MS shows off Windows 8, has 2 operating systems in one

Microsoft, which has been fighting a losing war of perceptions against Apple and Google, especially in the Tablet PC space, has just unveiled Windows 8, which, it hopes will be a good comeback, if not a game-changer.

Windows 8, which is some time away from launch, is billed to be a new  operating software that  scales from touch-only small screens  to large screens, with or without a keyboard and mouse.

Mike Angiulo, corporate vice president of Windows Planning, Hardware and PC Ecosystem, showed hardware partners Windows 8 to help the partners build devices that take advantage of the new user experience in Taipei. Photo courtesy Microsoft Corp.

But is this new OS just like Windows 7 with a touchscreen experience or does it have anything more to offer?

According to Matt Rosoff inBusiness Insider, “It will basically be two operating systems in one: a traditional desktop that looks and works a lot like Windows 7 and runs traditional Windows apps, and a full-screen browser interface that runs apps written in HTML5 and JavaScript.”

Julie Larson-Green, corporate vice-president at Microsoft, wrote on the Windows blog that Windows 8 was “reimagining” the 25-year-old operating system.  She highlighted optimised browsing, fluid, easy switching between running apps and a new interface as key pluses.

The new OS will support HTML apps, smartphone apps and even traditional applications that are familiar to users of Windows 7, says Telegraph’s  Matt Warman.

In demonstrations at the D9 conference in Palos Verdes, California, and the Computex show in Taipei, Microsoft executives showed a starting page that resembles Microsoft’s latest phone software. It seems the software company is making progress toward the new operating system, which it promises will run on a range of hardware devices from traditional PCs to laptops and tablets, using both touchscreen and mouse and keyboard commands.

“The new designs are heavily influenced by Windows Phone, with ’tiles’ on a new homescreen that the company hopes will be useful for both tablets and traditional PC setups”, Warman says.

But Microsoft has told chipmakers who want to use the system for tablets to work with only one manufacturer to speed up the delivery, Bloomberg and Dow Jones news reported, sparking worries among some PC vendors that they will be left out.

What makes Windows 8 potentially different is that it’s got a new skin running on top of traditional Windows, one that’s based on the same “Metro” design ethic as Windows Phone 7 and is intended to be run on touch-based interfaces. There’s also a new app-development environment based on HTML 5 and JavaScript, says Jason Snell from Macworld.

But Daring Fireball’s John Gruber feels the new model , though is innovative and interesting, has an OS that is too complicated to operate.

The snapping concept is an interesting way to make use of a bigger screen to show two apps at once. Displaying side-by-side content isn’t possible on Apple’s iOS, and no one’s yet solved that problem in the post-windows (note lowercase “w”) UI landscape… But I think it’s a fundamentally flawed idea for Microsoft to build their next-generation OS and interface on top of the existing Windows. The idea is that you get the new stuff right alongside Windows as we know it. Microsoft is obviously trying to learn from Apple, but they clearly don’t understand why the iPad runs iOS, and not Mac OS X.

Microsoft’s Windows 8 won’t be out until next year and the OS could be as much as two years behind Apple. But Adrian Crisan, Sony’s director of engineering for Vaio, doesn’t think that would be a problem for Microsoft as the new OS already has a lot of built-in infrastructure. “Today Apple is first on one thing and Microsoft is first for another and, overall, it’s going to be a race and whatever customers will like, they will buy, ” he told  reporters in Taipei on Thursday.