Windows 8 is a Major Leap Forward, and Here's Why

Credit to Paul Thurrott of the SuperSite for Windows for the images.

Last Wednesday, Microsoft began to unveil Windows 8, the next version of the Windows desktop operating system. However, this version of Windows has promise that the previous versions did not. Steven Sinofsky, the man “responsible for Windows”, according to Paul Thurrott, introduced a very interesting interface for Windows 8 that appears to be all too similar to the Windows Phone 7 “Metro” UI. In Windows 8, they have engineered a special interface designed for multitouch tablets that packs the functionality of traditional Windows and a brand new experience for tablet owners.

As a part of Windows 8, this new interface for tablet devices is a big deal. The new user interface packs true multitouch designed from the ground up for tablets. The first thing you will notice about the interface is that it looks very similar to Windows Phone 7’s “Metro” user interface. The idea of bringing live and interactive content to small or large tiles was originally brought forth in Microsoft Windows Phone 7 platform, and is now coming to the desktop in a similar fashion with Windows 8. With Windows 8, you can have applications that bring interactive content, straight to your tablet. A great example would be social networks like Facebook. You could have a tile on your screen that has live Facebook content that is refreshes at certain intervals. Or you could choose to setup a photo slideshow tile, which displays photos of your family and friends, retrieved from various sources like Facebook and Google, as well as photos stored locally.

It is important to note that the new Windows 8 experience for tablets isn’t the only option. You could still choose to run the traditional Windows desktop experience. I believe that the traditional Windows desktop is the default interface, but you could turn on the new Windows 8 UI. You might ask why someone would turn off a gorgeous new interface. Well, it’s quite simple. The majority of Windows PCs running right now are not tablets with touch screens. Since the new interface is really more designed for touch screen tablets I would like to see Microsoft integrate some of the innovative new interface features of Windows 8, into the traditional desktop experience so that even if you were using the old desktop shell, you could still receive some of the benefits of the new UI. There is no word currently on whether Microsoft will do that or to what degree they will do that.

There were some concerns addressed at this unveiling. Microsoft did address the issue of compatibility with applications and the integration of Windows 8 in businesses. The user will still have the ability to run conventional Windows applications, and you can still run the new tablet interface at the same time. So you won’t be stuck with only the new applications that will be designed for the new tablet shell. The major software giant also made note that they are designing Windows 8 so it will not be difficult for businesses to adapt it. Microsoft plans to offer businesses who subscribe to Windows in their business, the ability to switch their Windows 7 licenses to Windows 8 free.

It wasn’t immediately obvious to me, but the more I think about Windows 8 and the future of Windows on desktops and tablets, I believe this closely resembles Bill Gates’ dream of the perfect tablet PC. Windows 8 seems to have mastered the perfect touch interface for tablets, but still maintains backwards compatibility with traditional Windows applications and systems.

This unveiling of Windows 8 seems to be pretty close to what the final product will look like. And even Microsoft is confident that there shouldn’t be any more major revisions to Windows 8. There seems to be a consensus that Windows 8 will launch in mid-2012. And to backup that up, Steve Ballmer was quoted as saying that Windows 8 should ship in 2012. All we can do is hope! But from what we’ve seen so far, Windows 8 will be a dramatic step forward for Microsoft and for the Windows brand.

The iPad is dominating the tablet industry, but why?

The tablet industry has become a crowded market with the release of Android tablets such as the Galaxy Tab 10.1, the Motorola Xoom (pronounced "zoom"), and Asus's Eee Pad Transformer. No doubt that these tablets have some very unique qualities to them that make them great products, but there are some things they've taken a page from Apple's iPad. That's understandable since consumers have had this high expectation that whatever functionality exists on the iPad, exists, or at least should exist, on the other tablets. There is some logic behind why the iPad is dominating the market, and then there is simple luck that Apple just happened to have.

There are some factors that make it quite clear why Apple is winning in the tablet space right now. They really made the iPad into a very profitable and successful product in the iOS family of products. The quality and size of the display, the multi-touch technology, the operating system (iOS specifically designed for iPad), tablet-designed software development kit (iPad SDK), and the price are all key parts of why the iPad is selling in numbers dramatically higher than their Android tablet competitors. If Apple took even one of those elements out of their product in the first generation, then the iPad predictably wouldn't have been such a success as it was and still is today.

Of course, luck was also involved in the iPad's success. Apple got in at the right time, and the right place. That feels like luck to me because nobody can really predict what is going to happen in the tech industry a year from now or even a month from now. The industry is too unpredictable. If you were to tell me in 2008 or even 2009 that Apple was going to release a tablet called the "iPad", I would've though you were insane!

Now let's compare Apple's iPad to the competitors. Unfortunately, Android, despite having a "tablet-optimized" version, still hasn't mastered multi-touch. Apple is still the palpable master of multi-touch software and hardware. Yes, Google's Honeycomb version of Android, which is known as the "tablet-optimized" version, handles display sizes really well and the multi-touch isn't bad necessarily. It's simply imperfect, compared to the iPad which seems pretty darn close to perfect. I also consider the sheer fact that there are too many screen sizes for Android tablets, that "tablet-optimized" applications will not run perfectly of most of the devices because the variety of display sizes divides the tablet industry up into many fractions. If we had a set standard for tablet display sizes, then maybe this "fragmentation" issue with Android wouldn't be as big of a deal.

Let's imagine for a second that a consumer just bought an Android Honeycomb tablet. They will be bitterly disappointed to discover that the selection of "tablet-optimized" applications is terribly small. In essence, the quantity of apps that could use utilize the large screen size of the device, is quite low. That consumer would feel discouraged and would have feelings of regret. That consumer next time, might've considered an iPad, since the number of tablet applications for the iPad, is much higher.

Price was another area in which Apple was and still is quite innovative in. For a Wi-Fi only (no contract with a wireless provider) 16GB iPad would cost you $500. Most people can't complain since I don't know anybody who would use up all 16GB. And for most people, they're surrounded by Wi-Fi hotspots most of the time, so they don't need 3G (or wireless provider) connectivity. Much to the industry's surprise, there's only one tablet that has been priced similarly to the iPad. The Samsung Galaxy Tab, which has a 7-inch display, but does not run Android Honeycomb, is $500. Everybody else has to play catch up to Apple and Samsung, the two price leaders in the tablet world.

If the prices for these tablets would drop, and manufacturers improve on some of their lacking areas, then I think Android tablets could eventually meet parody with Apple's iPad. But for the time being, we'll just have to be patient and make due with the iPad.

More Windows Tablets please!

Thanks to Apple’s iPad and Samsung’s Galaxy Tab Android tablet, everyone has since forgotten the Windows-based tablets. The industry seems to have headed in the wrong direction. Instead of a mixed culture of complexity and simplicity, the tablet manufacturers as a whole, seem to want to have complete simplicity. The obvious question that just has to be asked is, ‘Have they forgotten the geeks?’ The iPad has made things simple and I do not believe that is necessarily a bad thing, but if we eliminate complexity altogether, then we as consumers, will not have choice. That, I believe, is a dangerous idea!

The key to all this is choice! Prior to the iPad, the Galaxy Tab, and all the Android tablets, Windows on a tablet was the only choice. Therefore, the industry should not go back to that period in time, but rather, we should proceed forward and allow for choice. Apple and all these Android tablet makers want to eliminate Windows tablets. This eliminates choice and that does not benefit the consumers in any way, shape, or form.

I understand that the manufacturers do not want freedom of choice because they want consumers to rely solely on their platform, rather than a few different platforms for computing. It makes them more profitable and hurts their competition. That is what concerns me the most! Competition is good for the technology industry but of course, those tablet makers don’t want competition!

Besides the fact of choice and competition, Windows tablets allow people to ease into the transition from desktop computing to mobile computing. Yes, it is a very slow transition, but over time those will see that mobile computing is a benefit to them. In the meantime, Windows tablets give you the power of Windows, such as the application infrastructure and the power of a full desktop operating system, while introducing people to multitouch. Although, multitouch is not quite as intuitive on a Windows tablet, it still works. Especially with Windows 7, in which some of the major apps have been redesigned from the ground up for multitouch computing. Use Microsoft’s OneNote as an example, which is part of Microsoft’s Office productivity suite. Their latest version, OneNote 2010, has intuitive multitouch support. It supports hand recognition, which operates fairly well without difficulty, and supports hand drawings, whether you’re using a stylus or your fingers. The experience of using OneNote 2010 will be one that anyone can enjoy. The beauty of a Windows 7 based tablet is that it can serve a great number of purposes, such as productivity and entertainment. You can enjoy a movie and flip the screen around (if the hardware permits) and quickly flip it back to normal position when you’re done to swiftly transition back into productivity. It serves the best of many worlds! It combines multiple products into one, which is why I prefer a Windows 7 tablet over an iOS or Android tablet.

Sure you can’t all the great multi-touch applications and games that you can with Android and iOS, but for me and I know for a lot of other people, they’re fine with that. In a bad economy, people cannot afford to buy a one-purpose product. In fact, you could buy a Windows 7 tablet for around the same price range as an Apple iPad or a Samsung Galaxy Tab. Some Windows 7 tablets are actually cheaper than a Samsung Galaxy Tab.

So maybe a Windows 7 tablet is not for everyone. But it would benefit a lot of consumers, more than an iPad or Galaxy Tab would. It combines some great features of the Android and iOS tablets, with the benefits of Windows and a desktop computing platform.