At work I have a set of floppy disks in my desk draw, three or four of them are MSDOS 6.22 and the rest are Windows 3.11.\u00a0 It\u2019s been a while since I installed them on anything, but the last time I did a couple of years ago it was enough to demonstrate that a) Windows 3.11 was blindingly fast on a modern PC and b) the user experience wasn\u2019t really all that different from today.\u00a0\u00a0 Sure Explorer has replaced the old File Manager, and Windows 7\u2019s Aero is whole lot nicer than Program Manager, but you don\u2019t feel completely out of sync, the metaphors are still the same.<\/p>\n
Windows 8 is looking to change all of that:<\/p>\n
It\u2019s quite a change, and one that\u2019s long overdue.\u00a0 Desktop operating systems, whether Windows, OSX or the various flavours of Unix shell all use the same basic metaphors, its incredibly refreshing to see Windows 8 try something new.\u00a0 It\u2019s clearly borrowed much from Windows Phone 7\u2019s UI and it\u2019s Metro design language.<\/p>\n
As someone who\u2019s IT background is in enterprise desktop deployment and management, what\u2019s most interesting for me is the complete separation of the traditional Windows UI from the new Metro interface.\u00a0 As the video above shows \u2018Legacy\u2019 Windows apps (I can barely believe I\u2019m say that given the effort I\u2019ve put into those apps over the years!) launch in what looks like a traditional Win7 Aero interface, but this doesn\u2019t seem to be part of the Windows 8 experience \u2013 in fact I\u2019d bet that part of the OS has barely changed from 7.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s easy to speculate about all of this, but the separation of these user experiences may be more than just visual.\u00a0 Windows 8 will be delivered on both on the x86 platform that PC\u2019s have used for years, and the ARM platform.\u00a0 These are completely different architectures and this would almost certainly introduce application compatibility issues.\u00a0 One way around this however may be some form of virtualisation.\u00a0 This in itself this would be tricky, but perhaps the traditional Windows desktop is able to runs within a virtual machine which is surfaced though the new Win8 interface \u2013 much like parallels is able to surface Windows applications within OSX on a Mac.<\/p>\n
The enterprise IT people among you might also have thought of another interesting idea\u2026 what if that traditional desktop could be redirected off to a centralised Virtual Desktop (VDI) infrastructure.\u00a0 Low cost ARM devices all of a sudden look very tempting as thin client devices.<\/p>\n
No matter how it\u2019s delivered, that old Windows desktop will be a welcome site for enterprise IT departments.\u00a0 Many of organisations are spending a lot of time and money migrating to Windows 7, and by far the hardest part of that is application compatibility.\u00a0 Microsoft would do well to minimise the application compatibility differences in the new OS, if Win8 breaks apps that work in 7 \u2013 on x86 at least \u2013 then it would be difficult for organisations who have invested in Win7 to adopt Win8.\u00a0 Just look back to Vista.\u00a0 It looks that may not be a problem for Win8, which is a good thing.<\/p>\n
With MS keen to adopt ARM as a way of competing in the tablet space, where x86\u2019s power consumption destroys battery life, the new interface also gives them some interesting options to make a \u2018clean break\u2019 away from their legacy.\u00a0 If they have found a way to run the old interface virtually upon other hardware platforms, that could well spell the end for the old Windows.\u00a0 One of MS\u2019s traditional strengths, the backward compatibility of apps (ok, that\u2019s always true\u2026), has also been a shackle around it\u2019s legs stopping Windows developing into something new.\u00a0 Abstracting the old from the new would allow MS to move Windows on while still retaining its legacy apps.<\/p>\n
The big assumption there of course is that developers adopt the new interface and development environment.\u00a0 Of course at the moment we don\u2019t really know whether the new Win8 interface is able to present the heavy duty apps that PC\u2019s run day in day out.\u00a0 I guess that Office 15 will be the first real test of this.\u00a0 Will it surface through the new interface in Win8 or revert back to the old Windows.\u00a0 I really hope its the former \u2013 the Office apps on WP7 are slick and fast, it would be fantastic to have the full fidelity apps presented though the Metro front end.\u00a0 How long it would take the big third party apps like AutoCAD to follow is another matter of course, but if Win8 upgrades are made easy and cost effective it might happen sooner rather than later.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m also very pleased to see MS asserting some control over Windows 8\u2019s hardware.\u00a0 Whilst it\u2019s nice to have choice, I\u2019m no longer convinced that the vast PC ecosystem is a positive thing.\u00a0 It\u2019s a volume market so margins are low and its too easy for poor quality hardware and software to slip though.\u00a0 Problematic driver software and the sheer amount of \u2018crapware\u2019 that litters new computers does nothing to help the end user in the long run, and is one of the main reasons for the PC\u2019s poor reputation for performance and reliability.<\/p>\n
If by asserting control MS can improve the quality of the overall end product, I have to say that I\u2019m not all that concerned by a restriction of choice \u2013 though I know some manufacturers are crying fowl.\u00a0 In the past I\u2019ve spent too much time dealing with problems caused by crappy hardware and software, and I can still see those same problems today if I talk to the people doing those jobs now.<\/p>\n
So all in all I\u2019m quite impressed with what MS have shown us today.\u00a0 Added to the other information that\u2019s leaked out Windows 8 it\u2019s looking like a very positive move.\u00a0 The only concern I have it timescales\u2026 late 2012 is too late.\u00a0 In my view they need to RTM this in the new year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Microsoft have today shown us Windows 8 and it’s new Metro interface, what will this mean for applications, virtualisation and Enterprise IT.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,4],"tags":[292,472,35,482,13,481,107,22,417,447],"class_list":["post-989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech","category-work","tag-app-store","tag-applications","tag-enterprise","tag-metro","tag-microsoft","tag-pc","tag-vdi","tag-virtualisation","tag-windows-8","tag-windows-phone-7","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/refraction.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/refraction.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/refraction.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/refraction.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/refraction.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=989"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/refraction.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/989\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":991,"href":"https:\/\/refraction.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/989\/revisions\/991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/refraction.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/refraction.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/refraction.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}