Just Windows with a tablet skin running on top. I "get it", because it still allows you to run the entire Windows catalog, but I'm still unimpressed.
It poses two immediate concerns. One, this means that a huge bunch of Windows OS junk is ported to ARM, and the tablet has to power the OS as well as a layer of "apps" on top. Two, this suggests that Windows on ARM will have to provide legacy support for x86 Windows apps... which people were saying Microsoft was never going to do.
The worst case scenario? Windows 8 on ARM has no legacy support for x86 Windows apps, is just a rubbish cobbled-together "Windows OS" running on ARM with another patchwork of "apps" running on top of it. In other words, failing like Microsoft has never failed before.
By Deus, how much lower can Microsoft and Ballmer sink? I suppose when you are falling down the abyss there's only one direction you can go.
Microsoft schooled Apple on this one, a week before Apple. You know Steve has to be pissed. You have to admit, no one saw Microsoft doing this so soon.
I have some meds I take that I'd be happy to share with you.
Microsoft schooled Apple on this one, a week before Apple. You know Steve has to be pissed. You have to admit, no one saw Microsoft doing this so soon.
The UI looks nice. Ever since I saw WP7, I have always felt that it is highly underrated. But what we've seen so far is a graphical overlay. Until Microsoft demonstrates Windows 8 on an actual piece of hardware in person, Windows 8 is nothing more than vaporware.
Frankly, I don't get why companies announce/preview a product when they have no intention of releasing it in the next couple of months or so. Actually, scratch that, I do understand why. Companies can use this preview/announcement as a way to discourage people from buying competitors' products. I know quite a few who have been holding out for a Windows tablet but they don't want to pay a premium for a Windows 7 tablet when they get a better experience with a Windows 7 laptop.
Steve should be calculating a counter-move. But getting "pissed," I don't think so. Not over vaporware.
It poses two immediate concerns. One, this means that a huge bunch of Windows OS junk is ported to ARM, and the tablet has to power the OS as well as a layer of "apps" on top. Two, this suggests that Windows on ARM will have to provide legacy support for x86 Windows apps... which people were saying Microsoft was never going to do.
The worst case scenario? Windows 8 on ARM has no legacy support for x86 Windows apps, is just a rubbish cobbled-together "Windows OS" running on ARM with another patchwork of "apps" running on top of it. In other words, failing like Microsoft has never failed before.
By Deus, how much lower can Microsoft and Ballmer sink? I suppose when you are falling down the abyss there's only one direction you can go.
I know there are some very smart engineers at Microsoft who feel frustrated with the lack of creative vision from management. Replacing Ballmer is on many people's wish lists. I think past Nokia management and Microsoft management have a lot in common. Patting themselves on their backs about how many units they sell and market share. Whats needed here are new engineering driven Microsoft projects that are revolutionary and innovate.. not products which evolve and are driven by risk management.
Watch the video again. It looks more like a tablet with the Windows Shell running inside it, not the Windows Shell with a tablet skin on top.
The immerse UI is apparently a separate shell, so I'm not sure how they actually do it.
Well... yes and no. Windows 8 running on an ARM SoC won't have any back wards compatibility with applications written for older versions of Windows. I saw Microsoft state somewhere there won't be a compatibility layer.
I think this is only the first of a long line of Windows 8 reveals. There is a lot of storage overhead in supporting legacy Windows, so I'm not sure how well that will fit the cheap "tablet as a consumption device" market.
I'm incredibly impressed from what they showed in the video. Microsoft appear to have created a tablet UI that it a lot more multitasking and "content creation" friendly. However I'm fully aware that it was nothing but a staged demo, so at this time I think it would be pretty naive and/or arrogant to make a call either way about this.
The big questions I have is can they make Windows 8 tablet:
Perform well on a relatively slow processor
Have respectable battery life
Fit the storage requirements of a relatively cheap tablet
I still wouldn't be surprised if they revealed multiple versions. The "full" version (as shown), and a ARM-only based "consumption" version with no backward compatibility where Microsoft dictate the hardware (resembling the WPx model more than Windows).
If you don't think it's an abstracted UI layer on top of Windows then you don't understand OS Design.
Who schooled who? Apple did a back to Mac, taking things from iOS back to Mac OS X, next thing you know Microsoft is taking things from Windows Phone 7 back to Windows.
Now you tell me who is schooling who!
I think you are right. Apple did Back to Mac. However, Microsoft seems to be attempt to do both a Back to Windows Desktop AND Back to Tablet (Desktop Apps to Tablet).
Back to Mac.. is this significant. I think it could be. The iOS ecosystem is very popular and has lots of nice apps. I love apps which access data in the Cloud and present it to me using a slick native UI vs using a general purpose Web browser and its Webkit widgets. It would be very cool if someday, I could run these iOS Apps on my Mac for free. Either via an ARM VM or native.
Back to Windows? is this significant. I think it could be as well. However, the Windows Phone ecosystem has a lot of ground to make up compared to iOS.
Back to Windows Tablet. Do we really want to do try this again. Why will this work this time compared to the last few tries? I for one have no interest in attempting to run Legacy Windows Apps using a touch screen interface. "Windows Air" laptop is a better route for MS, IMHO.
This is garbage. MS is flailing at this point. Feeble attempts at announcing something more than a year and a half away...the UI makes no damn sense. Its confusing, does not blend with the Windows 7 UI at all, and what's worse they are trying to convince people "apps" are just web sites. If you have to tell me "this blends well with Windows desktop" and show the ACTUAL Windows desktop ONCE in the whole damn demonstration; you're flatly lying to me and everyone else.
There's nothing of use in this whole damn OS beyond legacy software. If flipping through a bunch of idiotic tiles is useful then the "ribbon" fits in well w/ this blunder as class A 1 great crap.
Billions of dollars are being wasted on this company, and its angering me. The money could be used to do so much more like building a gold house for Ballmer, curing cancer, making a giant Master Chief statue made of silly putty. But no, alas, here we are watching some pasty bald dude from the last decade talk about a "collage" of ideas. Yeah, the talent has left the company like D.E.D. stated.
Fun idea: stop trying to mimic your enemies with crap ass catch up and half-assed touch UIs. Develop what you got and stop trying "unify" the damn planet. How about making your mobile platform stand up on its own two legs first before cramming it into "big boy shoes" like some bad parent?
Either way; no one will remember this garbage after next week.
this is garbage. Ms is flailing at this point. Feeble attempts at announcing something more than a year and a half away...the ui makes no damn sense. Its confusing, does not blend with the windows 7 ui at all, and what's worse they are trying to convince people "apps" are just web sites. If you have to tell me "this blends well with windows desktop" and show the actual windows desktop once in the whole damn demonstration; you're flatly lying to me and everyone else.
There's nothing of use in this whole damn os beyond legacy software. If flipping through a bunch of idiotic tiles is useful then the "ribbon" fits in well w/ this blunder as class a 1 great crap.
Billions of dollars are being wasted on this company, and its angering me. The money could be used to do so much more like building a gold house for ballmer, curing cancer, making a giant master chief statue made of silly putty. But no, alas, here we are watching some pasty bald dude from the last decade talk about a "collage" of ideas. Yeah, the talent has left the company like d.e.d. Stated.
Fun idea: Stop trying to mimic your enemies with crap ass catch up and half-assed touch uis. Develop what you got and stop trying "unify" the damn planet. How about making your mobile platform stand up on its own two legs first before cramming it into "big boy shoes" like some bad parent?
Either way; no one will remember this garbage after next week.
It does look nice and maybe informative to most but what use of it if it is going to be behind the running app all the time. Plus this is just on top of normal (read old, correction, ancient) windows. Can't see much use with mouse and keyboard but touch only which brings us to them following Apple in the first place (good in a way but they do it wrong!). From my standpoint ATM the way I use Windows PC, they are unnecessary. But I do like to be able to see system stats on my desktop much like built in widgets.
Who schooled who? Apple did a back to Mac, taking things from iOS back to Mac OS X, next thing you know Microsoft is taking things from Windows Phone 7 back to Windows.
Now you tell me who is schooling who!
Nailed it! Ha ha ha,.. Apple got "schooled" by showing a Lion pre-view with the "Back to Mac" event and a year later Microsoft really schooled them so bad with a Windows 8 pre-view a month before Lion is released.. with a "year" of updates before an actual Windows 8 launch.. ha ha ha ha ha.
I'm going with Lion, iOS 5 & iCloud integration is going to be pretty big with the changes coming to iTunes. I think the current MobileMe sync services (contact, calendar, & email) will be free and all the new goodness with file storage / sync, iTunes iCloud licenses, etc will have a similar price tag as MobileMe was $99/year or $150/year for family (family price may be a little higher). Just the ability to re-download my iTunes music is something I've been waiting forever to see.. and the "Sync partial songs" system with iCloud will be awesome! I can sync my entire music library in a fraction of the space on my iPhone and seamlessly stream all of it with out buffering.
Microsoft needs to realize that along with UI changes there needs to be actual improvements to the underlying OS. Oh Snap.. I forgot about Snap.. Oh wait that was a Windows 7 feature that was still all UI.. and they made it less useful in Windows 8. Lol Bring a functional Auto-save, Versions, & auto-resume like Lion will and then you might have something.. A Lion Zune
Microsoft schooled Apple on this one, a week before Apple. You know Steve has to be pissed. You have to admit, no one saw Microsoft doing this so soon.
A strategically timed shot over the bough maybe, but considering that new features in Lion having already demo'd (over a year ago?), the merging of iOS and Mac OS in Lion (and we're on the eve of it's release), and though it doesn't "look" like OS X, MS is clearly (again) taking its cue from Apple's iOS/Mac OS integration effort, I'd hardly call this "schooled".
Interesting idea, but I don't think it's original at this point, and if it takes them two years to deliver, we may be looking at 10.8 at that point.
Quote:
Delivering a tepid product that [...] does little but confuse Windows PC users is not going to shore up Microsoft's losses.
This one is on the mark and always kills me. Every release of windows has had subtle, but confusing for the users, changes. No doubt this will come out in full bloom with W8. How many times has MS released some great next idea that as a result of its shallow thinking and poor delivery just...wasn't?
Prediction 1: Windows 8 will be the best selling version of Windows EVER.
Prediciton 2: Apple will continue to outpace the PC market furthering it's revenue, profit and valuation lead from MS.
Oh... I agree with both predictions... I just don't think that W8 will be out any time soon... which will give plenty of time for Apple to show its direction in its own fashion.
M$ plays its cards in a totally different way from Apple. Microsoft wants everyone to know that they are actually moving forward and shows everyone what the future will bring. Apple tends most often to show the product when it's finished or close to being finished and quietly works on the next update.
If you can run desktop apps on a tablet, you're doing it wrong. It's like running iPhone apps on an iPad, theoretically possible, but it looks so atrocious that anyone with a sense of style would rather shoot themselves that do it.
I think you are right. Apple did Back to Mac. However, Microsoft seems to be attempt to do both a Back to Windows Desktop AND Back to Tablet (Desktop Apps to Tablet).
Back to Mac.. is this significant. I think it could be. The iOS ecosystem is very popular and has lots of nice apps. I love apps which access data in the Cloud and present it to me using a slick native UI vs using a general purpose Web browser and its Webkit widgets. It would be very cool if someday, I could run these iOS Apps on my Mac for free. Either via an ARM VM or native.
Back to Windows? is this significant. I think it could be as well. However, the Windows Phone ecosystem has a lot of ground to make up compared to iOS.
Back to Windows Tablet. Do we really want to do try this again. Why will this work this time compared to the last few tries? I for one have no interest in attempting to run Legacy Windows Apps using a touch screen interface. "Windows Air" laptop is a better route for MS, IMHO.
Agreed, Apple has a significantly more clear path to potentially having a "universal" app that will scale from iPhone to the Mac. iOS is OSX... with some underlying innovations that needed to be done to handle the unexpected phone call in the middle of doing something. This led Apple to a very functional auto-save, auto-resume system as a foundational part of iOS. This is one of the big changes that is being brought back to the Mac that will really change the way we think about a "desktop" OS. Same can be said about Versions. Less dealing with managing my file system and running app's.. and more just using them. Having said that, Lion & iOS 5 will be brought back closer together and it would be conceivable that at some point there will be a merging of the Mac App Store and the iOS App Store and like the iPad, there will be Mac only app's, iPad only apps, iOS only app's, and Universal app's that will scale to any platform. For example AngryBirds... they could have 1 version for $5.99 that will use a mouse and keyboard larger interface for the Mac, and the same code can simply have a different UI adjusted for the iPad form factor, and a 3rd UI for the iPhone/iPod Touch form factor.
M$ plays its cards in a totally different way from Apple. Microsoft wants everyone to know that they are actually moving forward and shows everyone what the future will bring. Apple tends most often to show the product when it's finished or close to being finished and quietly works on the next update.
I think Microsoft is intentionally trying to confuse us by using the word "optimized".
The layperson thinks it means that Microsoft will have the best touch interface of anyone.
For Microsoft, it just means that it works the best they can figure out how to make it work. Until somebody else, like say, Apple, comes up with something new, that's all she wrote.
And to say it remains optimized for mouse and keyboard by just including the existing Win7 UI is the height of hubris.
But this is SOP for Microsoft. Promise the moon and ship customers a rock.
Gah, I was just reading on another site that Microsoft is actually coming up with "a third-generation activation system would speed up getting a device ready to use".
Only Microsoft would spend so much effort trying to protect something so few will want.
Comments
Surprisingly, TouchMS-DOS was not demonstrated.
Just Windows with a tablet skin running on top. I "get it", because it still allows you to run the entire Windows catalog, but I'm still unimpressed.
It poses two immediate concerns. One, this means that a huge bunch of Windows OS junk is ported to ARM, and the tablet has to power the OS as well as a layer of "apps" on top. Two, this suggests that Windows on ARM will have to provide legacy support for x86 Windows apps... which people were saying Microsoft was never going to do.
The worst case scenario? Windows 8 on ARM has no legacy support for x86 Windows apps, is just a rubbish cobbled-together "Windows OS" running on ARM with another patchwork of "apps" running on top of it. In other words, failing like Microsoft has never failed before.
By Deus, how much lower can Microsoft and Ballmer sink? I suppose when you are falling down the abyss there's only one direction you can go.
Microsoft schooled Apple on this one, a week before Apple. You know Steve has to be pissed. You have to admit, no one saw Microsoft doing this so soon.
I have some meds I take that I'd be happy to share with you.
Microsoft schooled Apple on this one, a week before Apple. You know Steve has to be pissed. You have to admit, no one saw Microsoft doing this so soon.
The UI looks nice. Ever since I saw WP7, I have always felt that it is highly underrated. But what we've seen so far is a graphical overlay. Until Microsoft demonstrates Windows 8 on an actual piece of hardware in person, Windows 8 is nothing more than vaporware.
Frankly, I don't get why companies announce/preview a product when they have no intention of releasing it in the next couple of months or so. Actually, scratch that, I do understand why. Companies can use this preview/announcement as a way to discourage people from buying competitors' products. I know quite a few who have been holding out for a Windows tablet but they don't want to pay a premium for a Windows 7 tablet when they get a better experience with a Windows 7 laptop.
Steve should be calculating a counter-move. But getting "pissed," I don't think so. Not over vaporware.
It poses two immediate concerns. One, this means that a huge bunch of Windows OS junk is ported to ARM, and the tablet has to power the OS as well as a layer of "apps" on top. Two, this suggests that Windows on ARM will have to provide legacy support for x86 Windows apps... which people were saying Microsoft was never going to do.
The worst case scenario? Windows 8 on ARM has no legacy support for x86 Windows apps, is just a rubbish cobbled-together "Windows OS" running on ARM with another patchwork of "apps" running on top of it. In other words, failing like Microsoft has never failed before.
By Deus, how much lower can Microsoft and Ballmer sink? I suppose when you are falling down the abyss there's only one direction you can go.
I know there are some very smart engineers at Microsoft who feel frustrated with the lack of creative vision from management. Replacing Ballmer is on many people's wish lists. I think past Nokia management and Microsoft management have a lot in common. Patting themselves on their backs about how many units they sell and market share. Whats needed here are new engineering driven Microsoft projects that are revolutionary and innovate.. not products which evolve and are driven by risk management.
@snova,
I like the thoroughness and balance of your posts. Welcome to the forum.
solipsism. thanks for the kind words. not sure how often I will check in. Just had an evening to kill some time tonight.
Watch the video again. It looks more like a tablet with the Windows Shell running inside it, not the Windows Shell with a tablet skin on top.
The immerse UI is apparently a separate shell, so I'm not sure how they actually do it.
Well... yes and no. Windows 8 running on an ARM SoC won't have any back wards compatibility with applications written for older versions of Windows. I saw Microsoft state somewhere there won't be a compatibility layer.
I think this is only the first of a long line of Windows 8 reveals. There is a lot of storage overhead in supporting legacy Windows, so I'm not sure how well that will fit the cheap "tablet as a consumption device" market.
I'm incredibly impressed from what they showed in the video. Microsoft appear to have created a tablet UI that it a lot more multitasking and "content creation" friendly. However I'm fully aware that it was nothing but a staged demo, so at this time I think it would be pretty naive and/or arrogant to make a call either way about this.
The big questions I have is can they make Windows 8 tablet:
- Perform well on a relatively slow processor
- Have respectable battery life
- Fit the storage requirements of a relatively cheap tablet
I still wouldn't be surprised if they revealed multiple versions. The "full" version (as shown), and a ARM-only based "consumption" version with no backward compatibility where Microsoft dictate the hardware (resembling the WPx model more than Windows).If you don't think it's an abstracted UI layer on top of Windows then you don't understand OS Design.
They are so innovative.
Who schooled who? Apple did a back to Mac, taking things from iOS back to Mac OS X, next thing you know Microsoft is taking things from Windows Phone 7 back to Windows.
Now you tell me who is schooling who!
I think you are right. Apple did Back to Mac. However, Microsoft seems to be attempt to do both a Back to Windows Desktop AND Back to Tablet (Desktop Apps to Tablet).
Back to Mac.. is this significant. I think it could be. The iOS ecosystem is very popular and has lots of nice apps. I love apps which access data in the Cloud and present it to me using a slick native UI vs using a general purpose Web browser and its Webkit widgets. It would be very cool if someday, I could run these iOS Apps on my Mac for free. Either via an ARM VM or native.
Back to Windows? is this significant. I think it could be as well. However, the Windows Phone ecosystem has a lot of ground to make up compared to iOS.
Back to Windows Tablet. Do we really want to do try this again. Why will this work this time compared to the last few tries? I for one have no interest in attempting to run Legacy Windows Apps using a touch screen interface. "Windows Air" laptop is a better route for MS, IMHO.
There's nothing of use in this whole damn OS beyond legacy software. If flipping through a bunch of idiotic tiles is useful then the "ribbon" fits in well w/ this blunder as class A 1 great crap.
Billions of dollars are being wasted on this company, and its angering me. The money could be used to do so much more like building a gold house for Ballmer, curing cancer, making a giant Master Chief statue made of silly putty. But no, alas, here we are watching some pasty bald dude from the last decade talk about a "collage" of ideas. Yeah, the talent has left the company like D.E.D. stated.
Fun idea: stop trying to mimic your enemies with crap ass catch up and half-assed touch UIs. Develop what you got and stop trying "unify" the damn planet. How about making your mobile platform stand up on its own two legs first before cramming it into "big boy shoes" like some bad parent?
Either way; no one will remember this garbage after next week.
In closing: too much crap.
this is garbage. Ms is flailing at this point. Feeble attempts at announcing something more than a year and a half away...the ui makes no damn sense. Its confusing, does not blend with the windows 7 ui at all, and what's worse they are trying to convince people "apps" are just web sites. If you have to tell me "this blends well with windows desktop" and show the actual windows desktop once in the whole damn demonstration; you're flatly lying to me and everyone else.
There's nothing of use in this whole damn os beyond legacy software. If flipping through a bunch of idiotic tiles is useful then the "ribbon" fits in well w/ this blunder as class a 1 great crap.
Billions of dollars are being wasted on this company, and its angering me. The money could be used to do so much more like building a gold house for ballmer, curing cancer, making a giant master chief statue made of silly putty. But no, alas, here we are watching some pasty bald dude from the last decade talk about a "collage" of ideas. Yeah, the talent has left the company like d.e.d. Stated.
Fun idea: Stop trying to mimic your enemies with crap ass catch up and half-assed touch uis. Develop what you got and stop trying "unify" the damn planet. How about making your mobile platform stand up on its own two legs first before cramming it into "big boy shoes" like some bad parent?
Either way; no one will remember this garbage after next week.
In closing: Too much crap.
+1
Who schooled who? Apple did a back to Mac, taking things from iOS back to Mac OS X, next thing you know Microsoft is taking things from Windows Phone 7 back to Windows.
Now you tell me who is schooling who!
Nailed it! Ha ha ha,.. Apple got "schooled" by showing a Lion pre-view with the "Back to Mac" event and a year later Microsoft really schooled them so bad with a Windows 8 pre-view a month before Lion is released.. with a "year" of updates before an actual Windows 8 launch.. ha ha ha ha ha.
I'm going with Lion, iOS 5 & iCloud integration is going to be pretty big with the changes coming to iTunes. I think the current MobileMe sync services (contact, calendar, & email) will be free and all the new goodness with file storage / sync, iTunes iCloud licenses, etc will have a similar price tag as MobileMe was $99/year or $150/year for family (family price may be a little higher). Just the ability to re-download my iTunes music is something I've been waiting forever to see.. and the "Sync partial songs" system with iCloud will be awesome! I can sync my entire music library in a fraction of the space on my iPhone and seamlessly stream all of it with out buffering.
Microsoft needs to realize that along with UI changes there needs to be actual improvements to the underlying OS. Oh Snap.. I forgot about Snap.. Oh wait that was a Windows 7 feature that was still all UI.. and they made it less useful in Windows 8. Lol Bring a functional Auto-save, Versions, & auto-resume like Lion will and then you might have something.. A Lion Zune
Microsoft schooled Apple on this one, a week before Apple. You know Steve has to be pissed. You have to admit, no one saw Microsoft doing this so soon.
A strategically timed shot over the bough maybe, but considering that new features in Lion having already demo'd (over a year ago?), the merging of iOS and Mac OS in Lion (and we're on the eve of it's release), and though it doesn't "look" like OS X, MS is clearly (again) taking its cue from Apple's iOS/Mac OS integration effort, I'd hardly call this "schooled".
Interesting idea, but I don't think it's original at this point, and if it takes them two years to deliver, we may be looking at 10.8 at that point.
Delivering a tepid product that [...] does little but confuse Windows PC users is not going to shore up Microsoft's losses.
This one is on the mark and always kills me. Every release of windows has had subtle, but confusing for the users, changes. No doubt this will come out in full bloom with W8. How many times has MS released some great next idea that as a result of its shallow thinking and poor delivery just...wasn't?
The coming years should be interesting
Prediction 1: Windows 8 will be the best selling version of Windows EVER.
Prediciton 2: Apple will continue to outpace the PC market furthering it's revenue, profit and valuation lead from MS.
Oh... I agree with both predictions... I just don't think that W8 will be out any time soon... which will give plenty of time for Apple to show its direction in its own fashion.
M$ plays its cards in a totally different way from Apple. Microsoft wants everyone to know that they are actually moving forward and shows everyone what the future will bring. Apple tends most often to show the product when it's finished or close to being finished and quietly works on the next update.
I think you are right. Apple did Back to Mac. However, Microsoft seems to be attempt to do both a Back to Windows Desktop AND Back to Tablet (Desktop Apps to Tablet).
Back to Mac.. is this significant. I think it could be. The iOS ecosystem is very popular and has lots of nice apps. I love apps which access data in the Cloud and present it to me using a slick native UI vs using a general purpose Web browser and its Webkit widgets. It would be very cool if someday, I could run these iOS Apps on my Mac for free. Either via an ARM VM or native.
Back to Windows? is this significant. I think it could be as well. However, the Windows Phone ecosystem has a lot of ground to make up compared to iOS.
Back to Windows Tablet. Do we really want to do try this again. Why will this work this time compared to the last few tries? I for one have no interest in attempting to run Legacy Windows Apps using a touch screen interface. "Windows Air" laptop is a better route for MS, IMHO.
Agreed, Apple has a significantly more clear path to potentially having a "universal" app that will scale from iPhone to the Mac. iOS is OSX... with some underlying innovations that needed to be done to handle the unexpected phone call in the middle of doing something. This led Apple to a very functional auto-save, auto-resume system as a foundational part of iOS. This is one of the big changes that is being brought back to the Mac that will really change the way we think about a "desktop" OS. Same can be said about Versions. Less dealing with managing my file system and running app's.. and more just using them. Having said that, Lion & iOS 5 will be brought back closer together and it would be conceivable that at some point there will be a merging of the Mac App Store and the iOS App Store and like the iPad, there will be Mac only app's, iPad only apps, iOS only app's, and Universal app's that will scale to any platform. For example AngryBirds... they could have 1 version for $5.99 that will use a mouse and keyboard larger interface for the Mac, and the same code can simply have a different UI adjusted for the iPad form factor, and a 3rd UI for the iPhone/iPod Touch form factor.
M$ plays its cards in a totally different way from Apple. Microsoft wants everyone to know that they are actually moving forward and shows everyone what the future will bring. Apple tends most often to show the product when it's finished or close to being finished and quietly works on the next update.
Windows Longhorn!
The layperson thinks it means that Microsoft will have the best touch interface of anyone.
For Microsoft, it just means that it works the best they can figure out how to make it work. Until somebody else, like say, Apple, comes up with something new, that's all she wrote.
And to say it remains optimized for mouse and keyboard by just including the existing Win7 UI is the height of hubris.
But this is SOP for Microsoft. Promise the moon and ship customers a rock.
Only Microsoft would spend so much effort trying to protect something so few will want.