Regarding Windows

So, today, this article turned up in my RSS feed Windows 8 Consumer Preview: No Going Back from Gizmodo , and that's what we'll be discussing today.

I've read some reviews of Windows 8 and have seen some usage and the first thing that struck me was "dayum, that is pretty." Because it really really is. I mean, just look:

That's gorgeous! This is Microsoft finally paying attention to their products looking finished and cohesive across all brands. Note that you can find this same design principle- the Metro UI- across all of Microsoft's properties: Windows Phone 7, XBOX, Zune, and now Windows 8. It's minimalistic, sleek, and symmetrical. This is a departure from the recent movement by industry design leaders (read: Apple) to embrace skeumorphism (an example of a skeumorphism is a calendar application that looks exactly like a calendar on your wall; real life allegories in a digital environment) as a design principle. It'll be interesting to see which comes out on top, but for my money I prefer non-skeumorphic.

It looks nice, and by all accounts- I have not used it, so this is not a hands on review- it's quite snappy and responsive. There is an active community quickly developing apps for the system, and they're mostly free. So that's all good.

However, there are some issues. This is a touch based operating system. It was definitely designed touch first. From what I've seen and heard, using it on a desktop is almost entirely like using Windows 7, which is pleasant- it's the best Windows to date- but that means this upgrade might not be necessary for most. It also means that where the touch environment is most notable- the Start screen (pictured above) and Windows 8 apps- it may be difficult to navigate via keyboard and mouse. Lifehacker tested this with a keyboard and mouse, and while it seemed that they figured it out and it worked well, the point is that it isn't intuitive, out of the box, you would likely spend some time figuring this stuff out. What I'd really like to see is hardware that catches up to this software. A multitouch trackpad if they could get it passed Apple's lawyers, and perhaps a capacitive touch screen if they can't. That would actually be pretty interesting, it could display notifications, and integrate or perhaps be replaced by your Windows Phone.

I like what I've seen so far, and if it's at least as good as Windows 7 and Windows Phone 7, then I'm sure it will do well.