Before Microsoft moved to the Windows Server / Windows XP platform there were two distinct Windows platforms that, while they shared the same code-base had separate development teams and separate aims.
For ten years now we’ve had a single platform and a single code base and the result has been impressive with the complaints about the Windows platform being buggy and insecure now gone and complaints instead aimed at third-party companies such as Adobe.
I’m wondering though if it isn’t time for Microsoft to skim a consumer focus for Windows 8 and future Windows development. Let me explain why.
A year ago anyone using a Windows Mobile device, which included myself still had to contend with a smartphone version of the desktop operating system, with the Start Menu and traditional pull down menus, dialog boxes and so on. It simply was never going to work with modern touch screens and so, in a period of only 18 months, Microsoft re-wrote completely from scratch an entirely new and innovative Smartphone OS and the result is, at the very least, impressive.
Now people are having serious discussions about how well this OS would transfer to tablet devices, it really would only need some minor tweaking to get it to work.
Then there’s Windows itself. Microsoft have tried to innovate with the main Windows interface but there’s really not too much they have been able to do because the vast majority of Windows customers are businesses. When Microsoft introduced the Media Centre interface (can you believe that was eight years ago?) there were, and still are, hopes to extend that to include more functionality but it still remains a little-used part of the Windows desktop OS.
Now we find ourselves at a crossroads where the whole computing market is changing and I believe that Microsoft and the Windows desktop platform needs to change with it. Here, ironically, we can look to Linux for some inspiration.
Since the dawn of time, well the dawn of Linux anyway, that OS had always supported a modular OS desktop with a great many different desktop interfaces available for it. Now the challenge here for Microsoft would be to take this a step further because all the Linux desktops are still, essentially, traditional desktops.
What Windows needs going forward is a series of switchable desktops in the OS, the traditional one for business users, one geared around tablet use (at the moment the standard Windows 7 interface is pretty useless in this regard) and a half-way house that, in the same way Microsoft have now shown us with Windows Phone 7, Apple have demonstrated with the iPad and Google have shown us with Chrome OS, will bring a far more consumer-focused interface based on the way modern home PC users want to interact with these devices.
With Windows 8 we are already witnessing some push towards different business and consumer versions with very business-focused features rumoured to be sitting alongside a new app store and tablet features.
So how difficult would this be? To be honest it really shouldn’t be that hard because when Microsoft re-engineered Windows Vista they componentised the whole OS, built a main core kernel, WinPE, and allowed other components to be laid out on top of that.
The other way this would work is that for decades now all the main windows interface components, for instance the minimize, maximise and close buttons on windows, have all been managed not by developers but by Microsoft through APIs.
So how’s this for an idea for 2012. Let’s have two or three sets of these APIs built into the OS, each of which does the same job and looks broadly the same, but which are focused for business, consumers and touch respectively, and a switchable desktop interface to match.
If Microsoft could pull this off, then it would push Windows far ahead of the competition and set a new standard for Apple, Google and the open-source community to match.
For ten years now we’ve had a single platform and a single code base and the result has been impressive with the complaints about the Windows platform being buggy and insecure now gone and complaints instead aimed at third-party companies such as Adobe.
I’m wondering though if it isn’t time for Microsoft to skim a consumer focus for Windows 8 and future Windows development. Let me explain why.
A year ago anyone using a Windows Mobile device, which included myself still had to contend with a smartphone version of the desktop operating system, with the Start Menu and traditional pull down menus, dialog boxes and so on. It simply was never going to work with modern touch screens and so, in a period of only 18 months, Microsoft re-wrote completely from scratch an entirely new and innovative Smartphone OS and the result is, at the very least, impressive.
Then there’s Windows itself. Microsoft have tried to innovate with the main Windows interface but there’s really not too much they have been able to do because the vast majority of Windows customers are businesses. When Microsoft introduced the Media Centre interface (can you believe that was eight years ago?) there were, and still are, hopes to extend that to include more functionality but it still remains a little-used part of the Windows desktop OS.
Now we find ourselves at a crossroads where the whole computing market is changing and I believe that Microsoft and the Windows desktop platform needs to change with it. Here, ironically, we can look to Linux for some inspiration.
Since the dawn of time, well the dawn of Linux anyway, that OS had always supported a modular OS desktop with a great many different desktop interfaces available for it. Now the challenge here for Microsoft would be to take this a step further because all the Linux desktops are still, essentially, traditional desktops.
What Windows needs going forward is a series of switchable desktops in the OS, the traditional one for business users, one geared around tablet use (at the moment the standard Windows 7 interface is pretty useless in this regard) and a half-way house that, in the same way Microsoft have now shown us with Windows Phone 7, Apple have demonstrated with the iPad and Google have shown us with Chrome OS, will bring a far more consumer-focused interface based on the way modern home PC users want to interact with these devices.
With Windows 8 we are already witnessing some push towards different business and consumer versions with very business-focused features rumoured to be sitting alongside a new app store and tablet features.
So how difficult would this be? To be honest it really shouldn’t be that hard because when Microsoft re-engineered Windows Vista they componentised the whole OS, built a main core kernel, WinPE, and allowed other components to be laid out on top of that.
The other way this would work is that for decades now all the main windows interface components, for instance the minimize, maximise and close buttons on windows, have all been managed not by developers but by Microsoft through APIs.
So how’s this for an idea for 2012. Let’s have two or three sets of these APIs built into the OS, each of which does the same job and looks broadly the same, but which are focused for business, consumers and touch respectively, and a switchable desktop interface to match.
If Microsoft could pull this off, then it would push Windows far ahead of the competition and set a new standard for Apple, Google and the open-source community to match.
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