14 DAY TRIAL // At this point in the development process, Milestone 3 if sources close to Microsoft are to be trusted, there are more questions than answers about Windows 8. The Redmond company has yet to confirm officially any details related to the next major iteration of Windows, and the operating system’s default browser version is just one of them.
Reports now indicate that Internet Explorer 10 will ship with Windows 8, according to Chinese site win7china but also additional sources.
What I can tell you in this regard is what members of the IE team told me last week.
A few days before Internet Explorer 9 RTW was scheduled to go live worldwide, I had a chat with two prominent members of the team that built the browser, Roger Capriotti, Director, Internet Explorer Product Marketing and Rob Mauceri, Group Program Manager at Microsoft.
One of the questions I asked them was, now that IE9 hit RTW (release to web) what’s next? And what will the default browser be for Windows 8, IE9 or its successor?
Now, when it comes down to specific topics, talking to Microsoft employees is no guarantee that you’re going to get an answer.
It must be clear by now that Windows vNext is a taboo topic for the software giant, and so is IE vNext.
Fact is that I didn’t get an answer on what are the company’s plans with the next version of Windows and Internet Explorer. And it’s only because Microsoft is not ready to share them with the public yet.
And personally, I think that it’s a tad too early to speculate, even though to some it might appear that even speculation on Windows 8 and IE10 is a mundane task fit for Captain Obvious.
At the same time, with Windows 8 having only hit M3 at the end of February 2011, all reports related to the platform need to be treated with as much skepticism as possible, since they might end not fitting into the software giant’s plans for Windows 7’s successor.