Discussion on:

Should there be separate tablet and desktop editions of Windows 8?

So what are your arguments for one edition that spans all platforms? What are your arguments for separate operating systems for each platform? Which choice will be the most difficult to complete successfully?

Make these extra features a choice at install. Just like the "Add\Remove Features" control panel. A short check list where you can add things from catagories like: HTPC, Languages, Input, Networking, Admin tools, Games. This way each user can customize their install or they can hit a big "Default Reccomended Packages" button.

OEM PCs could come with a package tailored to the device intent and the user could later add and remove these packages.

I like modular. Sometimes you want the bare minimum and sometimes you want to try all the features. Give me choices! That has always been where Windows has been a better experience for me when compared to a Mac. The choices. I can have more control with a MSPC. Let us continue this trend of customizability. The PC, being a personal computer, should be personalized by definition.

THink of it as a buffet. You take your plate, go through the line and load the stuff YOU want. Change your mind, go through the line again and get something else. Don't like the menu, go somewhere else. Just don't worry about whats on my plate.

It would be a risk to have one edition for all. The first and most important thing that comes to mind is cost. If you look at the editions of Windows 7 and the price for each edition then this will certainly put the cost of the tablets up high. For example when you look at netbooks the price is so cheep partly because of the fact Windows Starter is generally included.
Another reason is that having all those features available whether installed or not will take up considerable amount of space, which in a tablet is more valuable considering many tablets have from 16GB up to a maximum capacity of 64 GB. And with Windows 7 (as an example spec.) requiring between 16 and 20 GB depending on whether you use 32 bit or 64 bit editions it would mean that a typical tablet would require 32 GB to be of any use. And that comes back again to the price of having that much required space available.
In summary, keeping the price of tablets down will be key to its success. Maybe its possible the Store icon will be a portal to allow additional features from the advanced editions to included.

I see your point but I think that looks at cost from only one perspective, the end users'. The price of a product isn't just calculated by the sum of its parts, but also the cost of developing and maintaining those parts. If MS creates two separate versions of Windows, they will need two separate departments to develop them. They'll need two departments for research and development, two for updates and maintenance, two for marketing and so on. That's a lot to spend on office space, salaries, and equipment and those added costs to MS convert directly into an increase in the cost of the product to end users. That's not even taking into account the added difficulty of the right hand talking to the left hand so both departments are on the same page as far as compatibility and interoperability.

Particles knows each others from faraway,telepathy works,precognition too.
Why can??t os-developers find common os cores-core standards-and then collaborate in OS-worlds? If not on the same one,try different dimensions like my many-dimensional function-theory which-according to me-works on the basic,ontological level of reality,binding everything together (Einsteins dream: how to solve this;but why with dicrete equations,not by a basic,axiomatic principle like in Laine??s new paradigm of sci).

What he said.

When I saw the link in the newsletter I came with the intention of saying separate versions but you convinced me. The only problem I see is the size of the OS on the tablets, will there be enough memory etc. to handle it?

You also explained what that, to me useless, Media Center junk is on my Win 7 machines, also I suspect the equally useless HP Media Center on them.

Thanks.

maj

At this point, I can not see why there shouldn't be one version of Windows for both traditional PCs and tablets. As long as the binaries are compatible, and the proper driver code is available, why not? Must we bifurcate everything?

I concur totally if MS were to approach it as two separate and distinct OS's for the different platforms. However, if they approach it as a single entity with the built in option to turn off the "touch screen" side of it so that it functions normally for the keyboard/mouse user, it simply will add a little additional development time and additional code generation. It's really not that hard to do. In my opinion that's the way MS should approach it... a single new version of the Windows OS where the end user can choose which functions he/she wants active.

Microsoft has always stumbled on this because they've never really committed to their decision. Consider the approaches here:

- Microsoft tried implementing tablet functionality into a desktop OS. This didn't work. Why? Because the vast, vast majority of apps were meant to be used on a desktop. So what if you could bring up an on-screen keyboard or handwriting-to-text conversion panel? It wasn't integrated, it wasn't cohesive. Just cumbersome and ill-supported. Most developers would never test their application's accessibility with a tablet interface. Plus, the available hardware sucked, and you still had full boot and shutdown times - no instant-on gratification - making it little more than an underpowered, expensive device lacking the ergonomics and power of a laptop or desktop. FAIL.

- Microsoft's Media Center is an application on a general purpose OS. This is OK if you wanted a PC in your entertainment system, but most people didn't. They wanted an appliance with the power, versatility, and customizability of commodity PC hardware. When specialized hardware (tuner and A/V output cards) *finally* started showing up to give a computer the same I/O capability as a cable box or DVR, the only thing lacking was software that could be used with the ease of a remote. Again, you don't want a Start menu and 60-second boot times. Appliance-like. Windows MCE was never like this. Again, FAIL.

- Apple's iPad solved all of these problems. It turned on instantly, it had a consistent interface. Apps that ran on the iPad were *designed* for the iPad. The only problem, really, is how locked down it is. No custom apps, lack of flexible I/O. But it did what it was supposed to do, and it did it REALLY WELL. Finally, a successful tablet computer.

- Linux has a ton of options for customizing commodity hardware. You can get the power of a real, modern multitasking kernel, and do whatever you want with the UI. Touch, appliance-like, whatever. But, you have to build it yourself. For a very small niche, this has been nearly perfect. The only thing really preventing (albeit limited) success is the effort required by developers to support enough and the right kind of hardware, and of end-users to essentially engineer their own solutions. Unless some third party sells a pre-fabbed bundle, this won't ever take the computing world by storm, but for some it's plenty.

So, given this history, what direction should Microsoft go? Bundle the add-ins with the base OS, or develop separate OSes? Neither.

The problem here is that MS doesn't know how to do "modular". What they NEED to do is build "The Windows Kernel" and package that with:
1) a general-purpose KB/mouse UI for desktop use.
2) a minimal KB-only, or KB/mouse UI for server use.
3) a minimal touch UI for tablet use.
4) a minimal graphical UI with generic input event handlers for interactive appliance use.
5) no UI for hypervisor or headless service hosting use.

Is this a lot of effort? No, not really. You have a kernel team, a driver team, a base library team, a couple UI teams, and a couple integration teams. The kernel should build with any level of options enabled to suit the target platform. The GP-OS would be the superset of ALL options, so the duplication of testing would be minimal.

The development tools should be built to target these different platforms and load the requisite UI libraries rather than the generic Win32 presentation library as it exists now. Changing the interface would be as simple as building an alternate presentation layer on an existing codebase. Developers who build business logic into the UI will have trouble with this, but that's NEVER been a good practice, and Linux has proven this approach works. Many applications can be targeted for console use, or gtk or Qt UIs through a simple switch passed to the build script.

As separate, targeted, supported platforms, when someone distributes a desktop application, they don't need to worry how tablet users would be able to use it. But they can take their back-end code, develop an alternate UI and compile it for the tablet market if they choose to. Etc., etc.

This is the ONLY approach that will work, and I bet my left big toe that MS has still not learned this one essential lesson. And they will still fail to dethrone the iPad. Now, they stand to lose the desktop, too.

Wacom. Specialized, mostly, but well done. Kind of off-target inregards to what iPad consumers are looking for, but I just thought I'd mention it.

Completely on-board with your perspective, though. I've said the same things before, but mostly less specifically.

The UI isn't the OS, and we should be able to swap UIs on the fly.

A large-area, high-res desktop and mouse is the human performance equivalent of a vast, RAM-speed SSD. Every time you have to scroll, it hurts you the way having to page RAM to disk hurts system performance.

We already have the "docking station" concept for the system hardware, where it detects whether it is docked or not and adjusts to whatever extra performance the docked state can offer. Even running on mains is taken advantage of, compared to deliberate fainting spells to keep the battery alive.

So when I choose to dump the 10-foot or hand-held UI in favor of traditional hi-res WIMP, that is what I expect to do - not just when I pug in the big screen (which can be hardware-detected) but when I pace back from the wall TV/presentation touch screen and start wiggling my mouse or typing on the keyboard.

What I do NOT want, is the kludgy "we did it first" mess of Ubuntu's Unity, which feels like using a club for a mouse in Windows 3.yuk Program Manager. Ubuntu think they've got that covered because you can change UI at the logon screen - but heelllllooo, I bypass that screen and therefore don't get that UI; I need to do it on the fly, not be given a once-a-boot opportunity to lock myself into one GUI for the rest of the session.

Otherwise, what is the point of installing at all? (Other than to make things difficult in certain cases.)

I can't grasp why modularity is so damn difficult, and why there aren't more options in Add/Remove Windows Components. Quit tying up everything in common/shared dlls. (You know, like the "Send To Desktop - Create Shortcut" is (or was) dependent on sendmail.dll. Stupid.

So, is there any info on what the OS is actually like? Or is this just 7 with yet another UI (or UX, for the apparently always-genius UX design types).

I can see why having only one version makes a lot of sense. It makes it easier for consumers to understand and helps keep pricing structures sane. However, my concern is performance. I just wonder if having a specialized ARM version just for tablets would work better with tablet hardware than a combo version for both x86 and ARM. To me, the biggest problem with Windows tables hasn't been the interface (although I think the new metro-based UI is a huge improvement), but with the weight of and battery life of the hardware. The expectations for tablets is that they must be able to run all day and weigh no more than a pound and a half (or so). I just really wonder how Windows 8 will run on that type of platform...ARM processors are so much less powerful than today's crops of X86es, and today's Atom-based tablets have left a lot to be desired, I'm really curious to see how this all works out from a hardware performance perspective.

A massive leap forward ... ahead of Apple that could sweep Apple to yesterdays news.
One with optional intuitive functionality, Server, Desktop, Tablet, Smart Phone, and maybe the Laptop if they are still around!

W8 will be a leaning curb, the next edition will save it grace as W7 did to Vista. the tablet version on W8 tablet cannot compute on the level of a PC or laptop unless there are leaps and bounds in tech hardware development to boost power. to limit the ability of your OS by the hardware is two steps back. The development should be focused on a tablet version alternative for a already reduced price if you own the PC version.

I've got a 1920x1200 24" Dell and am looking toward a 30". Win 8 would make that wasted
real estate. I have all my most used icons at a glance even with two or three applications open. "8" would have us go back in time to a 640x480 on 14" mentality having to group icons in sub directories (or scroll of screen). Its a great Idea for mouseless and keyboardless touch screen devices, but keep it away from workstations.

Simply said ... Offer people many choices and they may say it is nice to be able to have options, Yet, 90% of the time, they will always select what they are familiar with. The Media Center platform version of XP failed, not for any lack of usefulness ... But for the simple fact that Microsoft didn't support it correctly from the onset, by not offering it as a purchasable disk option . Understandably because, it was hardware motivaterd and dependent. I owned a Media Center PC. It was the best one I have ever had. But Microsoft made it obsolete the day after I bought it home because it wasn't worth upgrading. They've made the same blunder by even offering a Starter edition of Windows 7. They further that blunder by considering releasing a new OS before 2016 and by not making the improvements they are currently working on as a Windows 7 Service Pack update. You lose customers if you offer too many changes, too soon. To be really honest, I think Microsoft missed the boat when they wouldn't even consider my idea to hardwire the OS into a purchasable Hard Disk (or Solid State Disk) Drive. In that way, you have a secure OS and a built in obsolession strategy to boot (pun intentional).