For months now, various pundits have been deriding the upcoming Windows 8 as the next Vista.
People have mademocking videosshowing older people thoroughly confused by Windows 8’s Metro tile interface.
Indeed, the Windows 8 Metro interface is radically different than the traditional Windows desktop.
It’s a touch interface.
Since the Windows 8 Metro software hasn’t changed, what exactly is so different?
After all, Microsoft is demonstrating the exact same interface on touch-enabled hardware.
And all of a sudden, Windows 8 is making sense.
Microsoft, it turns out, is slightly ahead of the curve here.
Why force a touch interface on non-touch computers?
It’s actually not that complicated.
Hire reputable industrial designers, then listen to them.
And then test the resulting products extensively and fix whatever annoys people.
In the Ultrabook category, Microsoft OEMs, such as Samsung and Acer, are deliveringbeautiful MacBook Air-like computers.
However, we need to recognize that personal computers are undergoing a fundamental shift in how we use them.
When personal computers first came out, they were essentially creation tools.
There was no communication, no multimedia, nothing to load from disks.
Back then, users edited a document or edited a database.
For multifunctional machines, it is actually not odd to overlay one model on top of the other.
When you want to consume content on the Microsoft Surface, you use it as a tablet.
When you want to create content, switch it to the Windows desktop mode and use its innovative keyboard.
