Windows 8 Unveiled. – Years after MS have hired some nice guys to do their new Windows 8 UI. The Tiles ( Metro-Styled ) are a nice concept (for a tablet), novel, intuitive and innovative, pundits already touts an iPad killer Windows 8 tablets in the works, except one big problem they don’t see, that it ain’t run any of X86 legacy code yet. (Noemal Windows Applications).
Nice UI, but what if when the user looks for the famous Office™ icon here?
Microsoft is struggling to remain in relevant with the promise of another new edition of Windows where everything about its core legacy is now covered up with an animated web-based distraction layer called Metro-Style. Inherited from the Windows 7 Phone interface, it’s nice in rival concept, if Apple can turn Mac OSX into iOS and iPad apps, so can Microsoft, quite easy right?
Except one fundamental flow in their new concept which pundits fail to see. Companies make blenders in many forms, Microsoft has many references on this regard. Anyone remember Tablet PC, Windows CE, Windows Mobile, Kin, Zune, anyone? Nokia’s current situation is another, here I have written another. These seemed good sound business decisions at once, it’s not that you can’t try new and fail. It’s that if they are flowed from start due to wrong intentions ot lack of analysis. They fail anyway. Company’s should invent itself and initiate new risks looking at their own core strengths rather than looking at others’ success on a particular field. This is where they are doomed.
Microsoft surely need its presence in mobile space now. Runaway success of iOS and Android made anyone in industry, envy. So tries many things since Palm Pilot days to copying others’ success but without any significant success, or road map. This novel App Tiles idea is nice for different a start, for ripping and copying anything else. but it directly contradicts MS’s own efforts to preserve its Windows and MS Office legacy strength. MS suggesting the top way to build apps is pure HTML seemsn now MS eats its own dog food. Since when HTML became stronger app plaform andn MS new motto? Forgetting something Microsoft fought and learned from the Netscape/ IE days and introduced Silverlight as an Adobe Flash-like alternative and HTML5 to make sure Windows remail dominant in desktop space. It’s like now MS is trying to paint itself again in Apple’s shoes, desktop wars were long ended. The problem is, unlike in the history that initioal MS’s Mac Office did bring in actual Windows success later. (Anyone specticle please do read how MS Office and Windows came to be)
Apple even didn’t bring Mac OSX desktop apps to its iOS, it only merged the core technology behindnand invent itself a new category of multi-touch applications commonly refers as Apps where no Mac OS X user did expect iPhone or iPad to run their comventional Mac OSX desktop apps on them. The beauty is if Apple ever wanted them to be, technically they can do that since this is all the same Coca APIs and Touch Frameworks out of the Xcode. In software perspectives this is “All new ball game” and much easier for developers now!
Microsoft on the other-hand, naming this web-apps only layer for tables as Windows 8 gives a BIG false hope for the user that they will run their typical Windows Apps. When they find that they DON’T here goes another vaporware down. Announcing this without ever getting ready to port it’s Windows native APIs for developers or hasn’t shown much interest in bringing its own cash cow Office Apps to the Windows 8 tablets. In contrast Apple released redesigned multi-touch enabled iWork alongside the first iPad launch even though iPad buyers did not initially except iPad to run iWork, when it did they found it surprise!
Why has Microsoft been so slow in seeing or showing any benefit to bring in its all successful desktop class software titles to the Win 8 tablets is anyone’s guess. Doesn’t it sees MS Office does make good money in Tablets and lock on the enterprise? The real issue is here that even for the biggest software maker on earth it takes enormous amount of time, resources and money which MS doesnt have to port it’s all legacy Windows APIs to ARM chip (the processor found on tablets) and beyond (remember Intel, sluggish Atom netbooks anyone? Does it happen any of Andriod or iOS app?) and let developers to build successful Windows native applications for these ARM based new world of energy efficient multi-touch devices.
People who tout Adobe Flash too, remember Flash was developed as single input device platform in mind (mouse). Adobe now cant run back and redesigned it as multi-touch finger friendly platform.
Egg before the hen issue here, any potential buyer who buys these Windows 8 tablets will expect them to run Windows applications (Native). So let alone buyers, why on earth any manufacture agrees to build such a tablet device instead of loyalty free Android is a question, on the other hand if you take iPad, which already has the economy of scale, apps and these already runs all Windows applications by the form of Citrix like remote desktop, visualization or by some other form of software. (For Eg: Documents to Go, QuickOffice)
Windows 8 will shatter the tablet market, yeah YOURS truly!
Looks like leading to the wilderness to me, a road to oblivion?
The only thing Windows 8 will do for tablets is to fragment non Apple fans between Android and Windows 8, making it easier for Apple to lead the tablet market even further. It will also fragment the efforts of companies like Samsung and HTC (HP and BB now out) that are trying to decide which platform makes most of the sense.
Microsoft’s experiments with a web-tablet by the name of Windows (it sounds full pledge Windows PC to the people except it isn’t) while confuse many and add evidence to the already Dead-On-Arrival HP’s WebOS Tablets and BB PlayBook lukewarm interest. remember those were similar but mature (Actually shipping devices!) webOS and Google’s Chrome OS devices. Both are another two ways of delivering a non-Windows, web-based experience on low power devices which hasn’t shown any commercial success yet.
So here we go, while Apple only faces a single credible competitor in smartphones, it appears there will be multiple disjointed efforts among tablets partners to prevent any one brand generating enough muscle to challenge the original iPad. Microsoft’s hoax “animated web-based Windows distraction layer” wowed some pundits, it’s just another skin of Kin, Zune or Windows 7 phone.
Even my 2 year old little is so obsessed with post PC mulch-touch devices I can clearly see that the iPad credibly challenges the conventional PC market, she will hold no resplendence to our “keyboard tethered hooked up beige boxes” nor will she ever make sense of it.
Funny Microsoft tries to make a web-application device in 2012 (out by when?) by sacrificing its core strength Windows and it’s Office in it. Plam Rest In Peace, HP is in flames of shame. BlackBerry digs their burial, Nokia is just figuring out what hit them. And now I guess MS is just started of seeing the ghosts of AppStore sans first iPhone in 2007.
Whether Microsoft can deliver Metro Office apps interesting enough to spur demand for Windows 8 tablets, or whether Windows 8 tablets will find a market without critical apps such as Office, are important issues Microsoft leaves completely unanswered.