Microsoft has seen the future of Windows and it’s touching. Well, touching the screen to be specific.
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\nThe new Windows 8 interface is all about smearing a perfectly fine LCD monitor with your greasy fingers. Touch-this. Touch-that. Everything is touch! It’s like Apple did all that research on phone and tablet interfaces and Microsoft suddenly noticed and said, “YES!”<\/p>\n
Something like that.<\/p>\n
The current Windows desktop, the one everyone has disliked since Windows 95 came out in 1996, is now merely an app<\/em>.<\/p>\n Yeah, they’re using “app” instead of “program.” Wonder where that came from?<\/p>\n Like I’ve written before, a computer is a computer. It’s designed for information management, files and folders, programs, gathering and manipulating data, sort-and-report \u2014 in a word, productivity.<\/p>\n Tablets, on the other hand, are designed for drive-by computing. They’re ideal for the casual user, the blurker, the watcher, the game-player, the browser, the music-listener, or anyone who considers typing a two-sentence email reply or a “me too” post on a blog as their worthy and vital contribution to the wealth of knowledge of mankind.<\/p>\n Microsoft has obviously confused the two devices, believing that people who want to be casual users also want that from their desktops.<\/p>\n Hardly.<\/p>\n In the future, phones and tablets will suit a majority of the population. They won’t even buy desktop computers. But the people who do, they will want a real<\/em> operating system with a traditional interface. From looking at what Microsoft is doing with Windows 8, that’s not the case here.<\/p>\n My guess: Windows 8 sells well, and even if it doesn’t Microsoft’s absurd licensing agreement with PC manufacturers mandates that it will. But people in professional offices will shun it. They will beg for Windows 7 or even the dreadful Windows Vista. Updates will lag.<\/p>\n It should be an interesting time, at least for wags like myself.<\/p>\n