How Would You Better Integrate Microsoft’s Products?

With the Windows 8 beta out next week and getting all the attention especially with it’s integration of the company’s Kinect technology, the rest of Microsoft’s product line-up has taken a back seat in the eyes of the public and businesses.  It is a very extensive line-up though including Hotmail, SkyDrive, Office Web Apps, Office 365, Office 2010, Windows Server, Windows Phone, ForeFront, Lync, Xbox 360 and many more.  One of the core benefits of using Microsoft’s products is the way that they integrate with one another, or do they?  The integration between Windows and Windows Server is obvious and long-standing, again it’s obvious to see the links between Microsoft Office and Office 365, but what about the rest of the product line-up?

If we look more at the consumer products, Live Mesh and SkyDrive integrate a little bit, but not enough for most people’s tastes, Windows Phone and Windows 8 are rumoured to integrate much more and the poor Xbox 360 is pretty much left out on its own.  But why is this and why is it something I believe needs to change?

The reason for the continued separation in Microsoft’s products is because of the way the company is structured.  Each department is effectively set against it’s ‘rivals’ in terms of meeting targets and winning plaudits from the bosses higher up in the company.  This tribal approach can, on occasion, make it difficult to get different departments working together because they are competing day to day.  Some of the reason too sits with purely technical challenges, such as the ‘current’ status of the Windows Phone kernel being a unique product outside of Windows 7, 8′s and Windows Server’s MinWin, and some are business decisions.  A good example of this is the decision to limit Windows Live Mesh to 5Gb of synced storage because if the company opened up all of SkyDrive then people would fill it up, never use it again and Microsoft would be obligated to maintain that data in perpetuity.

Not all integration goes well however.  Google have been heavily criticised recently for their new privacy policy where they want to share much more closely the data and information you have in their different products and services.  On the face of it this looks perfectly sensible, but the move is already being investigated by governments around the world after a public-backlash.

So how would you better integrate Microsoft’s products and why?  There can be little doubt that the integration we currently have can really help in day to day life.  For example I store some critical Word and Excel documents in SkyDrive.  I can open these on any PC in Office 2010 from a Windows 7 Jumplist as though they were stored on that computer, and I can also open them on my Windows Phone.  On each device I know that I’m always getting the most up to date version of the file, which makes life much simpler.  On the flip-side my Hotmail is now pretty full of more than ten years worth of emails and, crucially, attachments.  There’s no way to strip these attachments out other than to completely delete the emails, and many of these attachments are either duplicates or in the case of sent email, no longer required most of the time.  SkyDrive would seem like the perfect place for them to be stripped out to and stored, but there’s no way to do this (currently).

So how would you further and better integrate Microsoft’s product line-up?  Would you create closer ties between Windows and the Xbox, so that you can push and pull video and music directly to the console as easily as you can drag and drop files on your own desktop, or would you want better wireless integration between your Windows Phone and the Microsoft designed Ford Sync in your car?  Do you even like the thought of further integrating products or does it leave a Google Privacy-esque bad taste in your mouth?  Why not tell us in the comments.

The Last Week Without Windows 8, What is the Tech World Doing?

Unless you hadn’t noticed, Microsoft are gearing up for the release of the Windows 8 (beta) Consumer Preview publicly in just over a week, but others, such as official beta testers and MSDN (Microsoft Developer Network) subscribers will no doubt get it a week before as happened with Windows 7.  We’re now in the last week then with no news.  So far though the old adage that “no news is good news” hasn’t gone so well for Microsoft, and Windows 8 has received some very bad press as IT Pros and businesses express their concerns about Metro, and the relegation of the traditional Windows desktop to almost a side-feature.

Also this week Apple have unveiled the next version of OS X (they’re dropped the Mac bit) called “Mountain Lion”.  It was widely expected that the company would build more tablet-like features into the operating system, expanding on the iOS-style Launcher that was introduced with the previous version.  Almost as if in response to the negative publicity Windows 8 has received they’ve decided not to press ahead with further tablet-friendly features for now, assuming that any such features were even planned, and focus on the desktop instead.

They have added some features that challenge Windows 8 however including some new social networking and cloud integration, and a notifications panel.  Mountain Lion will be released, out of Apple’s normal cycle for OS X, this summer to challenge Windows 8 on the desktop and to try to convince disgruntled IT Pros that Apple is a friend to the desktop user.

Elsewhere on the Internet you’ll have noticed that general tech news on the blogs has been somewhat slow this week, this is because a lot of people will have taken the week off anticipating a mad few weeks from next Wednesday.  For those of us writing Windows 8 books then the process will begin in earnest from the middle of next week, and I have just finished clearing out, tidying and sorting my home office to get everything ready.

You’ll find that authors will probably have been clearing the decks in recent weeks, as I know I have, making sure that all the other work that will need to be done in the next few months, until June in my case, has been finished and put to bed way ahead of time.  It is going to be extremely busy from here’on in and personally I have not just one, but two Windows 8 books to complete by the end of May, one of which has to be written in a format called ASCIIDOC, which is equivalent to writing a whole book in XML  :/

As for everyone else, well you’ll know what you have been doing, but the crescendo of excitement surrounding the release of the Consumer Preview in the last few weeks seems to have fall very quiet in recent days.  People are now sitting and waiting for February 29th to come around.

How many people will download the public release of the Windows 8 Consumer Preview remains to be seen, but Microsoft will need many millions of people to do so in order to claim a success.  This figure would need to be at least 9 million or well into double-figures in the next month or two for the company to claim victory and that people are genuinely excited about Windows 8.  So far, all departments within Microsoft have been banned from discussing Windows 8 at all, with the only outlet being through the Building Windows 8 blog.  On February 29th that embargo looks set to be lifted and we will no doubt then see a torrent of information released, day on day, week on week, that will give the public plenty to read and give the rest of us plenty to write about.

Now though it’s all very quiet.  In a way this is lovely as I’ve been able to enjoy some down time and sort some last minute things out, like my office.  In a way though it’s quite eerie.  I remember this happening the week before the Windows 7 beta was released, and believe me, all hell’s gonna break loose soon.

Why Enterprise-Level Metro Apps Can and Will Work

I’ve written a lot about Windows 8 over the last few days as we approach the release of the Consumer Preview at the end of this month.  One subject that’s not been touched on so far is how effective new Metro apps can or could be in businesses and enterprises, and if a move to Metro might actually be a good idea for many companies.  I thought it was time to take a look at this subject in a bit more detail.

The first time I saw a Metro business app demonstrated was on a Windows 7 tablet way back in May 2011.  We didn’t know anything about Windows 8 at this point and this demo app, written and presented by Microsoft at their Tech.Days event was something new, we had no idea that it was a demo of something much bigger and in fairness the prople presenting it didn’t know either.

This app was relatively simple, a tracking app for real-estate agents out on the move.  It showed how the computer’s GPS could help locate their next appointment and it had work, task and contract management tools built right into the finger-friendly interface.  I pretty-much dismissed it at the time, as this was a Windows 7 tablet it was being demonstrated on and how could these compete, but I never forgot it.  What we didn’t know was around the corner was the deal with ARM and the promise of a new tablet-friendly OS.  But what about the rest of business?  Could Metro apps really be the way forward and how might they work?

One of the biggest pluses for businesses to move to Metro apps is that all too many companies are still using older bespoke software that runs only in either Windows XP or the much hated Internet Explorer 6.  These apps will simply have to be re-written and up until now companies have resisted.  With all support for XP ending in April 2014, which is less than 800 days from now, a critical deadline is approaching.  My argument is why redevelop these apps for Windows 7 when developing for Metro will be a better idea.  Let me explain why.

Microsoft have really pushed the boat out with the Software Development Kit (SDK) for Metro, developing it in such a way that it’s easier than ever before to write apps for the new platform.  On top of this any app compiled using the new tools will automatically run on any and all Windows 8 devices, regardless of the processor they run on.  This is an incredible achievement and is the most significant part, for me anyway, of Windows 8 overall.  This will make redevelopment of bespoke apps, and the development of new apps, much easier and cheaper.

There is also the look and feel of Metro apps to be considered.  Just because Microsoft have shown off Metro apps with minimal pull down and push up touch menus doesn’t mean that this is the way they have to be written.  A screen width of 1080 pixels is still the same resolution regardless of whether its running Metro or the Windows desktop and just as much text and information can be fitted on it.

Moreover some of the examples of Metro business apps that have appeared so far are very reminiscent of the Flash and Shockwave apps that people were designing five to seven years ago.  Back then they never took off because the plug-ins didn’t provide all the power and resources that were necessary, and could be quite hungry for processor-cycles and memory themselves.  Now though, all these resources are baked into the operating system.

The opportunity exists then for creating rich, imaginative and friendly interfaces that are, and this is the important part, designed to work with a mouse and keyboard.  Let’s not forget that what we’ve seen so far with Metro is not the only way to design a Metro app!  Software development for Windows over the years has shown us that the only limit to innovation on the desktop is the limit of the Human imagination.

Imagine then you have a book-keeping app where you can take advantage of sliding pages, even creating a ledger style and feel if you like, or a data-entry app that, rather than having people squint at small boxes and bemoan having to stare at the world’s nastiest interface all day, every day, has a user-friendly tabbed or animated interface that does the same job.  Things don’t need to be scaled up 10-times, you can design for a mouse and keyboard and everything still can be bespoke!

On top of this you then have the same apps available for people working on laptops and tablets with various hardware configurations and, with almost no problems at all, you end up with apps that can be ported to your company’s Windows Phone smartphones.

I want to finish though by answering the question about requiring to have multiple windows open on a screen at one time, each one usually a different running app.  Sharing between apps and even cloud services is baked into Windows 8 for the very first time.  Metro apps here can save you time by being designed to automatically share your data between these apps, sparing your workload.  A cleverly designed app suite in Metro could use tabs or panels to easily switch between, or display, multiple apps on your screen side by side, making everything accessible.

There is nothing to stop any of this from happening and much of it is happening already.  In short I believe that the arguments against using Metro in the business space have been clouded by the over-simplistic apps we’ve seen so far.  Nobody has yet seen the true potential of a Metro app when designed properly, these are still to come.  I believe that when they begin to appear, the world will suddenly stop and want to take another look.

Will we Anti-Trust Microsoft in the Future?

It’s not that long ago, really not a distant memory, when Microsoft were hauled before regulators in the US and Europe for several years over the anti-competitive practices of bundling Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player with Windows.  Competitors such as Opera and Real Networks (remember them?) said such practices were damaging their own success and as such Microsoft had to spend millions of dollars defending themselves only to mostly lose and have to offer both versions of Windows without Windows Media Player and also the Browser Ballot screen in the EU (which I have to admit is a very good idea anyway) so that users could make an informed choice about what web browser they wanted to use.

Since this happened such software has begun to creep back into Windows.  Windows 8 is without doubt the worst offender ever with a new Metro version of Internet Explorer embedded into the new Start Screen as well as the desktop version present also.  It is the first version of Windows to include anti-virus software and now we learn that the ARM-version of Windows 8 will also include desktop versions of Microsoft’s next office suite, codenamed “Office 15″ in the form of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote.  So what’s happening here and could Microsoft face more anti-trust action in the coming years?

To look at this we have to look at the competition.  When Microsoft were going through their anti-trust actions there really wasn’t any.  At first they just had two desktop operating systems to compete against, OS X and GNU/Linux.  With this they had a monopoly, but one that they’d worked hard for and earned.  With the software things were a different issue where there were a great many web browsers, media players and more.

I began to wonder what might happen with further anti-trust actions when Microsoft announced that, for the first time, they would be bundling anti-virus software with Windows.  ”Windows Defender” isn’t like the existing Windows Defender that first appeared with XP, it’s a re-badged version of Microsoft’s free Security Essentials product.  So far no other anti-virus vendor has kicked up a fuss, though that may still happen.

We had further news though this week that Windows 8 on ARM processors will also include bundled versions of the company’s next generation Office suite in the form of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote.  Surely then this would cause a real storm and trigger another anti-trust investigation right away?  Actually I don’t think it will, and it’s likely that Microsoft may never face another anti-trust investigation again.

There are several reasons for this.  The first is that in the last few years all manner of popular and effective competition has sprung up in the operating system space, in the form of iOS, WebOS, QNX, Chrome OS and most notably Android.  Each and every one of these operating systems (with the notable exception of ChromeOS which is entirely cloud-based) come pre-installed with a bespoke web browser, media player and more and all but iOS come with a pre-loaded Office productivity suite.  This then is surely what will have triggered Microsoft’s decision to bundle a version of Office with Windows 8 tablets.

It’s a savvy move too.  They will undoubtedly be cut-down versions, similar to the Office web apps, and will be used to try and up-sell people to the full version of Office on their PCs in the same way that Office Starter, which is commonly shipped free of charge with new PCs does already.

It is very easy now then for Microsoft’s lawyers to argue that bundling Office 15 with Windows 8 tablets isn’t anti-competitive at all, especially as they don’t do it with the desktop version of the OS.  They’re just copying what other tablet operating system makers have been doing for some time now.  With the anti-virus argument it might be a harder argument to make, and it is possible we will see some of the smaller or even major anti-virus vendors complaining to the US authorities or to the EU.  It’s much more likely though that they’ll simply dismiss Windows Defender as being “rubbish” (which it isn’t I should add if you’re considering it) and trying to convince people to buy their own suites anyway.

So what do you think the legal future is for Microsoft given everything they’re bundling with Windows 8?  Why not tell us in the comments below?

Can Windows 8 Be All Things to All People? The Case for Splitting It Up!

Yesterday Microsoft finally announced their plans for Windows 8 running on ARM-designed processors.  The news came with two very interesting pieces of information…

“WOA (Windows on ARM) includes desktop versions of the new Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. These new Office applications, codenamed ‘Office 15,’ have been significantly architected for both touch and minimized power/resource consumption, while also being fully-featured for consumers and providing complete document compatibility. WOA supports the Windows desktop experience including File Explorer, Internet Explorer 10 for the desktop, and most other intrinsic Windows desktop features—which have been significantly architected for both touch and minimized power/resource consumption.”

Now before I begin I want to talk about some of the things that happened in the last century, namely the birth of the consumer versions of Windows.  This began with Windows 95 which was bold in much the same way as Windows 8 is now because it broke the clearly defined user interface paradigm and went with a new way of working with our desktops.  It turned out that this new way was hugely successful, but this freedom to innovate with Windows came at a cost.  The consumer and business editions of Windows had begun and they stayed on this track until the launch of Windows XP in 2001.

By the end of the 20th century things were not going well for consumer editions of Windows.  The operating system had become a stability nightmare while its business counterpart was doing fine, and clearly the Windows NT kernel, the core of the operating system, was much more stable and secure than anything the consumer team could come up with.  Thus at this point the teams were merged and Windows became a single product for both consumers and businesses alike.  Even this had its problems however with Windows XP, the first outing, being criticised as being too “consumer friendly” and not business-like at all.  The arguments passed however and XP became, and still is, hugely popular on the workplace desktop.

Now the kernel discussion has moved to other platforms with Windows Server and Windows 7 already sharing the same core and rumours abounding that the next major update of the Windows Phone operating system will follow suit and adopt what’s been called MinWin.  This makes complete sense.  If Microsoft have only one kernel across all their products it makes it easier to update, makes cross-device compatibility simpler and much more besides.  This is what Apple has been doing for several years already when they based the first version of iOS on their desktop OS X operating system.

Now however Windows 8 is changing the game, and the problem is tablet computing.  Microsoft are so far behind in the tablet market that if they don’t do something radical, right now, they’ll lose it forever and at that point their market share will inevitably dwindle to the point where they become the next IBM and have to find something else to do.

Windows 8 is giving everybody the new Metro tablet interface as the default Windows 8 UI.  Sure, business users will be able to switch it off and revert to the desktop but that’s not the point.  The point is yesterday’s announcement about Windows 8 running on ARM-powered processors.  Here Microsoft have now stated that the desktop will exist on ARM and that the platform will come pre-loaded with versions of the next editions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote.  Surely this is great news?  Anybody who wants a Windows tablet that they can use for serious work will now be able to.  The desktop is being modified to work much more effectively with touch and all is going to go brilliantly.

If you detected a hint of sarcasm running through that last paragraph then you’d be right.  I am deeply concerned about the inclusion of the Windows desktop in the ARM version of the operating system.  While its easy to argue that this paves the way for hardware manufacturers to create low-power ARM-based laptops and ultrabooks, the simple fact remains, and Microsoft have confirmed this, that no existing x86 or x64 apps will run on the ARM version of Windows.  The existence of desktop versions of these Office programs won’t even give hardware makers the option to hide the desktop on their devices.

This means, for starters that the most common question asked by people with ARM-powered Windows 8 devices will be “Why won’t my software install on this computer?”  But the ramifications run much deeper than this.  It means, for instance, that Microsoft have pretty much given up, in the short term anyway, of creating any meaningful versions of their Office apps for Metro.  Adobe has shown with Photoshop Touch how powerful touch apps can be, and a Metro implementation of the Ribbon UI, which is already very finger-friendly, could be extremely effective.

But no.  Microsoft have stated “desktop versions” instead, despite the fact that past Windows explorer these people will have nothing else that ever will, or ever can run on their desktop.  The term, ‘frustrating’ will probably come up a lot from these people.

Meanwhile, business users and IT Pros are bemoaning having Metro foisted on them when they’d much rather get used to that at home but still keep the traditional desktop at work.  This doesn’t sound unreasonable on the face of it.  What Microsoft are doing here though is taking Windows 95 too far.  They’re forcing an unwanted consumer interface onto business users, while now at the same time plugging a pointless and useless business interface into consumer devices!

I could have coped with the former but the latter just makes no sense to me.  Thus I believe the time has come to split Windows once again into consumer and business versions, managed by different teams.  It’s a good time to do it too.  The Windows kernel is very well managed and there’s no reason in the world why both versions couldn’t just be features and skins on top of MinWin, much in the way Windows 7 and Windows 8 are already.  We need a clear separation and demarkation between what is a consumer product and what is a business product.

I can understand installing Metro onto some business machines because there are a great many times when a Metro app will work great in the workplace, I’ve seen them demonstrated personally, and for everything else there’s the desktop.  Putting a desktop that won’t run existing Windows programs though, and for which the major software companies are unlikely to ever recode their applications due to the small size of the market they’d be selling into just doesn’t make any sense.  So now Windows has to be split.  There has never, in my view, been a better case for doing it and frankly there’s never been a more appropriate time.

Windows 8 Consumer Preview Coming February 29th

The beta “Consumer Preview” version of Microsoft’s new Windows 8 operating system could be released on Wednesday 29th February.  Microsoft have announced a “Windows 8 Consumer Preview event” in the city, that is also home to the Mobile World Congress expo that week.

This looks like a reasonable time to launch the beta given that Microsoft previously said it would release it at the end of February.  For those on the official testing programme or who subscribe to their software via the MDSN website, with Windows 7 these groups received the beta around one week to ten days before so if this is repeated this could mean that they get delivery of the beta any time from the 17th of this month, which is what I was expecting personally.

The Consumer Preview will include many features not seen in the previous Developer Preview release, which Microsoft gave out publicly in September last year.  This is because many of those features either had not been written yet or were not finished.  One of the things that is set to change considerably is the new Metro interface, and several leaks in the last couple of weeks have shown that in some ways Microsoft has changed it significantly.

The Developer Preview has received some criticisms from business users and IT Pros, primarily because of Metro, but it remains to be seen how many of those criticisms are answered satisfactorily by the Consumer Preview.  Business users should not be concerned about the name “Consumer Preview” either as this is basically code for, “We’ve got developers excited [hopefully] but now we need to spur those developers on and make sure they’ve not forgotten about us by getting millions of members of the public excited as well.”

New features that have been demonstrated but not yet used by the public, including the new “Windows App Store” will open at the same time.  The final release of the operating system is expected later in the year around October.

Why Have Microsoft Been So Quiet About Windows 8

In case you missed it, we’ve had a great Windows 8 discussion going on here at gHacks in the last couple of days, one that is no doubt set to continue for a while yet in various forms as we look forward to the release of the Consumer Preview (beta) at the end of this month.  One of the issues that people have highlighted with Windows 8 is the poor communication we’ve had so far from Microsoft.  So why is this and what has caused it?

I’m writing this as an outsider looking in.  I’ve no real idea why Microsoft have chosen to keep quiet on so many things, such as having Windows 8 default to the desktop as the main user interface which seems to be the biggest and most common question.  I do have some insight into the company, the products and the people behind Windows 8 however, so hopefully I might be able to shed some light as to the reasons why, and what the historical perspective of this is.

Before Windows 7 the Windows betas were a mess.  The official testing community, of which I have been a member for years, usually got access to builds of a new operating system during the alpha stage.  This was pretty pointless as if Microsoft wanted you to find bugs you would probably find one within five minutes of installing the thing that would prevent you from using it completely.  In fact Microsoft have said that the majority of bugs reported by testers over the years were things the company already knew about.  One of the problems associated with such an open development process was that features that never made it to the final product, either because they never worked reliably, or because the company simply ran out of development time, did on occasion cause some distress for testers and bad publicity for Microsoft.  A couple of great examples are the relational file system WinFS and a new Guest Mode that would roll back user settings and files when someone new finished using your PC.  Both were slated for release in Windows Vista and neither worked properly.  WinFS, under a new name, is only making a comeback now, and only in Windows Server 8.

It was after this that the former head of Microsoft’s Office division, Steven Sinofsky, took charge of Windows development.  Sinofsky was already a very secretive man and much of the secrecy now revolves around him, his personality and his desire to make certain that the only information that makes it out into the public domain is the correct information.

Thus Microsoft launched the Building Windows 8 blog where Sinofsky and his team have been trickling out information steadily since shortly before the Developer Preview of Windows 8 was released.  We can be certain that if Microsoft didn’t need to get developers writing Metro apps we certainly wouldn’t have seen Windows 8 then at all, and it wouldn’t be appearing for the first time until now.  This is because Sinofsky and the Windows development team hate releasing anything that’s neither finished nor ready.

Alas this was what they had to do with the Developer Preview and, as such, it’s had a lot of very bad, and probably equally unfair, press.  What Microsoft didn’t do was adjust their marketing strategy at the same time and, as such, the communication about the operating system has focused almost entirely on what’s new, what’s cool, where huge improvements have been made, but that it has not actually been answering many of the questions people have been asking.

This could be because at the time the answers to those questions simply didn’t exist.  Don’t forget that Windows 8 still had an awful lot of development to get through after the DP was signed off at the beginning of last August.  That’s a long time ago now.  It could equally be though that it wasn’t the discussion Microsoft wanted to have.  For example, telling IT Pros that they could simply switch to the desktop as their default UI could very well have undermined all the work they have been doing getting the world, and software developers, excited about Metro.  After all, if Metro was something that could just be switched off, why would people worry about it and you’d very quickly find it being relegated to a minor sub-feature in Windows like Media Centre.

I may be wrong with my assumptions and assertions here, but it’s certainly true that nobody within Microsoft is coming up with the answers.  This might change in the coming weeks or it might not.  One thing is for certain though, the wider world is simply not going to stop asking.

On Keeping An Open Mind When It Comes To Windows 8 – A Response

Yesterday Martin wrote up his thoughts and concerns about the forthcoming Windows 8 operating system from Microsoft.  I’ve spent much more time with Windows 8 so far, have given talks about and I’m current writing two books about how to get the best out of it, one for complete novices and another for IT Pros and Enthusiasts.  I thought then that I might be a good person to respond to some of Martin’s concerns and perhaps bring a different perspective to the discussion.

I don’t want you to think though that I will be spouting Microsoft’s official PR line, the company is perfectly capable of doing that on their own and they don’t need me to help them.  What I want to bring to the discussion though are the thoughts from someone who has spent some time with the OS, knows perhaps a bit more about what’s coming than I generally let on  ;)  and understands the different aspects of the OS in some depth.

Many of Martin’s concerns centre around the new dual-interface between the desktop and the Metro UI.  This is a legitimate question about why we either need or should have a dual-interface in an operating system.  I feel that Windows 8 is a transitional OS between the way we’ve been doing things now for around 30 years and the way we’ll be doing them in the future.  Anybody who has spent any time working with a tablet will intuitively use Metro and won’t even think about the fact that they’ve only got one (or two) apps open at a time.  We’ve just gotten used to it.

Martin is quite right though that people often have other things running in the background such as messenger apps, multiple browser tabs and so on.  If you look at the way some tablet operating systems handle these you can get some idea of the direction that we’re going in with Windows 8.  Don’t assume for a moment though that Metro in Windows 8, as seen in the Developer Preview or as expanded in the Consumer Preview (beta) will be anything like Metro when Windows 9 arrives, or even Metro when Windows 8 Service Pack 1 is delivered.  As a UI it’s still a concept, even though it’s roots can be traced back almost a decade ot Windows Media Centre, and as such much is set to change and evolve in the next three years.

So how this multi-application space works in Metro with Windows 8 will be determined by how people and companies write their apps.  We will see a great many different ways of doing things as many imaginative people bring their own ideas and concepts to the Metro UI, and it will be interesting to see where these take us and what Microsoft officially adopt.

Ultimately then we will lose the desktop.  The fact that we’ve been using it for the last thirty years doesn’t mean there isn’t a better way of working.  Metro may not be it, but we have to start somewhere.  I’m not sure how much I’ll use Metro myself but despite having a very uncluttered desktop, the prospect of having an interactive one that is telling me, all in one place, what my latest email is, who’s mentioning me on Twitter, what the forecast is for tomorrow, what my next appointment is, the current currency rate between the £ and the US$ and more is very appealing.

Regards using the desktop, Microsoft have said that, even if it’s just in group policy, you will be able to set the desktop as your default UI.  This will be important for people for whom all their software requires it.  While we’ve seen some very imaginative tablet apps appear such as Adobe Photoshop Touch, it will be several years before top quality professional-grade apps appear for Metro.

Martin also raised concerns about using Metro and the new Windows-orb’less desktop with a mouse and keyboard.  While Microsoft have not announced anything yet, they have said that everything you can do with touch you will be able to do with the mouse and keyboard.  Personally I’m looking forward to seeing what new mouse gestures they offer.  Also don’t forget that very soon we will have monitors and laptops with Kinect sensors in them as well.

Martin is quite right though that as things stand the dual-interface, and how you switch between them and control them, can be confusing.  It’s partly for this reason that one of my new books “Windows 8: Out of the Box” has been commissioned where it probably wouldn’t have been for Windows 7.  On this we’ll just have to see what Microsoft offer us to increase usability and to minimise the learning curve.

So what about the Start Menu?  Microsoft wrote a very long blog post detailing why they were making the changes they were back in October.  I am of the opinion however that the Start Menu should have been dropped when the Windows 7 taskbar was introduced.  These essentially offered us two completely different ways to find and launch programs.  All Microsoft need to do is find a way to control (or bucket) all the extra programs (uninstallers / utilities etc.) that appear in the Start Menu and all new programs should be pinned to the taskbar by default.  For my part, I won’t be sad to see the Start Menu go.

To reassure you Martin there is a great deal more coming for desktop users and IT Pros, but that none of it was finished in time for the Developer Preview.  When the Consumer Preview is released in a couple of weeks we will all see what these features are but Microsoft have promised several hundred small and large features in total still to come.

Let’s be honest that Windows 8, as I said earlier is a transitional OS, much in the way early builds of Apple’s OS X were when the company was moving people off old PowerPC software.  It is probably going to be painful for some, but if there really is a new way of working ahead of us that can genuinely help productivity, usability and most importantly accessibility with computers, then I believe we should embrace it.  For a while though it will have to co-exist with the traditional desktop and there can never be a truly integrated way to do that.