Microsoft’s chief Steve Ballmer at a Gartner Symposium claimed that Windows 8 would be like a major gamble for his company. Analyst John Pescatore asked him about the next “riskiest product bet” and the answer was simply “the next release of Windows”. It is not clear if the answer referred to the importance of a successful core product or if the operating system would represent a radical break.
What is known is that the design will be a refinement of the operating system and will provide an Apple-like experience, including fast startup and automatic logout once the system hibernates, as well as a hardware button to trigger system restore. Cameras are supposed to help logging in. There will also be an ambient light sensor to support brightness auto-tuning and other settings resembling to MacBooks and iOS devices.
Windows 8 is scheduled to hit store shelves in 2012. When it does, Microsoft must deliver features that will ensure that Windows will remain the dominant desktop operating system.
Even though Windows 7 is performing extremely well around the world as the fastest-selling version of Microsoft’s operating system ever, the company already is working on Windows 8.
For now, it has been relatively tight-lipped about the features Windows 8 will bring to the table, but it expects to make it available to customers in about two years. Between now and then, the company will be doing everything it can to build upon the success of Windows 7.
Exactly how it will achieve that goal is unknown at this point. The marketplace is changing rapidly, and some of the ideas that might have worked in 2010 won’t necessarily work in 2012, when new products and software are available to customers. Realizing that, Microsoft needs to think about bringing several features to Windows 8 that will help it stay atop the highly competitive software market.
Even before the advent of Windows 7, Microsoft was hard at work planning the next iterations of the Windows client and server platforms. But even though the successor of Windows 7, commonly referred to, even by Microsoft’s own employees, under the codename Windows 8, was in planning, the Redmond company is not sharing any details on the release with the public. The silence continues even at this point in time, when the first reports indicating that Microsoft has actually kicked off the development process for Windows 8 began emerging. Still, sometimes details leak outside of Redmond. It is the case of a Program Manager on the Windows 8 team which claims that the next version of Windows will be unlike anything users expect of the operating system.
“The minimum that folks can take for granted is that the next version will be something completly different from what folks usually expect of Windows – I am simply impressed with the process that Steven has setup to listen to our customers needs and wants and get a team together than can make it happen. To actually bring together dozens and dozens of teams across Microsoft to come up with a vision for Windows.next is a process that is surreal! The themes that have been floated truly reflect what people have been looking for years and it will change the way people think about PCs and the way they use them. It is the future of PCs… Thats about it for this post for the time being – I know I’m not sharing much at this point but right now I can’t as we work towards finalizing that vision,” the PM said.
Read the rest of the article @ news.softpedia.com
Windows 7 is a smashing success according to Microsoft, whose statistics indicate that the operating system sold in excess of 60 million licenses since General Availability in October 22nd, 2009. At the same time, Microsoft is shifting its focus on the next iteration of the Windows client, which, according to the Redmond company, is at least codenamed Windows 8, if the moniker won’t become the official brand, just as it was the case for Windows 7. But while looking ahead, at just three months after Windows 7 GA, Microsoft is not yet ready to talk specifics about Windows 8.
In an interview with ZDNet UK, Steven Sinofsky, president, Windows and Windows Live Division, managed to be as elusive as possible. For example, to the question whether Microsoft will be able to top Windows 7 with Windows 8, Sinofsky stated “There’s no answer to that. That’s what we do, and that’s the work we’re going to do. It’s the balance between solving problems and innovation.”
Read the full article @ news.softpedia.com
The company of Redmond would be already preparing his team of development to begin the process of creation and assembly of the new operating system, specially setting off in the second semester of 2010.
Between some of the innovations established in the waybill, they emphasize the update of all kinds of applications developed for third, as well as the virtualization of teams and operative platforms of a more fluid and finished way.
Read the rest of the article at gnewstechnologyn
With Windows 7 making strides forward in its usage and popularity I thought it about time to have a look forward to what I hope Windows 8 will be like.
Its probably best to first look forward to what we know is coming in the future and see how those trends might affect what Microsoft do with Windows 8.
- Mobile devices including phones, netbooks and tablets are going to become an increasingly important part of our lives and perhaps we’ll become more dependant on them than desktops and large notebook PCs. Part of this trend includes “location aware” technology that is often used in mobile phones and increasingly online services like Twitter are using more with features like Local Trends.
- Natural User Interface (NUI) is becoming an increasing trend of Microsoft to include in its products with full touch support in Windows 7 and Project Natal on its way for Xbox.
- Google plan to release their Chrome OS before the end of the year which will bring a brand new kind of operating system to computers, a cloud OS. This will mean that PCs will no longer need to have powerful hardware within them or large amount of storage as nearly all services will be accessed from the Cloud.
Read the rest of Gillys article at mymicrosoftlife.com
7700.0.100122-190 (Early Windows 8 Development) Screenshots Released by WZT
WZT has installed the client version of POST-RTM build 7700.0.100122-1900 (x64) and released it’s hash information.
FILE: 7700.0.100122-1900_x64fre_client_en-us-GRMCXFRE_EN_DVD.iso
SIZE: 3,231,166,444 bytes
SHA-1: C0CB719B781D49B39D8CC93A27F990A366B8E4C7
It should be noted that this is apart of the WinMain branch and not the SP Branch… meaning this is quite probably the early development stages of Windows 8.
Read the rest of the article at thewindowscenter.com
With the latest news of estimated Windows 8, Windows Server 2012 and Office 2012 RTM dates, I was reminded of something I ran across a while back but never posted about. The Microsoft Windows 7 blog, Engineering 7, gained quite the following during its tenure. It was a way for Microsoft to be transparent about some of their thinking for Windows 7 and to gain valuable feedback from customers the world around. Well, thanks to an apparent placeholder page on MSDN, it appears Microsoft is going to do it again with Windows 8!
Read the rest of the article at msftkitchen.com
Windows 8 might ship in 64 bit and 128 bit versions, based on the LinkedIn profile of Microsoft employee Robert Morgan:
Working in high security department for research and development involving strategic planning for medium and long-term projects. Research & Development projects including 128 bit architecture compatibility with the Windows 8 kernel and Windows 9 project plan. Forming relationships with major partners: Intel, AMD, HP, and IBM.
Robert Morgan is working to get IA-128 working backwards with full binary compatibility on the existing IA-64 instructions in the hardware simulation to work for Windows 8 and definitely Windows 9.
Hmm, very interesting…