
Why Windows 8 Is Fundamentally Flawed as a Response to the iPad - threepointone
http://daringfireball.net/2011/06/windows_8_fundamentally_flawed
======
teilo
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.

~~~
kenjackson
_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.

------
melvinram
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.

~~~
mbreese
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.

~~~
wvenable
> 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.

~~~
bxr
I agree, there is certainly a market for the tablet that keeps things
possible. The iPad type device is great for consuming content, it excels here,
its probably not going to be beaten (at least not any time soon). But there is
a huge market waiting to be tapped outside of just consuming content, and
microsoft is rightly looking at that.

Not only is a useful tablet what I'm waiting for in a consumer device (for my
definitions of useful), but business will love the thing. At work we have tons
of netbooks and win xp tablet-ish devices littered around the labs and I love
those little fuckers. There is never going to be an iScience or iEngieneer app
to do even the bog-standard things that we need the netbooks around the lab
for, and if there was it would be a re-invention of the wheel that is watered
down with a toy interface slapped on it.

Look at android, many of us use it because we're willing to take a hit on the
UI of our phone if it means we can do more. It will happen with tablets where
we can get a step less polish and a huge jump of possibility.

~~~
sid0
At this point I'm convinced the Android UI is way better than the iOS UI.
Forget how pretty it looks -- the presence of the back button alone elevates
the UI in my opinion.

------
kenjackson
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.

~~~
bruce511
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.

~~~
bad_user
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.

~~~
bonch
> A couple of years ago I also thought desktop-Linux will completely replace
> Windows.

I don't understand how you could have ever thought that.

> 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.

There's a contingent of desktop users who just can't let go. The idea of
things changing is a scary thought. Tablets are exploding in sales because
they're fulfilling the ultimate goal of accessible computing. The maintenance
hell of PCs, tying people to a desk, will be viewed as a fluke in an industry
that was in its technological infancy, the same way we no longer hand-crank
automobiles to start them.

You talk about connecting to a 21-inch monitor and using a keyboard and mouse
as if people WANT to do that. People today are using game consoles and
touchscreens. If they want to see something on a big screen, they'll plug
their mobile devices into their giant HDTVs, or they'll use their Apple TV or
their game console. With the exception of Blizzard, PC gaming already died and
went to consoles and mobile devices, and it's not as if PCs are going to let
users watch YouTube videos, send email, or read books better than an iPad
will.

Mobile devices are the futuristic vision of appliance computing that everyone
has envisioned for decades. That leaves PCs as something leftover for power
users. Steve Jobs gave a quote about desktop PCs, comparing them to pickup
trucks. Most people won't need them, but they'll still be around for those who
do.

~~~
riffraff
but suppose the average user wants to write a long note on facebook (cause
real non-techy people do not use email, anymore). They will also plug a
keyboard. Now, you are back to have a big screen (tv, monitor) and a computing
unit (pc, post-pc-device), and external input device.

You have a PC, again, except the tower casing is small enough and can be used
independently.

------
daeken
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?

~~~
anigbrowl
Actually the sheer earliness and specificity of the preview seems like an
unusually aggressive display of confidence from MS.

~~~
mhw
The earliness and specificity of the preview seems to me like a pre-emptive
strike against whatever Apple announce at WWDC in a few days time.

~~~
anigbrowl
They're not mutually exclusive. Time will tell whether they can effectively
realize their vision, of course, but at least they've made clear that they
have one.

------
marknutter
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.

~~~
daeken
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.

~~~
tptacek
They can; that's what Apple does with iWork.

~~~
thirdsun
So did Apple have a touchscreen friendly version of iWork ready a year before
the iPad launch? i'm pretty sure that the next office version will feature a
native metro UI.

The excel version from the video is just an existing version that hasn't been
adjusted to touchscreens yet.

~~~
thomasz
It is also an important demonstration to business users and developers that
their billions of dollars invested in keyboard+mouse oriented applications
won't be made obsolete over night.

------
Quarrelsome
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.

~~~
bonch
> One of the big selling points of windows is its pursuit of backwards
> compatibility.

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. :)

~~~
thomasz
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...

------
Kylekramer
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?

~~~
ashr
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.

------
stevenj
Let's wait and see.

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...](http://allthingsd.com/video/?video_id=20D08FE8-3928-43F3-AFE1-35DA78EB79FF)

------
51Cards
Ok seems to me that a lot of people are missing the point entirely here...
<insert zzzzzoooooooommmmmmm flying hand over the head motion here>

Microsoft has always worked hard to make Windows as flexible as possible,
hardware wise, functionality, etc. Some consider this a credit, some a
detriment, but no matter what I consider it to be a huge technical challenge.
Several people seem to be taking this from the perspective of an iPad attack
which is a very narrow minded view of the possibilities here.

What MS is doing here (and very wisely I think... IF they can pull it off) is
to produce one OS that works cross hardware environment. Win 8 it seems to me
CAN run like classic Win 7 (and earlier) supporting the plethora of existing
Windows apps. This is a MUST for MS. But originally MS tried to make the old
Windows UI touch friendly, which is a very bad approach. The existing Windows
UI grew up around a mouse and keyboard and MS has finally realized it. You
can't make it work for touch effectively, and so they are wisely separating
the two.

To solve the problem they are wrapping Windows in an OPTIONAL alternate touch
designed UI for systems where that is the preferred interaction method. They
have developed a new class of touch apps and a new way to manage the overall
UI. But most importantly they have blended the two forms of personal computer
interaction. This is BRILLIANT to me. You can now have one device, let's say a
tablet, that you can use like a touch device. But you can ALSO sit it in a
dock, with a keyboard and mouse and use it to replace your desktop PC
including all those legacy apps and Office programs that are the standard.
When done you undock and flip back to the touch UI to take it with you, but
you still have access to all your documents. Microsoft has for the first time
realized that the ultimate device will function in BOTH modes and to be
efficient the OS on that device also needs two distinct methods of
interaction. And this I think is what is brilliant.

You'll never see an iPad as the primary device on an office desk in its
current form and UI. Your accountant or DB admin or whatever will always be
more productive with a keyboard and mouse when it comes to heavy "business"
style applications. This is what the existing touch UI's can't provide. But a
device that can run no compromise Office style apps, business apps, the
millions of existing Windows apps in general... and then pick up and go with a
nice touchscreen keyboard, touch UI, web browsing, etc... I know I've used the
word a couple times but it's brilliant. I just hope their execution is up to
their vision.

Edit... my mind is running with the further possibilities... they will
definitely cross up development between Win Phone and Win 8... so now Windows
developers can target the mobile market and the largest desktop market with
one app. I still don't see the future of Win Phone turning around but who
knows, this could be a very smart move on MS's part to leverage their Windows
developer base and established market.

~~~
Lewisham
My feeling is that this is very much like the "Classic" support that Mac OS X
had for a few iterations. Yes, you can run Classic apps, but you don't really
want to.

Apple themselves only just recently got iTunes from out of their Carbon
compatibility layer, so calling Microsoft out for not getting a 10+ million
line code base wrapped in a new UI in time for Windows 8 is pretty rich. That
said, getting some form of Office Reader or something into the new UI would be
nice.

I am so, so, _so_ glad that Microsoft has double-downed on Metro. Many other
companies would have walked away, given the sales and the guffaws from their
competitors. It honestly makes me respect them a whole lot.

I also like the idea of the multifunctional machine, that can be the workhorse
during the day and the bedroom tablet at night. I would not be surprised if we
see something similar from Apple next year, but it depends on how far the iOS
and Mac OS X codebases/kernels have drifted.

~~~
bonch
> Apple themselves only just recently got iTunes from out of their Carbon
> compatibility layer

iTunes is still a Carbon application, but in fairness, it mostly has to due
with retaining Windows compatibility, and Carbon maps more easily to Win32
than Cocoa would.

~~~
rahoulb
NeXT used to have a Windows compatability layer - it was rumoured to be
included in Mac OSX (yellowbox). I'd bet Apple maintained it alongside Cocoa
(just like they kept the x86 port alive). itunes being carbon is probably just
down to the size of the rewrite.

~~~
Joeri
I suspect they're on the tail end of a big rewrite, and it could even be that
they're announcing a cocoa-based itunes next week. It's been pretty quiet
around itunes for a while now, and it's a product that needs a lot of love to
bring it back up to apple's standards.

~~~
panacea
I get the impression that iTunes is the one division in Apple that's truly
like a different 'business unit' and doesn't sit in the same ship as the rest
of Apple, who are all on board and sail together in the same direction when
focusing on 'the next thing'.

iTunes 10 was the worst thing Apple have launched recently (IMO). I hope they
fix it soon, but I'm not holding my breath.

~~~
rahoulb
It's a shame, because iTunes 3 and 4, when it was just Mac-only music
management (with a couple of devices supported), were amongst my favourite
bits of software ever.

------
joe_the_user
Microsoft Windows was a response to Apple's Macintosh, how many? Twenty five,
thirty years ago?

It was an inferior interface that let you run your old DOS programs even
though they weren't as good. It did well for MS.

I don't know if MS can succeed this way again. But it seems a bit much to say
that this strategy is automatically bad.

------
leif
I was an intern on the windows user experience team last summer, so I saw a
lot of this new ui. While I will never personally enjoy it (emacs is my ui),
I'm proud of them for it and I think it will do well.

The first thing to remember is that you have seen very little of the os as a
whole. You saw a "desktop" and some sample apps. There is a lot to come, and a
big part of the experience will be determined by third-party developers, so
try not to judge too harshly just yet.

Also, it is absolutely _gorgeous_. iOS looks like rocks after this. Big sharp
clunky rocks. Sure, you can pinch and zoom and rotate with some fingers, but
that's all at the app level in iOS. In windows 8 (from the video at least, I
didn't play with it in such a mature form during my stint), _everything_ is
fluid and responsive, transitioning smoothly between actions, rather than
closing one before opening the other. Where iOS enforces conformity between
apps' ui and puts clear separation between them, windows 8 seems to let each
app define itself, yet still be somewhat symbiotic with the os itself, and
with other apps.

Why all the complaints about excel? Microsoft can't alienate enterprise, and I
think we all know how much enterprise hates even UI changes. You aren't going
to do real excel work on a tablet anyway (the most you'll do is scroll around
and look at the figures someone emailed you), so why do you care if the ui
sucks for tablet?

Most importantly, though, I'd like to examine one of Gruber's points:

 _The iPad succeeds because it has eliminated complexity, not because it has
covered up the complexity of the Mac with a touch-based “shell”._

The iPad does eliminate complexity: this gives it an opportunity to break
current notions of computing, and this helps users recontextualize the tablet
and reintroduce themselves to it. In a way, it's a My First Post-PC Computer,
designed to re-teach us about computers, as infants, to clear the way for
better things to come.

Windows 8 might be that better thing, or at least the first real
instantiation. I find that it seems extremely futuristic, in the sci-fi movie
sense. It seems like the type of interface we've seen in movies about future
societies where computers are embedded in everything, and they all
interoperate seamlessly.

Notice the emphasis on home networking, and imagine your desktop, with all
your pictures and movies, serving them through your house to your TV, your
tablets, your kids' tablets, your picture frames. Your kitchen table runs the
same browser as your desktop, and can access everything on your desktop, so
you can pull up recipes that you bookmarked earlier that day. It also lets you
know when you have to finish dinner so you can make the movie you scheduled.
Your fridge knows what's stocked (and what's expired), and can send a message
to your spouse's car asking them to pick up the ingredients you're missing for
dinner tonight. Of course, when they get to the store, the cart recognizes
them and loads up the list too.

Of course I've gone a little bit crazy there, but I'm sure you can see what
I'm doing. Right now, we have (or, in about a year I guess we will have) two
devices that interact in a way something like this. The only thing left to do
then, is to scale up from 2 to 100. That's easy, the step from 1 to 2 is the
hard part.

The point is that windows 8 looks to me like the first real step toward this
goal, and the progress is happening exactly in the fact that it does _not_
eliminate complexity, it does _not_ segregate the tablet and the pc.

Why do you need to plug your iPad in to your Mac in order to do stuff with it
(if this is not the case, sorry, I don't own one and my memory of being told
this may be fabricated)? Because iOS doesn't have all the stuff in OS X that
it needs to do things on its own. Your windows 8 tablet will have all that, so
it can function on its own, but it also speaks exactly the same language as
your windows 8 pc, so communication and cooperation between devices is
trivial, even natural.

Of course, I still don't like microsoft, but I have to give them this one.
They are absolutely killing it.

~~~
MrScruff
Perhaps I'm being paranoid, but I don't see how the following two statements
are easily resolved.

 _I was an intern on the windows user experience team last summer, so I saw a
lot of this new ui. ... Of course, I still don't like microsoft, but I have to
give them this one. They are absolutely killing it._

Also, I don't understand what great distinction you're making between a
potential Windows 8 tablet and an iOS device. An iOS device needs to be
plugged into a PC precisely once, in order to be setup. After that it can be
used happily as an entirely independent device if you choose. Also, iOS and
the MacOS have far more in common than they have different. The principal
difference is the interface related APIs.

Your post seems to be making the usual mistake of comparing something that
doesn't exist to products that Apple are selling right now.

~~~
ghurlman
> Your post seems to be making the usual mistake of comparing something that
> doesn't exist to products that Apple are selling right now.

No, that was Gruber's mistake.

~~~
MrScruff
* No, that was Gruber's mistake. *

In what sense? If I release a controlled promotional video demonstrating my
new product, I would expect people to assume it will be at least
representative of what will ship, likely showing the product in the best
possible light.

On the other hand, if a company claims that their unreleased product is an
'x-killer' then I'm inclined to reserve judgement until I read a review or try
it in person.

------
6ren
It's worth remembering that Windows tends to alternate hit-and-miss (eg.
Win95, Win2000, WinXP, Vista, Win7), which in some cases indicates
experimentation with something new that didn't work out at first.

Also, MS will really want to work on ARM. It's easy to port the OS, but legacy
software (MS's key strength) is not. However, much recent software is written
for their VM (.Net) and _can_ be ported. It will be great for MS to make this
leap - and every organization that is dependent on such software will be
rooting for them. One would think the same would be true for Java...

------
hetman
I have to admit, this new Windows 8 approach has one aspect that is
surprisingly reminiscent of how I saw the whole Windows CE product up to
version 6. That is, trying to cram as much as possible of the Windows desktop
into a form factor it was never going to function well in (both due to UI and
performance).

Now I could be wrong that this is the reason why Windows CE 6.x and below
failed to gain much popularity, but it is why I found it never got my
attention no matter how much I wanted it to.

~~~
wvenable
The big problem with Windows CE is that it looked like Windows but it wasn't;
you couldn't take a Windows 95 app and run on it CE. If you could have done
that, it may have been much more successful.

------
neworbit
To me this seems very misguided. If Win8 has a tablet-touch mode that is well
suited for operation at casual usage and the ability to drill down into a
power user full Windows UI, that strikes me as ideal. And from what I'm seeing
in these vids, it's pretty well done.

Or to put it another way, this seems to be the proverbial 3.0 version of MS
software - if WinCE was 1.0 and TabletXP/Origamiproject was 2.0, this looks
like the one that'll get it right. (So far, and from what we see, etc.)

------
comex
> They can make buttons more “touch friendly” all they want, but they’ll never
> make Excel for Windows feel right on a touchscreen UI.

I suspect it goes the other way, too: touch friendly apps won't feel right
with a mouse. The video reassures us that "of course [the new apps] work great
with mouse and keyboard as well, if that's what you have", but the trade-offs
and requirements are completely different. Just based on the video:

\- For a touchscreen, buttons must be large and spread out, but the result
with a mouse would be a lot of unnecessary movement-- jumping all over the
screen.

\- This also means you can't pack a lot of buttons into a small space (or have
a menu bar), which, when done in moderation, is a good way to add flexibility
to a mouse UI. A touch UI would seem unnecessarily simplified.

\- Scrolling things around is really natural on a touchscreen, but most mice
don't even have horizontal scroll wheels. How do you scroll sideways, flick
with the mouse? Reach over to the keyboard?

Etc.

~~~
pkamb
>I suspect it goes the other way, too: touch friendly apps won't feel right
with a mouse.

That's the angle I'm looking at it from too. Why should I install this on my
non-touchscreen Thinkpad? Will I need to constantly 'flick' and scroll things
with my Trackpoint?

From the video: "[The apps] are designed for touch... but of course they work
well with mouse and keyboard as well if that's what you have."

Sorry, but that's not how it works. Microsoft needs to realize this.
Everything he was doing there would be terrible with a mouse.

------
tomlin
Most of the time Gruber's right about stuff like this, in a round-about way.
But this feels _stressed_. Gruber can find simple brilliances in Apple
products (rightfully so), but cannot see the brilliance of bringing the
concept of a unified OS back from the grave and totally reconceptualizing that
idea? Come on.

------
alimbada
I don't usually do this (<http://xkcd.com/386/>), but this is the second
article I've read today which shows the author's complete lack of
understanding about the subject (like that's never happened before in the tech
industry...)

Windows currently comes in 7 different flavours
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7_editions>), which have varying
numbers of features. Why would anyone with half a brain assume that a full
blown Windows 8 complete with touch enabled apps would be used across all form
factors? That doesn't make sense on any level and assuming that Microsoft
would do something that silly undermines the intelligence of the people
working there (granted there is a lot of beaureacracy at MS that hold them
back from being truly successful, but their engineers are far from idiots).
Already, Windows Phone is a vastly cut down version of the OS (to the point of
being annoying as it _lacks_ some much needed features)

From what I've seen and heard so far, Windows 8 is meant to be _scalable_. Now
whether that will work in practice is yet to be seen, but I don't see any
reason for them not to be able to have a minimal OS for phones (like Windows
Phone 7), a slightly more feature-rich tablet OS and a full blown desktop OS
(which itself will probably come in the Home, Pro, IcingOnCake, etc. editions)
that can also run on larger touch-screens. Of course, all of this is
contingent on whether they can properly modularise the OS so that unwanted
bulk can be dropped for lighter versions and also making sure that lighter
versions are optimised for their respective form factors in terms of
performance and battery life.

------
ThomPete
From the post:

* "Microsoft is obviously trying to learn from Apple, but they clearly don’t understand why the iPad runs iOS, and not Mac OS X." *

So Back to the Mac as Jobs called it was not an attempt to take some of the
GUI from iOS and apply it to the OS X?

I am a mac user (former PC back in the nineties) and wont be switching anytime
soon. But let's not throw stones when we live in glasshouses.

------
revscat
So what this looks like to me is that Microsoft took OS X's Dashboard, skinned
it with Metro, and moved it to be front and center in the OS's UI.

It definitely looks striking, but seeing as how I wound up not actually using
Dashboard -- ever, really -- I'm skeptical about how this will succeed in
practice, i.e. in Getting Things Done On A Computer. What is the flow for
doing something like working on a Word document, reading/replying to an email,
and then switching back to Word?

Insofar as desktops/laptops are concerned, this doesn't appear to help with
that flow, and actually appears to interfere with it. That's the point that
Gruber is making, I believe.

------
roc
I think Gruber is wrong to believe that Microsoft truly means to continue
their long-suffering approach of putting legacy Windows on touch devices.

The whole time Microsoft was developing WP7, they were touting CE 6.5. A bolt-
on veneer for a failed approach. Clearly, Microsoft didn't believe a word of
the nonsense they were spouting about 6.5. That's just how they are. They talk
up the old platform until the day they kill it.

And I think Windows-on-ARM is the giveaway. If Microsoft believed legacy apps
were still so important, why would they have so alienated Intel to create a
flavor of Windows that will never run those legacy apps? [1]

The iPad's noted deficiency in any attempt to truly replace a PC is the lack
of a 'docked' mode. that is: some way to drop it into a keyboard/mouse/display
dock to get some desktop-type-work done. The existing keyboard dock just
underscores how poorly it handles these things at present. [2]

And now Microsoft is pruning and optimizing Windows for ARM. The apps will all
have to be rewritten [3]. But clearly they're thinking about touch _and_
keyboard/mouse. This sounds like an obvious lead-in to encouraging people to
write those Windows 8 ARM apps with a native touch interface as well as a
'docked' kb/m interface.

And if they pull that off -- an all-metro Windows 8 touch default and plenty
of designed-for-touch apps, but the _capability_ to dock and go kb/m on
desktop work -- they'll be on solid footing to fight for their business
customers.

And, honestly, if Microsoft could get out of its own way and streamline their
media offerings, they could turn 8 into a really great device for consumers
too.

[1] The nascent arm-in-the-datacenter market is somewhat plausible, but I
don't buy it as a lone justification to so thoroughly piss of Intel. It's not
nearly as important as trying to protect the relevance of user-facing Windows
in a post-PC era.

[2] Try navigating around an app or the OS with the keyboard. Oh wait, you
can't. How many writers don't switch apps constantly during their process to
check references/email/etc? And isn't that who the keyboard was _for_?

[3] CLR apps that run on Windows 8 ARM are going to be about as popular as
pixel-doubled iPhone apps on the iPad.

------
KeyBoardG
They've shown a couple minutes of software for a product that is atleast a
year away. This article is completely pointless and is sensational to attract
traffic of fanboys.

------
ChrisLTD
Kudos to Microsoft for doing more than trying to create their own copy of iOS.
Microsoft's biggest strength is the Windows ecosystem, and if they are able to
leverage it in a userfriendly touch-based environment, tablets based on
Windows 8 should be a big win for them.

We should be applauding Microsoft for going their own way. With all due
respect to Gruber, we already have iOS, WebOS and Android, why do we need yet
another implementation of the same stripped-down OS idea?

------
skrebbel
This is what Microsoft has always done, and afair it's the only company to
ever have really succeeded at it: make a piece of software accessible and
understandable for novices, yet powerful enough for power users. Office has
this. Windows has always had this.

If any company can actually make something that works great on very different
devices, it's Microsoft.

------
MatthewPhillips
I think having dual modes makes a lot of sense. Being able to dock your tablet
and then have a keyboard/mouse with full Windows is a superior experience to
docking your tablet and still have a touch device. The iPad docking experience
is not very good, compared to a computer.

------
ravivyas
Look MA!.. I dont need to sync my devices.

This is what Win 8 hopes to offer. Its a bold , risky & tough task , but if it
does work WIN 8 will blow every other tablet out of the water ( I am saying
this while being an Droid Army member :-) ).

------
6ren
> (no explicit saving, no file system, ready to quit at a moment’s notice, no
> processing in the background, etc.)

These don't seem like necessary tradeoffs for a tablet in the long-term, as
processing power increases.

------
BruceForth
> The ability to run Mac OS X apps on the iPad, with full access to the file
> system, peripherals, etc., would make the iPad worse, not better.

For iPad users, yes, but not for Windows users.

------
code_duck
While it's what I'd expect Gruber to say, it's not realistic to say that
nobody else would have made a touchscreen OS for phones and tablets by now if
Apple had not.

------
mahrain
With Windows 8's Metro interface being a shell on top of the old Windows 7
shell, I can imagine pretty well how HP's Web OS running on Windows is going
to work.

------
cubeboy
Daring Fireball - what a shock.

'If not for the existence and success of iOS, Nokia wouldn’t be in trouble..'
If not for Nokia, iOS would never existed, touch screen phones would not have
been invented.

If not for the competitiveness and success of Windows, Apple wouldn't have had
to redesign itself. And now Windows is redesigning itself to compete. Apple
didn't invent this stuff, they re-adapted existing technologies into a
pioneering product. And now other companies are doing the same.

Gruber's points do not impact as much with such a thick layer of bias.

~~~
alexqgb
If you think Gruber's biased in favor of Apple, just wait until you meet Steve
Jobs.

I'm only half-joking. I mean the whole POINT of DF is that it's written from a
very Apple-centric point of view. That doesn't mean lavishing uncritical
praise on everything Apple does, while mindlessly heaping opprobrium on their
competitors. What it DOES mean is cultivating a point-of-view that attempts to
closely track the one held by Apple itself.

If Gruber says something is idiotic, what he means is "I think Apple thinks
this is idiotic, and here's why."

Obviously, his insights aren't perfect. But given that Jobs & Co. don't blog,
DF provides one of the more reliable guides as to what the folks in Cupertino
are actually seeing and thinking. Its sustained success indicates that, all
things considered, Gruber is doing a pretty solid job.

~~~
cubeboy
I have seen that, and I do like enthusiasts, and I have enjoyed DF before, but
every now and then a little too much seethes through and I feel that the point
of comparing Windows 8 to Mac OSX gets lost in the forest of praise for Apple.

I wanted to read DF's Apple-centric point of view, but couldn't get past the
third paragraph.

Its difficult when you're independent of platforms and have to read literature
written by those who are limited by their sole choice of one platform.

~~~
alimbada
"Its difficult when you're independent of platforms and have to read
literature written by those who are limited by their sole choice of one
platform."

I couldn't agree more.

------
jackvalentine
My burning question is: will Microsoft finally tighten up their licensing to
stop OEMs loading up Windows PCs with crapware?

------
kprobst
Oh please.

------
kleptco
Gruber fundamentally doesn't want to remember Jobs saying that iPhone runs
"real OSX": [http://www.tuaw.com/2007/06/04/steve-jobs-iphone-runs-
real-o...](http://www.tuaw.com/2007/06/04/steve-jobs-iphone-runs-real-os-x/)

He of course suffers from a very severe case of Cupertino Syndrome:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome>

~~~
Hari_Seldon
Not sure if you're being ironic here, but I'll assume you're not - iPhone DOES
run OSX, but with those parts removed that are not required for the device,
it's not Mac OSX, but it is OSX

