2-for-1: Can Windows 8 satisfy both the desktop and the tablet?

Microsoft presented itself an enormous task when it started development of Windows 8: Produce an operating system that could go toe-to-toe with iOS and Android in the touch-driven tablet space while still preserving the value of Windows' considerable history on the desktop.

This complex problem has challenged Microsoft for about two decades. For 20 years the company tried to ship touch-driven (generally stylus-driven) tablets that used the conventional Windows front-end, hoping a smattering of extra utilities—an on-screen keyboard that floated over the Windows UI, boxes to contain handwriting—would be enough to convert a mouse-driven operating system into a tablet platform.

These tablet machines never achieved substantial success. Apple's iOS, first released in 2007, demonstrated that touch machines could find enormous success as long as their interface was sympathetic to both the constraints imposed by touch—imprecision, obstruction of the view—and its novel capabilities. Before Windows 7 was finished (and before Apple had even announced plans to produce an iOS-running tablet) Microsoft started work on developing such a user interface for Windows.

2-for-1: Can Windows 8 satisfy both the desktop and the tablet?

 

[Lebon14]

It will win both if the RC and Retail give the PC user a choice...to have an acutal desktop at boot...a start menu, eliminate the ribon in the windows explorer (again as an option). In other words allow pc users to return to the intrface that has PROVEN its productivity. The beauty is in choice.

I can only agree with this statement. I hate Metro. I don't even need to use it, I know I will hate it. Microsoft didn't head in the right direction. To everybody I talked about the disappearance of the Start Menu all agreed with me : it will be hell for Mr. Mrs. Everybody. Everybody in that class of user use the Start Menu. Otherwise, they won't even know how to shut down their own computer and simply hold the power button out of frustration.

For a tablet and mobile interface, don't get me wrong, it will succeed. For laptops and PCs... No, just no... people will be asking either for Windows XP or Windows 7. I can forsee it.

I'm repeating the same message since I discovered that Metro stuff. I don't see why you guys are excited at. Why does people change what's working... really...

Kudos for the new task manager, ribbon ui integration and PDF viewer though... I give that to Win8 though...