“represents the single biggest platform opportunity available to developers”

The clue’s in the word single. They will be able to boast the same operating system for phone, desktop and tablet. Nobody else can claim that, so they will be justified.

They said ’single’ platform as opposed to single app store.

Microsoft has recently been copying some of Apple’s bad practices such as missing copy and paste off their first release of Windows Phone 7, being vaguer about future products, trying to lock developers into an App Store from which they take a cut and disabling plug-ins such as Silverlight and Flash from their Metro interface.

Maybe they will adopt some of the few nice things that Apple does like offering the latest version of their operating system as a £20 download for owners of the previous version

Maybe it will be a free update to Windows Phone users? There aren’t many of them, but metro is designed for phones and tablets. Metro apps can run on pretty much any hardware, and new phones and tablets have a similar display resolution to laptops.

The real barrier for developers committing is lack of credibility that Microsoft will stick with the plan long enough to achieve critical mass. Microsoft has such a record of launching new partner platforms and initiatives and then just losing interest and leaving the developers high and dry.
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Remember Windows SideShow and the .NET Micro Framework anyone?

After only 18 months on sales Windows 7 had sold 350 million copies. Last time i checked, this was more than tens of millions. Windows 8 WILL have the biggest audience by a considerable margin. I’d have thought this wasnt really up for debate

“after it’s clear it’s as universally hated as some belive it will be”

With the latest xbox 360 dash update we’ll see if it’ll be a success or not… . But after saying that the kids will get used to it and love it so the rest is history.

Windows 8 will sell millions and the Metro interface will give people what they actually want: “Instant access to information via live tiles”. Standard users, the kids, office workers that come in and do 9-5 need nothing more or nothing less.

I’d agree that Win8 will be an irrelevance for the average PC owner – if by ‘average’ you mean desktop and laptop.

There simply isn’t anything that is desperately needed in the OS.

Win7 is a success because it is a good OS and, after the Vista debacle, it probably benefited from a lot of Vista users upgrading.

But I can’t see many people going to the trouble of replacing a working W7 installation with W8. That will only be done by people who like bright shiny gew-gaws, most of whom probably use apple anyway.

W8 will, in the main, just take over from W7 as the OS to be installed on new machines.

@Fred
There’s a fair bit more to W8 than a ’shiny’ new face. There’s quite a buzz surounding a heavily revised file-system, for example and a new tool called ’storage spaces’, which is reputed to be similar to the old WHS system…

Corporate users will, I’m sure be catered for with enhanced deployment and management and very tight integration inro Server 8 (or whatever its called).

The Metro UI isn’t INSTEAD of an upgrade to W7 its as well as ….

@wittgenfrog
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The last thing I want is yet more interference from MS with the affairs of my files. I’m already sick and tired of Windows suddenly and randomly deciding that I’m not allowed to access my own data.
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I had hoped that the ‘new’ file system (FS?) that no one seemed to understand (the only thing the so called ‘expert’ journalists had to say about it was that it was some kind of ‘digital soup’) was dead and burried.
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If I wanted to be treated like a child with the OS telling me what I could and couldn’t do with my files I’d buy an apple and have done with it.

@Murph,
Actually I knew that netmf was still there – I use it myself! However MS open-sourced it when its intended use for Sideshow failed, and it has since been taken forward by companies like GHI as a microcontroller programming system.

My point is that MS invents these things and just puts them out there to fail. As Google demonstrates, you have to work harder than that actively promoting the idea and subsidising early implementations. This sort of thing is chicken-and-egg: partners need the confidence you are going to stick with it or they will not come aboard. MS seem to have dropped SideShow from W7 when it was only introduced in Vista. Now we have “Location and Other Sensors” in Control Panel, but I’ve never seen a product that integrates with this on the market. I suspect no one will develop anything, expecting it to disappear again in Windows 8!

@JohnAHind

Are you serious holding up Google as a demonstration of seeing things through?

They put loads out there and see if they fail, that’s how innovation gets done. Not everything will be a success.

The hype has already started. Last Week BBC Click claimed “next years must have upgrade will be Windows 8″. Must have by whom?
Microsoft has frequently taken a leaf out of Apple’s marketing book, for a number of years they claimed the business PCs sold with a dual load of XP and Vista/7 as being part of the new software sales. In reality it seems that most companies took the downgrade option. I sincerely hope having tried the developer release 8 will bomb but there is little chance of that with the sheep that have to have the “latest” thing.

Why upgrade to win8 on a desktop computer that is designed for a tablet? Also why spend another £100+ on a OS that will be full of bugs… I will only update if I have to and when SP1 is out for win 8!

I see a strong following behind Mac OS…Being a Windows and Mac fan. (Mac mostly lately) I see them Windows trying to copy-cat behind Mac but the OS is a cat and mouse game. That being said both oses Mac built on Unix and Window built on NT are dated back to around 1995-96 with nothing more than a more glamorous graphical interface. Come on guys lets develop something NEW not old rehashed behind a new graphical interface……