A pro-Apple, anti-Microsoft article from Gruber? I'm shocked.
However, even though this is yet another iteration of his "Why <insert Microsoft technology here> sucks compared to <insert Apple technology here>" theme, I tend to agree with him this time.
I cannot imagine the iOS devices finding success if they were actually just Macs with a new category of touch apps strapped on. This only leads to market and developer confusion. If it's just one platform, what is my target device as a developer? If I develop to touch-driven HTML5+JS, why would anyone want to use it with a mouse? If I develop to WPF, why would anyone want to use it with multi-touch? Whatever they call it, it's two platforms, crammed together, and they just don't fit well. As a developer, you still have to make a choice, and it is the device itself that determines what development path you will take.
Then there is the hardware requirements. Windows 7 made great strides in this direction, but I just cannot imagine Windows 8 running as efficiently on an ARM-based device as iOS does today. I hope to be surprised here.
I cannot imagine the iOS devices finding success if they were actually just Macs with a new category of touch apps strapped on.
Maybe we'll see with Lion. :-)
This only leads to market and developer confusion. If it's just one platform, what is my target device as a developer?
How would people want to use it? In some cases you may even do two apps, although you probably could share code (not clear what the app model is for Win8 still). Just like today you might build an app just for OS X, or just for iOS, or you might build one for each. Depends on the app.
Then there is the hardware requirements. Windows 7 made great strides in this direction, but I just cannot imagine Windows 8 running as efficiently on an ARM-based device as iOS does today. I hope to be surprised here.
No idea, but if WP7 is any indication, they are killing perf. WP7 flies on relatively weak hardware. On old SnapDragons it kills the perf of Android on dual-core modern SnapDragons. I hope Win8 has those chops.
The new touch interface looks interesting, but backwards compatability is baggage that threatens to make the Windows 8 user experience an ugly inconsistent mess.
Touch is great for mobile apps, but it doesn't beat the old mouse + keyboard when it comes to desktop productivity.
This discussion reminds me of arguments from the "Raymond Chen Camp" [1]. Backwards compatibility is of huge value and importance to Microsoft, but it's a big burden to carry as well. Throwing away all the code that has been developed to date for Windows would be a fatally stupid mistake.
Microsoft would be better served by keeping their touch based phone / mobile platform seperate from the desktop. I don't think it's possible to build a platform that nicely mixes UI metaphores.
Attacking Gruber because he says Apple's approach is better than Microsoft's isn't addressing the arguments he raises so let's address them:
"Microsoft’s demo video shows Excel — the full version of Excel for Windows — running alongside new touch-based apps. They can make buttons more “touch friendly” all they want, but they’ll never make Excel for Windows feel right on a touchscreen UI."
No one said Excel for Win 8 would be just a touch friendly version. Gruber's argument assumes that Microsoft won't attempt to think through the use-case of touch on Office products. Given that Office is one of their top pilars of profitability, you can bet that they'll at least attempt to create Office 2012 (or whatever) to fit in naturally with how people will want to and need to use it.
"The iPad succeeds because it has eliminated complexity, not because it has covered up the complexity of the Mac with a touch-based “shell”. "
You definitely have a point with that but a particular quote comes to mind "Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler." - Albert Einstein. You can't do real work on the iPad version of iWorks. Making Excel simpler just for simplicities sake would be a mistake for Microsoft. Exposing the right amount of simplicity for the various tasks is what they should be aiming for.
"Apple’s radical notion is that touchscreen personal computers should make severely different tradeoffs than traditional computers — that you can’t design one system that does it all."
You can't until you can. iOS is built on the same technology of OSX. IF they wanted, they could make iOS able to run OSX apps and be able to do many of the things that OSX can do. They've simply elected not to.
Most of the tradeoffs that Apple has made has less to do with what is possible and more to do with training their developers. If I remember correctly, Apple elected not to allow a 2 button mouse for a long time earlier in their history because they wanted to force developers to build apps that worked just fine with 1 button... to force them to create a different type of experience for users.
Microsoft's goals are actually the opposite. They don't want to create a completely different experience. Their corporate clients will buy the next version of Windows because it is an evolution, not a revolution. Creating a revolutionary product may actually be counter to their interests.
I think the biggest thing that Apple got right that Microsoft is in danger of not getting right is that people should have different expectations for a tablet. A tablet shouldn't have to do everything that a PC can, because it will end up doing most of them poorly.
You can't do real work on the iPad version of iWorks.
Again, this is okay with most people due to the different expectations one has with a tablet over a PC. If all you need to do is update one small item on the iPad, it's doable.
Making Excel simpler just for simplicities sake would be a mistake for Microsoft. Exposing the right amount of simplicity for the various tasks is what they should be aiming for.
I certainly wouldn't want to use a version of Excel that was designed for a PC on a tablet. It would be a horrible user experience. The only way to make it workable is to write something from scratch. Sure, it could read and write .xlsx files, but under the hood, it would need to be very different.
they could make iOS able to run OSX apps
I think that Apple has shown that they are actually going the opposite way. More and more of OSX looks like it was ported over from iOS.
One of Microsoft's problems with Tablet PCs in the early 2000s was that they were PCs. Because of this, they needed to have all of the horsepower to run Windows and still be portable enough to use as a tablet. This meant that they were always expensive. iPads on the other hand don't need to run a full copy of OSX, so they can be much lighter, smaller, and cheaper (than a Mac).
The best line in the Gruber piece is this:
You can’t make something conceptually lightweight if it’s carrying 25 years of Windows baggage
This is why Microsoft is going to have issues using the same code base for a tablet and the full Windows 8. It has too much extra stuff. A tablet doesn't need all of that stuff. This is one of those categories where having raw power isn't as important as being lightweight and using what you have as efficiently as possible.
Microsoft may be primarily selling to corporate clients and OEMs, but they will still be competing with iOS and Android tablets in terms of mindshare and expectations.
> A tablet shouldn't have to do everything that a PC can, because it will end up doing most of them poorly.
Yes, but that's ok. It might be a less than stellar experience to pull up a complex work spreadsheet that was emailed to me on my tablet while I'm on vacation but at least it's possible. I can get my work done and get back to sipping mai tais.
It's amazing how many people are down on the idea of having access to their apps simply because the experience is slightly degraded.
I think the biggest thing that Apple got right that Microsoft is in danger of not getting right is that people should have different expectations for a tablet.
I agree. Managing the expectations of what people should be doing on the different form factors is going to be important.
If all you need to do is update one small item on the iPad, it's doable. I certainly wouldn't want to use a version of Excel that was designed for a PC on a tablet. It would be a horrible user experience. The only way to make it workable is to write something from scratch. Sure, it could read and write .xlsx files, but under the hood, it would need to be very different.
Again, you're making the assumption that it was designed for a PC. I think they'll think through both use cases and expose the right functionality at the right times. (Yes, this is an assumption that gives MS the benefit of the doubt but given how important Office is to their profitability, I'm comfortable with this assumption.) Also, it wouldn't need to be very different under the hood. It would just need to be different UI. Yes, bigger buttons isn't going to cut it but UI is so much more than just 'bigger buttons'.
One of Microsoft's problems with Tablet PCs in the early 2000s was that they were PCs. Because of this, they needed to have all of the horsepower to run Windows and still be portable enough to use as a tablet. This meant that they were always expensive. iPads on the other hand don't need to run a full copy of OSX, so they can be much lighter, smaller, and cheaper (than a Mac).
You've definitely got a point there. They'll need to address this head-on.
The best line in the Gruber piece is this: You can’t make something conceptually lightweight if it’s carrying 25 years of Windows baggage
Agreed, though not completely. Making selective cuts would allow them to maintain the same code base for tablets and desktops. It might actually result in a better desktop experience.
Microsoft may be primarily selling to corporate clients and OEMs, but they will still be competing with iOS and Android tablets in terms of mindshare and expectations.
Agreed, which is why I'm excited to see the new UI. Not sure how far they are going to be willing to push things in order to compete on the excitement factor and winning consumers over.
> If I remember correctly, Apple elected not to allow a 2 button mouse for a long time earlier in their history because they wanted to force developers to build apps that worked just fine with 1 button.
I think you might be thinking of the reason the 128K Mac didn't have a terminal. In that case, they wanted to force developers to make new, graphical programs instead of just porting their terminal programs to the Mac. The mouse had one button [to cater to users][1]:
> The powers at Apple concluded that because the mouse was a whole new way for users to interact with their computers, it should be as uncomplicated as possible. Hence, one button.
The original Mac did not have arrow keys on its keyboard. This was to encourage programmers to write programs that use the mouse. I'm pretty sure I read this originally on http://www.folklore.org, but I can't find that particular story right now.
I'm sure the next version of Office will be optimized for the new Win8 UI style or at least have a companion version that's optimized for new Win8 style, but it'll be awkward for Microsoft if that next version isn't out until ~8 months after Win8 itself, which is very possible given that Office 2010 came 8 months after Windows 7 and they usually have similar release cycles.
(Were it up to me, I'd make damn sure Office 2012 is ready day-and-date with Win8, and accelerate the release by cutting absolutely anything, other than support for the new touch UI, necessary to make that happen.)
It's too early to say anything about Office on Windows 8. What Microsoft showed today was Windows 8, not Office. I'm sure Microsoft will has something for Office on Windows 8 with touch interface in mind. So far, I haven't seen any good office productivity applications on touch interface. I hope Microsoft impresses me.
PowerPoint and other presentation apps are naturals for touch. A lot of the stuff our engineers present in SolidWorks would be much easier done with a touchscreen.
The actual document/drawing creation lends itself to a tradional keyboard/mouse UI, but presentation is more intuitive when you can touch the screen and drag or rotate/enlarge an object with your fingers.
I think Gruber is actually missing something pretty important here. Something everyone has traditionally understood, but its been forgetten (and honestly, largely irrelevent nowadays):
Microsoft sells a boatload of copies of Windows.
They don't sell a lot of MP3 devices. Or tablets. Or phones. But they sell a lot of copies of Windows. And a very strong OEM partnership market.
With Windows 8 expect on the low-end they ship 200M copies its first year. On the high-end, think 450M. (they did 350M for Win7). This will be the default UI for all tablets and probably laptops (maybe desktops, but desktops are increasingly niche devices).
You're going to have a huge market of people now getting touch devices because the default touch experience is actually really good. Sure there's the other experience, but people will be able to largely stay in the default touch experience while doing consumption. They only pop out when doing creation. And those are the times on the iPad that you would typically go get your laptop anyways.
And in terms of the appstore... when there are 50M machines using this OS the first month -- there will be apps. Non-Apple devs will love to have an app store ecosystem of this size.
To put it another way, Gruber would be absolutely right if they had tried this with Windows Mobile. WP7 would be held back due to it, and WinMo had no marketshare to speak of. But for Windows proper this is actually the right move. It actually harkens back to them shipping IE with Windows and catching and passing Netscape. This is old fashioned MS leveraging their huge market position. It's something they frankly can rarely do anymore, but I think it will actually work for them this time -- maybe the last time.
And lastly, note that the legacy experience is really only there for Intel based processors. For ARM there will probably be very few legacy experience apps. I'm thinking Office and maybe one or two others. In a typical world, think Honeycomb, those tablets never build an app ecosystem. But in this world they get the huge installed user base of the Intel platform for app devs to target. So in one generation you may well have a solid app eco system completely sitting outside the legacy experience. They solved the chicken vs egg problem.
So did Microsoft sell 350 million copies of Windows 7 in a year, or are desktops "increasingly niche devices"? I'm not sure the two positions are compatible.
Sure some of the win 7 sales are upgrades, but while growth of pc sales has slowed, pc sales are up.
Given the number of pc's out there running windows xp, and with no data to suggest that those machines will be _replaced_ by tablets, I think the assertion that desktop machines are "niche" is somewhat pre-mature.
It's just a reality distortion field, typical for developers. A couple of years ago I also thought desktop-Linux will completely replace Windows.
Truth of the matter is desktops still represent the largest market of devices consumers are buying and at least 90% of them run Windows. This whole post-PC notion is crappy and doesn't hold water - tables and smartphones are complementary products to desktops, and won't replace desktops until you'll be able to attach to them a 21 inch monitor, a keyboard and a mouse/trackball.
So did Microsoft sell 350 million copies of Windows 7 in a year, or are desktops "increasingly niche devices"? I'm not sure the two positions are compatible.
Of course they're compatible. Laptops outsold desktops for the first time in 2005. See the attached chart for the US, which actually tends to lag the world in laptop vs desktop ratios:
Desktops are becoming a niche device. I do friends/family tech support on about 50 PCs. Of those about 10 are desktops. The other 40 are laptops (not saying my anecdote is data, but I don't think its unusual, and the actual data does suggest the same).
There are a lot of empty boasts in ken's comment. 50M machines running Win8 in the first month? Not touch devices, that's for sure. The default OS for all tablets? Tablets have a default OS. Right now, it's iOS. Microsoft will have to beat them in the marketplace. What is there about Win8 that is going to do that? I can't see anything.
Exactly. MS's bread and butter is selling $400 laptops which may or may not even have touchscreens and it remains to be seen if a touchscreen UI makes sense on traditional laptop or desktop formfactor (Jobs convincingly argued "no" before unveiling OSX 10.7). So I disagree that this gives Microsoft any advantage in the tablet space.
Look at Microsoft's MediaCenter. It's great software and it's on every PC, but it's nothing like an industry standard because it's just not a normal PC use case.
"Something everyone has traditionally understood, but its been forgetten (and honestly, largely irrelevent nowadays):
Microsoft sells a boatload of copies of Windows."
Sticking to a cash cow while the world changes is a sure way to become irrelevant.
1) Is there .NET on ARM? :-) I assume there is since Windows ships with .NET now.
2) Does the app use native code, e.g., COM interop? If so, you need to get the same COM interfaces tareting ARM.
3) Are you using any functionality that was deprecated and likely not carried over to a new platform?
If you satisfy all of those then its just like Java. Just copy the binary over and it gets JITted (or NGENed) on the ARM comoputer and runs just fine. No recompile, no extra work needed, besides maybe perf work since perf characteristics likely change.
Shocker, Gruber thinks that if you're not approaching something the way Apple does, you're not going to succeed. That's really all there is to this article. Let's wait and see what they produce, considering that there's over a year before this will hit the shelves, shall we?
To be fair, Microsoft has tried portable, non-PC devices for more than a decade and failed miserably, largely because they cling to the windows metaphor on small screens.
But to be more fair, in the past MS didn't really change the UI at all -- they just said, here's a stylus. In this case they actually provide a radically different UI.
Yes, yes, Gruber's pro apple, let's agree on that point and save the bytes.
He makes a very valid point about trying to run regular windows alongside this beautiful interface. MS just couldn't resist the temptation to make it fully backwards compatible with their old software. I can almost guarantee it was some outside, higher C-level person (Balmer?) that "loved the new interface, but could we get it to run windows too?"
If MS knows what it's doing, it will make custom mobile versions of its office apps like Apple did and never try to shoehorn an interface designed for a mouse and keyboard into their mobile operating system again. But, alas, they lack the discipline to do it.
Why can't applications do both? Have a touch interface for cases where it's warranted, have a 'normal' interface for when it's not. I expect Office 2012/2013 will do this.
It has been speculated that MS has lost their backwards-compatibility religion, but you still see vestiges of it in their strategies.
Maybe they don't have the discipline to ditch Windows for tablets, but they certainly have the willingness to steal (borrow?) ideas from their competitors. Putting the OS from Windows Phone 7 on lower power hardware (à la iOS and the iPad) is clearly the right decision.
It honestly looks more like a problem with pride and less like a problem with discipline.
I think it has to do with neither pride nor discipline. It's all about business.
Microsoft won't make much money by breaking backwards compatibility; in fact, they'd lose billions if they did. Think of the hundreds of millions (if not billions) of business licenses they have sold. Business customers want their old apps to keep working. Yes, I'm talking about the same people who still use IE6. Whether you like them or not, these are the customers who purchase thousands of licenses each, and there are lots of them. Losing these customers could hurt Microsoft just as much as, if not much more than, losing tablet-toting consumers.
Of course, Microsoft doesn't want to lose either market, so they'll produce a version of Windows that has both complete backwards compatibility with existing Windows apps, and a fancy shell to appeal to tablet users.
I can totally see that "X is great, but can we have Y?" question being asked, and it makes my skin crawl. Why? Because it signals - in the clearest way possible - that the product vision is NOT being set at the top, meaning the "leaders" are leading in name only.
When you say "they lack the discipline", I suspect you're being too kind. After all, discipline means being firm in hewing to your vision - which assumes you HAVE a vision to hew to in the first place.
Not sure he gets it. One of the big selling points of windows is its pursuit of backwards compatibility. As a windows dev and user I was close to having a heart attack until I saw "normal Windows" alongside.
Sure, maybe they can't "pull it off" but in all frankness I'm more of a fan of utility than "usability". I want all my old apps to work as they worked in the original OS and working as well on the new OS.
Basically... to people who enter data into those 200-and-more-input-controls UIs, accountants who do horrible stuff with excel, secretaries who struggled hard to learn how to create a standard letter in MS Word 2003 and don't want to go through this experience every odd year and developers who run Visual Studio, a browser and fiddler side by side on two or three 24'' monitors. Ah, and last but not least businesses who are not very eager to write of billions in licenses and custom applications...
I don't necessarily buy the idea that iOS's lack of complexity and compatibility is the reason for its success. You can already see complexity and compatibility problems 4 years in with iOS. Things like the undiscoverable double click method to call up the app drawer and the weird double pixel support for iPhone apps on the iPad are already here. iCloud seems to be poised to basically become the filesystem for iOS devices (if my prediction is right). Even Gruber says that iOS will eventually consume Mac OS X in this article. So if iOS is going to continue growing in complexity and trying to maintain compatibility over the years while also trying to remain user friendly, why is attacking the same goal with Windows from the opposite direction any worse?
I agree. I was very skeptical about having a "Windows" OS slapped on the touch devices, but after seeing this first video I would say that it doesn't look bad.
Lack of complexity in UX and lack of capabilities are 2 different things. The former is desirable while the latter is a limitation. For instance, IIRC, iOS didn't start out with bluetooth API and they came in later. It is an example of lack of capability. Gruber seems to imply that one means the other, in fact he seems to infer that you need the OS to be less capable for it to be easier to use.
People like iOS not because it does less or in other words can not do certain things. They like it because it does things that it is capable of with ease in a pleasurable way.
Great usability and versatility are not mutually exclusive things and that is how MS seems to be approaching this.
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However, even though this is yet another iteration of his "Why <insert Microsoft technology here> sucks compared to <insert Apple technology here>" theme, I tend to agree with him this time.
I cannot imagine the iOS devices finding success if they were actually just Macs with a new category of touch apps strapped on. This only leads to market and developer confusion. If it's just one platform, what is my target device as a developer? If I develop to touch-driven HTML5+JS, why would anyone want to use it with a mouse? If I develop to WPF, why would anyone want to use it with multi-touch? Whatever they call it, it's two platforms, crammed together, and they just don't fit well. As a developer, you still have to make a choice, and it is the device itself that determines what development path you will take.
Then there is the hardware requirements. Windows 7 made great strides in this direction, but I just cannot imagine Windows 8 running as efficiently on an ARM-based device as iOS does today. I hope to be surprised here.
Maybe we'll see with Lion. :-)
This only leads to market and developer confusion. If it's just one platform, what is my target device as a developer?
How would people want to use it? In some cases you may even do two apps, although you probably could share code (not clear what the app model is for Win8 still). Just like today you might build an app just for OS X, or just for iOS, or you might build one for each. Depends on the app.
Then there is the hardware requirements. Windows 7 made great strides in this direction, but I just cannot imagine Windows 8 running as efficiently on an ARM-based device as iOS does today. I hope to be surprised here.
No idea, but if WP7 is any indication, they are killing perf. WP7 flies on relatively weak hardware. On old SnapDragons it kills the perf of Android on dual-core modern SnapDragons. I hope Win8 has those chops.
Touch is great for mobile apps, but it doesn't beat the old mouse + keyboard when it comes to desktop productivity.
This discussion reminds me of arguments from the "Raymond Chen Camp" [1]. Backwards compatibility is of huge value and importance to Microsoft, but it's a big burden to carry as well. Throwing away all the code that has been developed to date for Windows would be a fatally stupid mistake.
Microsoft would be better served by keeping their touch based phone / mobile platform seperate from the desktop. I don't think it's possible to build a platform that nicely mixes UI metaphores.
[1] http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html
I'm curious if this is simply a shell on top of Windows (a la WMC), or full on baked-in integration with Windows.
"Microsoft’s demo video shows Excel — the full version of Excel for Windows — running alongside new touch-based apps. They can make buttons more “touch friendly” all they want, but they’ll never make Excel for Windows feel right on a touchscreen UI."
No one said Excel for Win 8 would be just a touch friendly version. Gruber's argument assumes that Microsoft won't attempt to think through the use-case of touch on Office products. Given that Office is one of their top pilars of profitability, you can bet that they'll at least attempt to create Office 2012 (or whatever) to fit in naturally with how people will want to and need to use it.
"The iPad succeeds because it has eliminated complexity, not because it has covered up the complexity of the Mac with a touch-based “shell”. "
You definitely have a point with that but a particular quote comes to mind "Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler." - Albert Einstein. You can't do real work on the iPad version of iWorks. Making Excel simpler just for simplicities sake would be a mistake for Microsoft. Exposing the right amount of simplicity for the various tasks is what they should be aiming for.
"Apple’s radical notion is that touchscreen personal computers should make severely different tradeoffs than traditional computers — that you can’t design one system that does it all."
You can't until you can. iOS is built on the same technology of OSX. IF they wanted, they could make iOS able to run OSX apps and be able to do many of the things that OSX can do. They've simply elected not to.
Most of the tradeoffs that Apple has made has less to do with what is possible and more to do with training their developers. If I remember correctly, Apple elected not to allow a 2 button mouse for a long time earlier in their history because they wanted to force developers to build apps that worked just fine with 1 button... to force them to create a different type of experience for users.
Microsoft's goals are actually the opposite. They don't want to create a completely different experience. Their corporate clients will buy the next version of Windows because it is an evolution, not a revolution. Creating a revolutionary product may actually be counter to their interests.
You can't do real work on the iPad version of iWorks.
Again, this is okay with most people due to the different expectations one has with a tablet over a PC. If all you need to do is update one small item on the iPad, it's doable.
Making Excel simpler just for simplicities sake would be a mistake for Microsoft. Exposing the right amount of simplicity for the various tasks is what they should be aiming for.
I certainly wouldn't want to use a version of Excel that was designed for a PC on a tablet. It would be a horrible user experience. The only way to make it workable is to write something from scratch. Sure, it could read and write .xlsx files, but under the hood, it would need to be very different.
they could make iOS able to run OSX apps
I think that Apple has shown that they are actually going the opposite way. More and more of OSX looks like it was ported over from iOS.
One of Microsoft's problems with Tablet PCs in the early 2000s was that they were PCs. Because of this, they needed to have all of the horsepower to run Windows and still be portable enough to use as a tablet. This meant that they were always expensive. iPads on the other hand don't need to run a full copy of OSX, so they can be much lighter, smaller, and cheaper (than a Mac).
The best line in the Gruber piece is this:
You can’t make something conceptually lightweight if it’s carrying 25 years of Windows baggage
This is why Microsoft is going to have issues using the same code base for a tablet and the full Windows 8. It has too much extra stuff. A tablet doesn't need all of that stuff. This is one of those categories where having raw power isn't as important as being lightweight and using what you have as efficiently as possible.
Microsoft may be primarily selling to corporate clients and OEMs, but they will still be competing with iOS and Android tablets in terms of mindshare and expectations.
Yes, but that's ok. It might be a less than stellar experience to pull up a complex work spreadsheet that was emailed to me on my tablet while I'm on vacation but at least it's possible. I can get my work done and get back to sipping mai tais.
It's amazing how many people are down on the idea of having access to their apps simply because the experience is slightly degraded.
I agree. Managing the expectations of what people should be doing on the different form factors is going to be important.
If all you need to do is update one small item on the iPad, it's doable. I certainly wouldn't want to use a version of Excel that was designed for a PC on a tablet. It would be a horrible user experience. The only way to make it workable is to write something from scratch. Sure, it could read and write .xlsx files, but under the hood, it would need to be very different.
Again, you're making the assumption that it was designed for a PC. I think they'll think through both use cases and expose the right functionality at the right times. (Yes, this is an assumption that gives MS the benefit of the doubt but given how important Office is to their profitability, I'm comfortable with this assumption.) Also, it wouldn't need to be very different under the hood. It would just need to be different UI. Yes, bigger buttons isn't going to cut it but UI is so much more than just 'bigger buttons'.
One of Microsoft's problems with Tablet PCs in the early 2000s was that they were PCs. Because of this, they needed to have all of the horsepower to run Windows and still be portable enough to use as a tablet. This meant that they were always expensive. iPads on the other hand don't need to run a full copy of OSX, so they can be much lighter, smaller, and cheaper (than a Mac).
You've definitely got a point there. They'll need to address this head-on.
The best line in the Gruber piece is this: You can’t make something conceptually lightweight if it’s carrying 25 years of Windows baggage
Agreed, though not completely. Making selective cuts would allow them to maintain the same code base for tablets and desktops. It might actually result in a better desktop experience.
Microsoft may be primarily selling to corporate clients and OEMs, but they will still be competing with iOS and Android tablets in terms of mindshare and expectations.
Agreed, which is why I'm excited to see the new UI. Not sure how far they are going to be willing to push things in order to compete on the excitement factor and winning consumers over.
I think you might be thinking of the reason the 128K Mac didn't have a terminal. In that case, they wanted to force developers to make new, graphical programs instead of just porting their terminal programs to the Mac. The mouse had one button [to cater to users][1]:
> The powers at Apple concluded that because the mouse was a whole new way for users to interact with their computers, it should be as uncomplicated as possible. Hence, one button.
[1]: http://lowendmac.com/musings/11mm/mouse-history.html
(Were it up to me, I'd make damn sure Office 2012 is ready day-and-date with Win8, and accelerate the release by cutting absolutely anything, other than support for the new touch UI, necessary to make that happen.)
The actual document/drawing creation lends itself to a tradional keyboard/mouse UI, but presentation is more intuitive when you can touch the screen and drag or rotate/enlarge an object with your fingers.
Microsoft sells a boatload of copies of Windows.
They don't sell a lot of MP3 devices. Or tablets. Or phones. But they sell a lot of copies of Windows. And a very strong OEM partnership market.
With Windows 8 expect on the low-end they ship 200M copies its first year. On the high-end, think 450M. (they did 350M for Win7). This will be the default UI for all tablets and probably laptops (maybe desktops, but desktops are increasingly niche devices).
You're going to have a huge market of people now getting touch devices because the default touch experience is actually really good. Sure there's the other experience, but people will be able to largely stay in the default touch experience while doing consumption. They only pop out when doing creation. And those are the times on the iPad that you would typically go get your laptop anyways.
And in terms of the appstore... when there are 50M machines using this OS the first month -- there will be apps. Non-Apple devs will love to have an app store ecosystem of this size.
To put it another way, Gruber would be absolutely right if they had tried this with Windows Mobile. WP7 would be held back due to it, and WinMo had no marketshare to speak of. But for Windows proper this is actually the right move. It actually harkens back to them shipping IE with Windows and catching and passing Netscape. This is old fashioned MS leveraging their huge market position. It's something they frankly can rarely do anymore, but I think it will actually work for them this time -- maybe the last time.
And lastly, note that the legacy experience is really only there for Intel based processors. For ARM there will probably be very few legacy experience apps. I'm thinking Office and maybe one or two others. In a typical world, think Honeycomb, those tablets never build an app ecosystem. But in this world they get the huge installed user base of the Intel platform for app devs to target. So in one generation you may well have a solid app eco system completely sitting outside the legacy experience. They solved the chicken vs egg problem.
Sure some of the win 7 sales are upgrades, but while growth of pc sales has slowed, pc sales are up.
Given the number of pc's out there running windows xp, and with no data to suggest that those machines will be _replaced_ by tablets, I think the assertion that desktop machines are "niche" is somewhat pre-mature.
Truth of the matter is desktops still represent the largest market of devices consumers are buying and at least 90% of them run Windows. This whole post-PC notion is crappy and doesn't hold water - tables and smartphones are complementary products to desktops, and won't replace desktops until you'll be able to attach to them a 21 inch monitor, a keyboard and a mouse/trackball.
Of course they're compatible. Laptops outsold desktops for the first time in 2005. See the attached chart for the US, which actually tends to lag the world in laptop vs desktop ratios:
http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/17/forrester-tablets-outsell-n...
Desktops are becoming a niche device. I do friends/family tech support on about 50 PCs. Of those about 10 are desktops. The other 40 are laptops (not saying my anecdote is data, but I don't think its unusual, and the actual data does suggest the same).
No, I agree. Some subset. But I think it will be substantial. Will it be 25M? 10M? Not sure, but it will be a lot.
The default OS for all tablets?
I meant the default UI for Windows tablets.
Microsoft will have to beat them in the marketplace. What is there about Win8 that is going to do that? I can't see anything.
While I can see the future pretty well, I'm not an opthamologist.
(Edited typo: OS => UI)
Look at Microsoft's MediaCenter. It's great software and it's on every PC, but it's nothing like an industry standard because it's just not a normal PC use case.
Sticking to a cash cow while the world changes is a sure way to become irrelevant.
Seems relevant to the topic (if it is easy, that's a whole bunch of apps), so I thought I'd ask.
1) Is there .NET on ARM? :-) I assume there is since Windows ships with .NET now.
2) Does the app use native code, e.g., COM interop? If so, you need to get the same COM interfaces tareting ARM.
3) Are you using any functionality that was deprecated and likely not carried over to a new platform?
If you satisfy all of those then its just like Java. Just copy the binary over and it gets JITted (or NGENed) on the ARM comoputer and runs just fine. No recompile, no extra work needed, besides maybe perf work since perf characteristics likely change.
He makes a very valid point about trying to run regular windows alongside this beautiful interface. MS just couldn't resist the temptation to make it fully backwards compatible with their old software. I can almost guarantee it was some outside, higher C-level person (Balmer?) that "loved the new interface, but could we get it to run windows too?"
If MS knows what it's doing, it will make custom mobile versions of its office apps like Apple did and never try to shoehorn an interface designed for a mouse and keyboard into their mobile operating system again. But, alas, they lack the discipline to do it.
Maybe they don't have the discipline to ditch Windows for tablets, but they certainly have the willingness to steal (borrow?) ideas from their competitors. Putting the OS from Windows Phone 7 on lower power hardware (à la iOS and the iPad) is clearly the right decision.
It honestly looks more like a problem with pride and less like a problem with discipline.
Microsoft won't make much money by breaking backwards compatibility; in fact, they'd lose billions if they did. Think of the hundreds of millions (if not billions) of business licenses they have sold. Business customers want their old apps to keep working. Yes, I'm talking about the same people who still use IE6. Whether you like them or not, these are the customers who purchase thousands of licenses each, and there are lots of them. Losing these customers could hurt Microsoft just as much as, if not much more than, losing tablet-toting consumers.
Of course, Microsoft doesn't want to lose either market, so they'll produce a version of Windows that has both complete backwards compatibility with existing Windows apps, and a fancy shell to appeal to tablet users.
When you say "they lack the discipline", I suspect you're being too kind. After all, discipline means being firm in hewing to your vision - which assumes you HAVE a vision to hew to in the first place.
To who? Does grandma give a shit, or will she just buy an iPad?
> As a windows dev and user I was close to having a heart attack until I saw "normal Windows" alongside.
Guys like you are why Microsoft can't let go. :)
Lack of complexity in UX and lack of capabilities are 2 different things. The former is desirable while the latter is a limitation. For instance, IIRC, iOS didn't start out with bluetooth API and they came in later. It is an example of lack of capability. Gruber seems to imply that one means the other, in fact he seems to infer that you need the OS to be less capable for it to be easier to use.
People like iOS not because it does less or in other words can not do certain things. They like it because it does things that it is capable of with ease in a pleasurable way.
Great usability and versatility are not mutually exclusive things and that is how MS seems to be approaching this.
As someone who's been very critical of Microsoft's consumer products, I was quite impressed with the Windows 8 demo at D9. [1]
Windows 8 looks nothing like Windows. It looks much better.
Good job, Microsoft. Make it great and ship it.
But building a great product won't be enough. You'll also have to build a great ecosystem.
[1] http://allthingsd.com/video/?video_id=20D08FE8-3928-43F3-AFE...