Per Microsoft’s new “Windows Everywhere” mantra / strategy, Windows 8 is designed to play nice with a range of form factors, including ARM powered devices such as tablets, but not only slates.
Having used Windows 7 on touch enabled devices I must say that I wasn’t really all that impressed with the overall experience.
While Windows 7’s natural user interface capabilities sound quite good on paper, but the operating system’s UI is not adapted to touch.
Sure enough, the resources are there, APIs included, for developers to build their own touch experiences, but I’m referring to Windows Aero when I say that the OS needed more work around NUI.
Effectively, when using Windows 7 with a touch capable monitor it felt to me like I was replicating the same actions and gestures I would do with a mouse but with my finger instead. It’s just no fun thinking: “how do I double click?” or “how do I right click?”
With the Introduction of Modern Shell (MOSH) or the new Immersive UI, Windows 8 no longer requires customers to use their fingers as a mouse replacement, but as fingers.
I call this evolution a combination of graphical user interface and natural user interface, which is clearly superior to the traditional Windows UI.
Just have a look at the two videos embedded below. Both feature Windows 8, one is the official preview of the operating system from Microsoft, and the other a demo involving a leaked copy of the forthcoming platform provided by Windows8Italia.
Windows 8 will feature both the new Immersive UI and the traditional UI, which will make the OS a better fit to the various form factors that it will support from PCs to slates.
I for one will not even be considering a Windows tablet until Windows 8 comes out, sometime in the second half of 2012, reportedly.
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