Is Windows 8 an iOS Killer or a Windows 7 Killer? Or Both?

Steven Sinofsky, president of Windows and Windows Live Divisions at Microsoft, talks to thousands of developers about the Windows 8 Developer Preview during the opening BUILD keynote, Sept. 13 in Anaheim, California.
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After months of rumors and unofficial leaks, Microsoft on Tuesday finally unveiled the first solid glimpse at its all new Windows 8 operating system, designed to recreate Windows from the ground up for post-PC world.

“Things are pretty different from 1995, the last time Windows went through a pretty significant evolution,” said Windows president Steven Sinofksy at the new Microsoft Build developers conference in Anaheim, California on Tuesday, FOX News reported. “Everything that was great about Windows 7? We took that and made it even better in Windows 8.”

An actual commercial release dates remained elusive, but developers and attendees got the opportunity to try the new Windows 8 out for themselves. Developers who weren’t there can download the preview version beginning tonight here.

The list of new features touted by Microsoft for the new operating system is long, including but limited to:

The new “Metro,” touch screen user interface, which emphasizes a starting screen filled with colorful rectangular “tiles” of single-purpose, fullscreen apps instead of the familiar backdrop of program icons, a page taken from the current Windows Phone 7 operating system.

But this time, Microsoft has gone a step further, introducing a whole new class of app, the Metro Style app, complete with its own store. These apps can be written in a variety of programming languages, C++, HTML, CSS and Java, allowing a range of web and software developers to begin creating new experiences for Windows 8 users.

In addition, the user experience of the Metro Style apps will be synched across all mobile devices, meaning where you leave off on your future Windows 8 computer you’ll be able to resume on your Windows 8 phone or tablet, PC Pro UK reports. Sound familiar?

The traditional Windows start screen and taskbar have been relegated to their own, separate Desktop Metro app.

Windows also seems to be taking a page from Google’s Chrome OS, powering the Metro UI with a browser engine, in this case, its Internet Explorer 10 Trident engine.

The Web browsing experience is also augmented by an IE 10 version skinned as a Metro Style app.

The web browser takes up the whole screen, and users can switch between different tabs by pulling down an “App Bar,” from the top or the bottom of the screen. No wonder some are calling it an “immersive browser.

IE 10 on Windows 8 can also share data with other applications, sending a link to another app or allowing you to post it straight to your Facebook from within the app, CNET reports.

Another advance over previous versions of Windows is the integration with Windows Live.

As both CNET and All Things D point out, the new operating systems takes care of what has become a vexing problem for many social media users, the fact that photos uploaded to social media websites are not necessarily easily accessible from the desktop.

Windows 8 offers social network apps the ability to use its “picker contract,” plugging all of the photos uploaded there to its user interface. The photos will show up on the screen as if they were stored locally on the Windows 8 device.

“Windows 8 will similarly blend instant messaging, contact information and calendars across multiple services via the cloud,” All Things D’s Ina Fried writes.

Windows 8 has also considerably upped its performance, including boot speed, battery life and memory usage. At the Build conference, Sinofsky even touted how much faster it was than Windows 7.

But the real question: is all that enough to make Windows 8 an iOS killer? Of course, with the product not yet out on the market, that question is a bit premature, but that’s never stopped the tech blogosphere from weighing-in on it.

For the “yes,” crowd, comes PC World’s Nate Ralph, who praises Windows 8’s successful synchronization implementation: “While Apple and Google scramble to further compartmentalize tech, Microsoft has gone and built the Everywhere OS.”

With a “maybe” is Seattle Times writer Brier Dudley, who opines that it all comes down to hardware. “If computer makers produce tablets as gorgeous as demo units Microsoft provided Monday, and they sell them for a reasonable price, there won’t be quite as much talk about the iPad vanquishing the PC industry.”

For the “no,” crowd is David Margee at the International Business Times. He outlines five reasons why he thinks Microsoft can’t hope to overtake Apple in terms of tablet sales, but a particularly interesting one is this: “Consider only that the tablet industry as mainstream just launched in 2010, effectively, when Apple released its first iPad. So yes, while the industry is young, it’s maturing at a faster clip than most — meaning that the longer Microsoft delays, the more consumers and manufacturers get set in their ways.”

Margee is effectively saying that Apple is beating Microsoft at its own game (compare to how Microsoft locked-up the PC operating system business in the early ’90s.)

But Extreme Tech’s Sebastian Anthony offers perhaps the intriguing prediction yet, writing:

You see, not only does IE10 power Windows 8′s primary interface, but Internet Explorer 10 — the browser — is also available as a Metro-style app, and as a full-interface browser in the Explorer Desktop. All three versions are fundamentally identical. Now… what if Windows 8 is as successful as Windows 7 and all of its previous forebears? What if Windows 8 is actually a success on the tablet? If Windows 8 becomes ubiquitous, so does Internet Explorer 10 — and if IE10 can be found on hundreds of millions of devices, what platform do you think developers will choose?

In any case, one thing nearly all reviewers, tech writers and analysts seem to agree upon: Windows actually did manage to re-invent itself this time.

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