
Making Sense of Our First Look at Windows 8 - Flemlord
http://allthingsd.com/20110601/exclusive-making-sense-of-what-we-just-learned-about-windows-8/
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sriramk
Biggest part of announcement was the HTML+JS part. Let that sink in- HTML+JS
is now the premier way to write Windows apps. Who would have thought this day
would come?

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teilo
Don't for a minute think this means that this means platform-neutral apps.

HTML+JS calling into Windows APIs, is more likely what this is, rendering rich
widgets ala ASP.NET controls. I'm willing to bet money on it.

And at that point, who cares? Different development toolset. Same lock-in.

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blntechie
I'm sure they're not going to use ASP.NET controls. If WebOS is universally
accepted as developer friendly I don't see why Windows which is planning for a
similar toolkit will not be considered so.

And let me know when the day arrives when you can develop and run platform-
neutral apps in Mac,iOS or in fact Linux. Don't be unreasonable. Thanks.

~~~
bonch
Apple actually tried to introduce HTML5 as the development platform for the
iPhone, and developers didn't want it.

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tomlin
Not quite. Safari for iOS is crippled when compared to the desktop versions.
You have to write a native app over a web app if you want to allow the user to
upload images or video, for example.

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kklimonda
Ok, just to be sure I understand that correctly - Microsoft has invested quite
a lot of money into developing Silverlight and WPF and then promoting those
technologies among developers as the best thing since sliced bread (not to
mention the only way to write applications for WP7) and now they are doing
that? How is that for the coherent vision and a clear message to people who'd
like to write for their platform?

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jacques_chester
Microsoft invest lots of money into lots of different technologies, then dump
them later. OLE, COM, Win16/32 and many _many_ others have fallen by the
wayside over the years.

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robryan
Another good examples is connecting to a database on the MS stack, so many
different ways of doing it.

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jacques_chester
The canonical example, in fact. They've gone through something like 10
different APIs/frameworks in the last decade, IIRC.

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jfoutz
But how do you make things?

This is a fantastic way to present information. it's beautiful. I would love
this on a tv, or a bunch of displays in my house. especially with an epaper
non light generating kind of display.

But... but... how do you make stuff? how do you design a house? how do you
write code? It seems so very very consumer.

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saturdaysaint
You open a CAD program or code editor?

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maheshs
There is a video on youtube for user interface of windows 8
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p92QfWOw88I>

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lukencode
I think it looks a lot nicer in motion. Though switching between desktop and
tablet modes could be a bit jarring.

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Flemlord
Live rollout:

[http://allthingsd.com/20110601/up-next-at-d9-microsoft-
windo...](http://allthingsd.com/20110601/up-next-at-d9-microsoft-windows-
president-steven-sinofsky-live-at-d9/)

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Apocryphon
Side question: we're going to see the debut of OS X Lion soon this summer, as
well. How often does this happen, when we have a year when both MS and Apple
reveal their upcoming operating system?

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rkudeshi
Technically, Apple showed off Lion last year and is going to release it this
year.

Microsoft is showing off Windows 8 this year and is going to release it next
year.

Nonetheless, this near-overlap happened around the time of Win 7 and Snow
Leopard too (both released late summer 2009).

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r00fus
This looks like a tablet OS rather than a desktop OS.

The elephant in the room is Office. How is Office going to make the transition
to a Windows 8, touch-based UI and still be usable to the dozens of millions
of current users?

The age-old desktop vs. touchscreen conundrum arises. Apple has two versions
of it's OS: OSX for desktops, which is (currently) not a touch-based UI, and
iOS for it's small and large tablet devices which is touch-based.

~~~
Flemlord
I wonder if they're keeping it quiet but plan on Office vNext being fully
integrated into the new UI. I recall some leaked screenshots that seem to be
leaning in that direction. Mmmm... here:

[http://www.redmondpie.com/microsoft-office-15-leaked-
photos-...](http://www.redmondpie.com/microsoft-office-15-leaked-photos-
suggests-metro-based-ui/)

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JulianMorrison
Looks to me like MS just declared the desktop to be dead.

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code_duck
Apple's experiences with iOS are giving most everyone that general impression,
including Apple...

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billybob
If they don't have a ship date yet, why are they showing this off? It seems
like they're just asking for any of their good ideas to be stolen before they
launch. Apple's approach seems to be to develop in secret and show something
off just before it hits the shelves.

Is Microsoft just seeing to see how people react to this, leaving room to
backpedal if necessary?

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smackfu
So that people can get all their outrage out of the way and get used to it.

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tomelders
When Steve Jobs said that touch interfaces on the desktop/laptop sucked, I
think that opinion was based on some thorough testing.

Looks like Microsoft are gonna go ahead and do it anyway.

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petercooper
Looks like OS X and Linux have nothing to worry about here. It's the Microsoft
Bob idea wheeled out again with a trendy minimalist feel instead of a dog.

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mtogo
It's Windows, there isn't going to be a change in userbase no matter what MS
does.

Windows users will not switch to Linux (but it's the year of Linux on the
desktop!) because of the usual issues, but serious (non-VS-using) developers
will never use Windows either. As for OSX, Apple hipsters aren't going to
spontaneously start using Windows, and Windows users aren't going to start
spending 2x as much on their computers any time soon.

~~~
joshes
You managed to pack a great deal of trolling into this post. Kudos for this
one.

