Day: 1 June 2011

Why Windows 8 Is Fundamentally Flawed ⇥

John Gruber also points out how crummy it is for Windows 8 to be a Windows product.

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

He continues:

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. The iPad succeeds because it has eliminated complexity, not because it has covered up the complexity of the Mac with a touch-based “shell”. iOS’s lack of backward compatibility with any existing software means that all apps for iOS are written specifically for iOS.

A fantastic critique.

Windows 8 Video Preview ⇥

If I didn’t have a tablet already, I’d buy one with Windows 8 on it, when it’s released. I find iOS on the iPad to be very touch-friendly, but lacking some of the features I take for granted on desktop OSes. Android and Windows 7 are both poor solutions to the problem. Windows 8, on the other hand, looks like it strikes the right balance. The video is embedded below (aside: why can’t Microsoft afford a lapel microphone?)

It’s dismaying to see that it can run current Windows applications. It seems like one great idea after another, until someone on the backwards compatibility team has their say. What if they gave it a new name (Microsoft Metro?) to distance it entirely from Windows?