I like what Microsoft is doing with Windows 8 and I look forward to using it on a tablet. A lot of apps are going to come out for it and a lot of developers will become very rich. The frameworks are easy, flexible, and designed to make very consistent apps which integrate very well with what Microsoft has invented.
But two things come to mind:
- I don’t think people will like using this for their desktop machines. No one wants to hold their arm up to touch their screen, a mouse is just better when you’re at your desk. Your arm will get tired if you have to move it all around just to work with a spreadsheet or scroll a web page. The problem gets bigger when you’re talking about 21 and 24-inch monitors. So, people will either use only the “legacy” interface for a long time or deal with the Metro interface with a mouse, which it wasn’t designed for.
- This stuff is all such a long ways from coming out. At least a year. Lots can change in a year—Google will no doubt start their copying machines and have a workable competitor by then (since their tablet strategy is pretty much doomed right now), and we have no idea what Apple has in the works because they only announce it when it’s ready. When Windows 8 comes out maybe enough people will already have tablets that no one will want to switch.