Last week, Microsoft unleashed a three-prong attack in which it revealed a major overhaul of the Windows UI, coming in next year's Windows 8 release. This includes a live appearance by Windows Head Honcho Steven Sinofsky at an industry conference, a professionally made video starring Microsoft UI Guru Jensen Harris, and a separate appearance at the Computex trade show in Taipei by Microsoft Hardware Lead Michael Angiulo.
Put simply, what Microsoft showed off was a shell, of sorts, which will sit on top of Windows 8, resembling the Windows Phone "Metro" UI, with colorful, dynamic tiles. It's called the Windows Start screen, is targeted at widescreen displays, and works equally well with traditional keyboard and mouse interfaces, kind of like Windows Media Center does today.
Mock-up of my personalized Windows 8 Start screen (
enlarge)
The Start screen has touched off a delicious and exciting debate over whether this UI is the single greatest innovation that Microsoft has ever created, or the single worst mistake in the company's history since Bob.
Well, I have a newsflash for you. This UI is genius. And while I understand that, for many of you, the knee-jerk reaction is to disagree, perhaps violently so, all I'm asking for is a little patience. Because I think I can explain why this UI, improbably, is perfect for just about any computing scenario you care to name.
Let's jump in.
First, to frame this discussion, at least admit that computing is suddenly evolving very rapidly. And whether you agree that Apple's iPad is a big deal or not, just know that the Cupertino company has in fact jumpstarted a new computing category, something that can and will exist alongside traditional desktop and notebook computers for the foreseeable future.
I've been saying since last year that these two product lines—iPads/tablets and PCs—will merge over time. That is, the iPad and its copy-cat followers are going to evolve "upmarket" in that they will pick up more and more traditional PC capabilities over time and lean less heavily on the consumption side of the usage fence. Meanwhile, PCs will evolve "downmarket" (not really, but it's unclear how else to say this) and pick up the best iPad functionality: A simpler UI. Instant resume and single-digit second boot times.
Conventional wisdom has it that Windows is too big and bloated to make sense on a highly-simplified, device-like tablet. Without getting into the details of why this is ludicrous, I'll just point you to Ed Bott's argument against this line of thinking, which boils down to reminding people about the deep componentization works that has occurred in Windows over the past few releases.
More important, I think, is the argument that Microsoft would never—will never—give up its greatest strength, a long-running tradition of backwards compatibility. Unlike Apple, which can aggressively junk aging technologies and products as it moves inexorably forward to The Next Big Thing (tm), Microsoft has approximately 1.2 billion users worldwide, and many of them are corporate customers who demand that today's products work with yesterday's. This thinking has guided Microsoft's OS design over the years, of course. And it's happening again in Windows 8.
But here's the thing. I and many others have also argued, endlessly, that it's not possible to have a single OS, let alone a single UI, that works equally well across all hardware types. I mean, how silly is it to think that Microsoft, or any company, could come up with one UI that works on phones, mini-slates, tablets and Tablet PCs, netbooks, notebooks, and Ultrabooks, desktop PCs, media center PCs in the living room, and—gasp!—even servers? It's ludicrous, right?
Wrong.
The Windows 8 Start screen is that UI. Here's why.
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