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My feeling is that this is very much like the "Classic" support that Mac OS X had for a few iterations. Yes, you can run Classic apps, but you don't really want to.

Apple themselves only just recently got iTunes from out of their Carbon compatibility layer, so calling Microsoft out for not getting a 10+ million line code base wrapped in a new UI in time for Windows 8 is pretty rich. That said, getting some form of Office Reader or something into the new UI would be nice.

I am so, so, so glad that Microsoft has double-downed on Metro. Many other companies would have walked away, given the sales and the guffaws from their competitors. It honestly makes me respect them a whole lot.

I also like the idea of the multifunctional machine, that can be the workhorse during the day and the bedroom tablet at night. I would not be surprised if we see something similar from Apple next year, but it depends on how far the iOS and Mac OS X codebases/kernels have drifted.

+1 for the support on Metro. I think the design and interaction is great (and more importantly some nicely original thinking).

One of the things that really impressed me with the demo video was the access to the file system from touch apps (and the use of open app resources as an extension of it). One of the things that I feel has been pretty detrimental to iOS is the removal of any direct access to the file system, meaning that apps can't share access to a file but have to have their own copies.

I wasn't too thrilled to see traditional Windows apps sitting next door though. Yes it's taken Apple some time to get rid of some of their legacy support, but this looks like MS is unwilling to really try and move forward. Despite the backlash they would no doubt suffer for it, at some point soon they really need to put their foot down and say "No, you cannot run 1990s software on this operating system".

But see that's the thing... touch is not "forward". Touch is an alternate method of PC interaction which is good for day to day tasks but definitely not good for everything. This is exactly what I find impressive about this new concept, that it can function in a mode for "keyboard/mouse' (which is not going away for the foreseeable future), and it can function as a slick touch UI device. I can finger browse, flip pages in my e-book, buzz off a quick email, flip through songs, etc... but I can also work in a business mode with all the programs where keyboard/mouse is the proper UI choice. And I can do it on one device and share apps and files.

Also MS's decision to maintain legacy support is their biggest asset. If MS suddenly cut off a huge portion of their past compatibility, and hence established application base, then there is a MUCH bigger risk people will jump ship to Linux or Mac since they need to change up their apps anyhow. Familiarity breeds loyalty, even if sometimes begrudgingly.

They key is will the performance be reasonable on "mobile" hardware. The performance of portable hardware is advancing at a rapid pace but I'm not quite sure it's ready yet (even in a year from now) to run a desktop/touch merged Windows code base. That is where MS is taking a big gamble to me.

I wasn't so much suggesting that touch was the future, as suggesting that nowhere was the future if they keep lugging about compatibility for the last 6 or 7 (major) versions of the OS, all the while looking at radically changing the way things work. This is the approach that brought us Windows 3.1 and 95.

Don't forget, Win 3.1 and 95 were a HUGE commercial success.

Windows 3.1 and 95 were _fantastic_ in their day. You might not be old enough to remember DOS programs...

I remember DOS programs just fine. In fact, thanks to today's technology, I don't even need to be old enough to remember them, I'm still living with some of them ;) [slight exaggeration sure, but not excessively so IMO]

My point wasn't so much the advances that 3.1 and 95 were or weren't, it's that each had fairly impressive improvements in the UI, but were still veneers bolted on to the last OS. I can appreciate them wanting legacy support since their cash cow is the business sector, but in doing so they limit their scope for advancement.

if touch is not "forward" then at least the mouse is definitely "backward". the ideal PARC machine would have been keyboard + touch, not keyboard + mouse. "touch" is interaction with something approaching the real world as it's been known since hunter-gatherer times. the "mouse" is just an artifice to make up for technology that didn't exist in the '70's/early-'80's.

the only thing missing for business apps on iPad form factor is quick text entry. we should drop the mouse. for precise detailed work one could use a stylus. touch is the ideal.

The problem with touch is that's a coarse-resolution input. You can be much, more precise with a mouse and hence have denser UIs. For "pro" apps this is a must.

Again, as I said, for fine-grained work one can use a stylus.

Sure, but as a UI designer you have to privilege one input device. You can't design the same interface for touch and a stylus/mouse.

I'd like to see you aim in an FPS with touch.

Or use a 30 inch vertical monitor.

Or use a 30 inch monitor at all without tired arms at the end of the day.

> Apple themselves only just recently got iTunes from out of their Carbon compatibility layer

iTunes is still a Carbon application, but in fairness, it mostly has to due with retaining Windows compatibility, and Carbon maps more easily to Win32 than Cocoa would.

Safari is most definitely a Cocoa app, and Apple has a Windows compatibility shim for it.

NeXT used to have a Windows compatability layer - it was rumoured to be included in Mac OSX (yellowbox). I'd bet Apple maintained it alongside Cocoa (just like they kept the x86 port alive). itunes being carbon is probably just down to the size of the rewrite.

I suspect they're on the tail end of a big rewrite, and it could even be that they're announcing a cocoa-based itunes next week. It's been pretty quiet around itunes for a while now, and it's a product that needs a lot of love to bring it back up to apple's standards.

I get the impression that iTunes is the one division in Apple that's truly like a different 'business unit' and doesn't sit in the same ship as the rest of Apple, who are all on board and sail together in the same direction when focusing on 'the next thing'.

iTunes 10 was the worst thing Apple have launched recently (IMO). I hope they fix it soon, but I'm not holding my breath.

It's a shame, because iTunes 3 and 4, when it was just Mac-only music management (with a couple of devices supported), were amongst my favourite bits of software ever.

Bingo, Microsoft is not trying to make an iPad.

Everything wrong with Gruber's argument is right there in one sentence: "Microsoft is obviously trying to learn from Apple, but they clearly don’t understand why the iPad runs iOS, and not Mac OS X."

Of course Microsoft understands what Apple is doing — they just disagree

Undoubtedly some people at Microsoft understand. But equally undoubtedly some people don't and are clearly pushing a vision based on legacy products. Unfortunately for Microsoft those people win.

"Microsoft has for the first time realized that the ultimate device will function in BOTH modes and to be efficient the OS on that device also needs two distinct methods of interaction. And this I think is what is brilliant."

I hardly think this is the first time they or anyone else has realized this. A swiss army knife would be in principle the ultimate tool if it were as good at each of its functions as a dedicated device, but in practice it turns out not to be. Anything great is built to meet constraints, perhaps even transcend them, but not to try to be all things to all people. Much of what you say is compelling, but here I think you're drinking Kool-aid.

"You'll never see an iPad as the primary device on an office desk in its current form and UI. Your accountant or DB admin or whatever will always be more productive with a keyboard and mouse when it comes to heavy "business" style applications. This is what the existing touch UI's can't provide."

This immediately reminds me of people who said EXACTLY the same things about the Mac UI relative to the command line. In a sense they were right, because the Mac UI evolved. But they were wrong in a much more important sense, because the UI they considered indispensable simply became a tiny little-used relic tucked in the corner of its successor.

In the end, a computer is a device that provides information to a user and allows that user to make and express decisions. There are fundamental bandwidth arguments we can make about UI "paradigms" -- e.g. mice are spectacularly more precise at pointing than fingers, and keyboards allow a user to input textual information far more quickly than other devices.

Imagine when displays become cheap and flexible enough that your entire laptop is a display, so keys can change their appearance and so can your trackpad. Which UI paradigm will adapt better to this situation?

Or imagine if your display could subtly change its tactile properties to eliminate most or all of the text entry advantage of keyboards.

Anyway, you've made good points.

Wow, you just blew my mind there! But now that you say it it makes total sense. Have a tablet style computer on the go, plug it into a dock and transform it into a desktop style computer. This is brilliant!

One obvious implication of this is the death of the desktop computer. For the first time, this OS is not designed for desktop-only computers.

I wonder how they plan to integrate applications that need big screens like software development or graphic design into the experience. After all, big screens don't lend themselves for touch. Maybe you would plug in your mobile device and it would show the Metro UI, but a big external monitor would only show classic UI. (Maybe with some touch-stuff in a sidebar)

It will also be interesting how they will integrate hardware upgradability. That pretty much exclusively works with desktop towers, wich is at odds with mobility.

GNOME3, Unity, Lion, Windows 8... There is a lot of UI innovation going on! Interesting times, I must say!

> When done you undock and flip back to the touch UI to take it with you, but you still have access to all your documents.

I view this as an antiquated approach to having access to your documents between your "desktop" and "tablet". As much as I hate the word, the future of sharing and accessing documents between devices is in the "cloud". Music and video are already headed in that direction. Services like Dropbox and Evernote have made huge strides. Web apps are also taking us there. And Google's Chromebook intends for everything to be in the cloud.

For sure, right now, it's not a purely seamless task if I say, create a Powerpoint presentation on my Mac and want to share it with someone on my iPad later at a lunch meeting. But, it's not rocket science either. I just throw it into my Dropbox folder. Then I open it from my Dropbox folder on my iPad. But I see these types of tasks becoming automated in the future until it becomes the norm. I don't think local storage will ever go away completely, but I do think it will be used for niche or archaic reasons.

I think they are going after this seamlessness. Remember that microsoft is obsessed with home networking.

One possibility I was thinking of is in terms of multi-screening support, where one screen (smaller?) would have the Metro UI customized with news, RSS feeds, music widget, FB/Twitter, Email, youtube, stocks or whatever, while the other screen, the main one, would have your actual working space. Hell the Metro one could even be touch to fully take advantage of the experience.

I Agree. It's very difficult to have an environment when you can be productive with the same application using a touch device. If you look for example at the iPhone/iPad native controls, they are pretty standard (and very well implemented): listviews, browser, etc.

If the people time with a tablet will be spend mainly on the browser (thinking html5)/mail applications there is not reason to spend a lot of time developing complex controls to use Excel perfectly on a touch device, just switch it to desktop mode and attach a keyboard and a mouse.

The question for mobile/tablet users is: are you using a complex spreadsheet on your mobile/tablet?