Windows 8: could it be more than lipstick on a pig?

So Microsoft has finally shown its hand, and opened the curtains on Windows 8, if only for a highly controlled sneak peek at the D9 conference. Some pro-Microsoft commentators have rambled on about how this was aimed at the audience of the D9, and thus the wider questions were left unanswered. Utter tosh. D9 was merely a vehicle for Microsoft's PR machine. It was all part of a planned unveiling, and if you think the global audience watching the videos were not considered to be the primary target, then more fool you.

What has Microsoft shown? Of course, it’s easy to jump to conclusions on the basis of a few minutes of demonstration. The devil is always in the detail, and the product is far from ready for release. Have I put in enough tempering thoughts so that I’m not accused of leaping off into the unknown?

History will not be kind to the Windows team and its utter failure to predict the rise of the 7-10in tablet

Well, here goes. Windows 8 is the most important release since Windows 95. Back then, it brought a new UI and a move to proper 32-bit GUI programming. Today, we have the same basic UI, an OS in 32-bit and now 64-bit versions, and a crater-sized hole in the shape of the tablet marketplace.

History will not be kind to the Windows team and its utter failure to predict the rise of the 7-10in tablet. Worse still, it will be even less kind in its view of Microsoft's ability, or rather almost complete inability, to respond to this emerging space.

The reason Microsoft was caught on the hop was down to history. The deal with the OEM partners was simple: the OEMs made the hardware, Microsoft made the OS, delivered the developer tools and fostered a development community. The reality is that the delivery of the development tools was almost a by-product of writing the OS and its own internal applications, both client and server. A development community happened almost without Microsoft's input, because of the huge market share that Windows enjoyed. Of course, effort was poured into programmes such as TechNet, MSDN, the developer conferences and so forth. But the developer tools were a by-product of the larger Microsoft vision, not an end unto themselves.

Apple’s game-changer

With tablets, Apple changed the rules. No longer was it a case of an OEM supplying the hardware, and Microsoft coming up with the OS, the developer tools and the third-party developers. Now it was an integrated stack - hardware, OS, developer tools and an application store. Not only that, you got a walled garden of security for the user. Apps were checked before being made available to ensure they had no malware. Style guides were enforced with a non-negotiable rigour. Credit-card handling, app distribution, versioning and so forth were all handled by Apple for a relatively small fee. But worst of all for the developers, the customer was an anonymous paying entity that was hidden away from the developer.

For Microsoft and its third-party OEMs, this was a bombshell. Try as they might to downplay its significance, it was the right solution at the right time. Worse still, the OEM vendors hadn’t seen this hardware revolution coming and were caught on the hop. They had nothing to compare, and took almost a year to get something into production. And what they eventually shipped was poor quality. Some of the hardware had truly disgusting screens, dreadful battery life, poor build quality and so forth. The choice of OS came down to a mutant form of a phone OS from Google or Windows 7 with some touch "enhancements" thrown in. The word "desperate" doesn’t even begin to describe this mess.

Do not be confused about the relationships between the hardware OEMs and Microsoft - Tense isn’t a bad word to use

For Microsoft, it was the worst of all outcomes. Not only had it dropped the ball by failing to have a touch-oriented OS ready to ship, but the developer tools story was confused too. Do we go with HTML5? Or Silverlight? Or something else like WPF? And the OEMs had committed the ultimate betrayal - they had looked away from Microsoft for an answer, found that iOS wasn’t available, and grabbed onto the only remaining solution. An OS offering from arch-rival Google, in the shape of Android.

Do not be confused about the relationships between the hardware OEMs and Microsoft. "Tense" isn’t a bad word to use. Long term readers will remember some five years ago when I sat down with a very senior director at Acer in Taipei, just before the launch of Vista. A planned 30-minute interview turned into a near two-hour tirade by Acer against Microsoft. Of course, this was planned and was the reason the company flew me out there, under the pretence of attending the company's 30th anniversary birthday dinner. Clearly Acer thought the time was right to publically fire another shot across Redmond's bow. The story went global overnight as I was flying back through Hong Kong.

And what was HP's response to the Apple threat? It committed an even bigger sin in the eyes of Microsoft. It bought Palm, giving itself its own operating system, developer tools and so forth. A bigger act of treachery is hard to imagine, coming from what is a top-tier partner.

One true Windows

So here we are with a preview of Windows 8. You will have seen the demos, so I won’t labour on about what’s obvious to see. What is more interesting is what isn’t there.

Firstly, I confess I’m deeply disappointed. Before the Redmondians start sighing, and changing my internal PR rating from "negative/neutral" (a rating I’m proud to wear, because it means I’m harsh when I need to be and "neutral" is a grudging acceptance of being right, in PR speak) to merely "negative". Remember all of those caveats I wrote at the beginning? Please just repeat them one more time.

I’m disappointed because it’s clear that Microsoft has an unswerving belief that One True Windows is the only way forward, and that One True Windows is the only solution that will match all the needs of the users. In essence, everything is still a PC. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

Now before I sound too bitter and twisted, it’s possible that Microsoft is right. There are advantages to bringing forward the old legacy: lots of apps, lots of drivers, and it’s easier to migrate from Windows 7 to Windows 8. Despite the UI default being the new touch-tiled interface, you can bet that there will be a policy-based setting that lets a company turn this off by default if needed, especially on business desktops. From that point of view, Windows 8 will be just like Windows 7 with a few tweaks. Nothing to worry about, keep doing your upgrades. Training will be a cinch.

But if you go to the new UI, then old apps will appear in their own desktop. Suddenly you will move from New Windows to Old. This might not seem a bad thing, except that New Windows is targetted firmly at a touch interface, and Old most definitely is not.

Now I accept that it’s not quite so cut and dried. It will doubtless be possible to use New Windows with a mouse. And there will be UI tweaks within the OS to help Old Windows be less of a dog when running on a touch-centric device - things such as auto-zooming of clickable items, for example.

But you just know that the new UI will really only be at home on a touch device, or a device with a touch interface - a largeish trackpad on a laptop, or a desktop trackpad panel. And the old UI will be something of a kludge.

This is the Microsoft of old: the arrogant, controlling, self-satisfied and smug Microsoft that I hoped we had left behind

And do we really want all of that legacy stuff on a new tablet, portable, or wall-mountable form factor? Do I really want to have Excel dragged screaming into this arena? Do I really want a five-year-old buggy printer driver that has little consideration for power-sensitive portable devices to be slapped into my shiny new OS?

I am far from convinced. Clearly Microsoft believes this is the answer. That having two OSes, one for a tablet/touch/small devices and a full-fat option for desktop machines is too much like confusion and complication. Microsoft must believe that having One True Windows is the only answer.

Designed by Microsoft, for Microsoft

The problem is this is driven more by Microsoft's needs than yours and mine. In essence, by having One True Windows, and where "Everything Is Still A PC", Microsoft manages to maintain a coherent licensing pricing model. It doesn’t have to explain why it has a second tier of OS with a second tier of pricing. The good ship Redmond keeps sailing on.

So what else is a worry? Well, it has made some announcements about the developer story so far, but has managed to cock this up, just like it cocked up the Silverlight story back at the Professional Developers Conference at the end of last year, where Bob Muglia effectively end-of-lifed the platform and then had to retract it all afterwards.

By saying that the New Windows UI is written in HTML5 and JavaScript, Microsoft has basically said it’s an IE10 UI. No mention of Silverlight, no mention of WPF. No mention of how existing .NET applications will run their UI in the New Windows world. There might well be simple and straightforward explanations; developers might well be worrying for nothing.

But how would you react to this statement from Pete Brown, the .NET community manager on the Silverlight developer forums? (Thanks to my good friend Tim Anderson for the pointer):

"You all saw a very small technology demo of Windows 8, and a brief press release. We're all being quiet right now because we can't comment on this. It's not because we don't care, aren't listening, have given up, or are agreeing or disagreeing with you on something. All I can say for now is to please wait until September. If we say more before then, that will be great, but there are no promises (and I'm not aware of any plans) to say more right now. I'm very sorry that there's nothing else to share at the moment. I know that answer is terrible, but it's all that we can say right now. Seriously."

This is the sort of thing that makes me want to ram-raid the front door at Redmond. The Windows 8 team knows exactly what is going to happen with the developer story. The developer tools division knows exactly what is going to happen. The Office team has already demonstrated Office 2010 running on Windows 8 on ARM, so it knows what’s going on (assuming it wasn’t a smoke-and-mirrors demonstration, something Microsoft has a poor reputation for). Everyone knows, except us on the outside. We have to wait until September, for the Professional Developers Conference, now named "Build", for this information. We are not allowed to know now.

Do you really think the Office team is booking seats at Build in order to find out what tools and development directions it should be taking for Windows 8? Can you hear my hollow laughter all the way from my hotel room, here in Hong Kong?

Jam tomorrow

Now I accept that the D9 presentation was tight for time. There wasn’t time to put out a detailed statement about what the developer story is going to be. But Microsoft put out a full press release on the matter. It could easily have clarified matters. But it chose not to do so, and is banning its public-facing people from commenting.

This is the Microsoft of old: the arrogant, controlling, self-satisfied and smug Microsoft that I hoped we had left behind. This is the Microsoft that believes that we will wait for whatever it cares to ship, and timescales are something it controls. Let us eat cake.

But the reality is very different. Microsoft still won’t commit to any sort of timescale, and even its PR team won’t actually agree with Steve Ballmer that it’s a 2012 release. Jam tomorrow.

Let’s say it’s an end of 2012 release. This would tally with previous work, with a PDC in September. A public beta around Febuary or March 2012, an RC1 around April/May, and gold code in July. First hardware shipping in September/October. It’s entirely possible that Microsoft will surprise us with a Spring 2012 launch, but I cannot believe it is possible.

So we have 18 months to wait. Eighteen months. In that time, Android will have revved at least once, probably twice. iOS will be almost at iOS6. By showing the lipsticked pig now, it’s clear what the target will be. And you can bet that everyone outside of Redmond is sighing a huge sigh of relief that Microsoft's hasn’t had the balls to do a pure new tablet oriented OS. Or...

Tablet-only Windows

Maybe there is a bigger, more aggressive and more interesting plan here

Or... is this a cunning plan? We know that Windows 8 will run on ARM. We know that no legacy apps or drivers will run on ARM, because there is, and will be, no compatibility or VM layer in place. Apps that run on .NET might cross compile to an ARM runtime relatively easily. An ARM version of Windows 8 might not have the classic desktop - after all, no classic apps means no need for a classic desktop. Windows 8 for ARM might actually just be clean and fresh: new drivers, new apps, new UI.

Is this all some ruse? Might Windows 8 for ARM be ready to ship early in 2012? And full-fat Intel Windows 8, with the new UI and the old Windows compatibility, released separately in 2012?

A split launch? Maybe Microsoft is being braver than we think. Maybe it’s not sitting back in its old, complacent monopolist ways. Maybe there is a bigger, more aggressive and more interesting plan here. Nine months is enough for the best hardware vendors such as Samsung, Acer and Asus to have ARM-based tablets ready to ship. Nothing was shown last week at Computex in Taipei, just lots of bog-standard things ready for Q4 this year. I know, I was there. But think about the non-disclosure agreement Microsoft would force on these vendors for support of an ARM-based tablet platform for delivery early in 2012. Silence from the top-tier vendors today would be assured.

Would even that be enough? Apple cannot make enough iPads. It has a huge development base, and the public loves it. When I arrived at The Upper House hotel in Hong Kong there was no paperwork, everything was done using iPads running custom applications. My desk has an iPod Touch loaded with a custom app through which I can order room service. Last night, at the wonderful restaurant 86F on the top of Taipei's magnificent 101 superskyscraper, all the menus were on iPads. Some airlines are looking at touch devices for their in-flight movies - British Airways already uses Archos devices on the London City to New York route.

The world has moved on. I accept these are niche, high-end solutions. But the market has clearly existed for point-of-sale, line-of-business applications running on touch devices. It doesn’t matter if the device is iOS or Android. What matters is that it isn’t Microsoft. And every month that goes by without a credible Windows for touch computing on a 7-10in device, the weaker Microsoft's position becomes.

A split delivery approach, with a touch-oriented ARM solution early in 2012 might be enough. Maybe. However, making everyone wait for a "lipstick on a pig" One True Windows at the end of 2012 will be too little, too late.

Ballmer has said that Windows 8 is Microsoft's riskiest bet. Maybe it will be. Maybe his view of risk is much more conservative than mine. But I am clear in my mind - get this wrong, and Microsoft is in serious trouble.