demanding that same intimate user interface on a tablet twist .
I think I understand Microsoft ’s imaginativeness here , but I ’m not trusted I can believe it ’ll work . What made the iPad successful when a decade of Windows tablet has give out was that it was a focused ware that omit feature in parliamentary procedure to keep that focus . It was absolutely not a Mac or microcomputer , but something new that was establish from start to finish as a touch - free-base gadget . Not only did that make it a consistent , easy - to - use of goods and services equipment , but it also made it relatively cheap and energy efficient .
The Metro port on Windows 8 looks really good . What I ca n’t get over is that Microsoft want a regular PC underneath . I hypothecate it scandalise me because I am seek to see the Cartesian product through an Apple lense : If Microsoft had announced that Windows 8 Tablet would not support old Windows software and would black market on consecrate tablet ironware only , I would have cheered , because I think that could be a really cool product . But I can see why Microsoft wo n’t do that : If it does , it risk just being an also - ran . PCs are its wad , for unspoiled or spoilt .
What if Microsoft is right?
Apple ’s product ism up to this point has been that spot interfaces and traditional PC interfaces do not intermingle — that nobody want to spend time with their arms out , touching their PC screen , nor do they require to plug in a mouse to an iPad .
But at the same prison term , Apple has released Lion , an operating system that brings legion features of iOS “ back to the Mac . ” Apple is , at the very least , trying to create as much alignment between its two operating system of rules ( which are relate , think ) as possible .
Would Apple consider truly merging OS X and iOS into a single operating system , like Windows 8 ? flop now , I ca n’t see it . Though OS X and Io have a sight in coarse — and more all the time — they run on ironware that ’s built for unlike function . package can adapt , but hardware really ca n’t . A tablet is not a laptop computer , and Apple ’s not the kind of company to design a pill with an optional elasticity - in accouterment that form of turns it into a laptop computer with a keyboard and a mouse .
As I see it , finally how we use these computing devices of ours will depend entirely on circumstance . A tiny gadget in your pocket needs to bear otherwise than a 10 - column inch tablet in your hired hand or a 20 - inch display with a keyboard and shiner at a workstation .
Apple ’s philosophy is to make hardware that ’s appropriate for a particular use , die hard appropriate software on that hardware , and ( with the advent of iCloud ) synchronize all your documents and data to whatever gadget you ’re using at the time . All of Apple ’s material is clearly part of the same kinfolk , and follows many of the same conventions , but a MacBook Air just is n’t an iPad . Even if it run iOS on top of OS X , it still would n’t be an iPad . iPads hunt down apps entail to be used on tablets . iPhones run apps meant to be run on phone . Macs run apps meant to be run on laptops ( and sometimes desktops ) .
Microsoft’s choice
Microsoft is doing this its way of life . The total approach here is uniquely Microsoftian , at a time when almost everyone else in the technical school industry is assay to take a page from Apple ’s book . Perhaps it ’ll even work this time . But as someone who was excited to see Windows Phone 7 ’s Metro interface come to a tablet gimmick , I ’m disappointed , because it seems what we ’re getting is a belittled Windows personal computer with a tablet - user interface cuticle floating on top . It just feels like the haywire approach to me , but I ’ll say this for Microsoft — it ’s consistent .
[ Update : John Gruber chime in , and as I noted back in June , there is a scenario where there are some tablets that run Metro and kick old Windows apps to the curbing . Could be really interesting . ]
