Hands-on with Windows 8: A PC operating system for the tablet age | Hacker News Reader

Hands-on with Windows 8: A PC operating system for the tablet age

arstechnica.com

47 pointsevo_910 comments

Contracts are a very interesting idea security-wise.

Traditionally you go through a file system or the Internet where apps can access anything, and so you get Android-style permissions that everyone ignores.

With contracts, you go through the user's already-necessary actions, and (I don't know about Windows 8's implementation, but it's definitely possible) you get exactly what you need, no more and no less.

Capability-based security is finally going mainstream.

Yeah, its an interesting way of ensuring security (apps only share out information they want to share) and cross-app compatibility (any platform can now support sharing of simple data from any other platform, without needing to use custom app API's)

Yeah this is really interesting, I can see some really cool possibilities for media applications depending on how it's implemented and what sort of data transfer latency the contracts incur.

This looks like a really neat interface. I know it's just a developer preview, but the article left me with a few big questions:

- Is this going to be the interface on all Windows 8 variants (desktop, tablet, professional & home - or whatever those last two are called now)?

- If this interface _is_ being marketed to enterprise customers as well, has Microsoft demonstrated any clever ways it will work for them? It all looks fairly home-centric at the moment.

- How do legacy Windows apps run in this environment? I run a tiling WM on my Debian laptop and I spend a lot of my time tweaking regular apps so they'll look OK in a non-traditional layout. Is there going to be some equivalent of 7's Windows XP Mode that switches you to a different desktop?

To answer your questions

- Microsoft have not yet revealed what SKUs they will ship for Win8, but they have said the home screen on all versions will be this Metro interface

- Clearly it will be marketed to them.

- In the home screen, there is a desktop tile. Select this and you get the Windows desktop as you'd expect where everything will run normally. It does not switch you to a VM or anything like that.

Thanks. :)

Doesn't the "metro interface" feel like just another app -- like Windows Media Center did? Metro = Microsoft Bob 2012.

I'm really excited by the new things that are being tried for desktop OSes. They really haven't changed much since I started using computers.

I wonder how long it will take for touch become mainstream in the laptop market.

Why do you think it ever will?

I imagine touch interfaces will become prolific enough and touch screens cheap enough that all laptops will eventually have touch screens, even if it is only a tertiary form of input.

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