There is an ocean of expertise and customized software out there on the Windows desktop, and Microsoft would never alienate these people.

This fits in nicely with Ed Bott's vision of Microsoft's future as a cloud-based service provider with its own hardware line, Surface.

First I want to point out that lots of speculation, including my own, tends to assume a certain degree of smarts, of intelligence & common sense among the elite in the executive offices at companies like Microsoft -- Why?... Other examples of seeing the world through the lens of our own perspective include imagining that Microsoft's elite are more interested in Microsoft the company, v.s their own egos & paychecks, & over-estimating a Windows' geek's worth.

Microsoft is owned by investors who demand the appearance of future profit growth -- Microsoft's worth is determined by what investors are willing to pay for their stock, which is based on how much they think it'll be worth in the future, so that any shares they own will increase in value. It doesn't matter as much if Microsoft's profits actually rise, or if Microsoft's fortunes eventually fail -- the main thing is does MS stock look good enough to other investors that the price of that stock rises. If it turns out that Microsoft actually does well, that's a bonus. Stock prices determine whom gets to sit in the corner offices, & the amount they get paid. Right now MS is no Amazon, Apple, or Google -- as Bott says, the companies MS is trying to up their game against, in Ballmer's own words, emulate. The Gate's days are over.

The Metro interface [I dislike calling the GUI long used by cell phones out of necessity, Modern] is copied the same way Windows' original desktop was copied, & together with Surface & their app store, pure emulation of the big 3 MS is targeting. Personally I take heart from the fact that MS has never been very good at the stuff Google excels at, they've never been good at retail like Amazon, & IMO their hardware's been going downhill for quite a while. Personally I hope this whole effort fails, so MS is forced to increase their fortunes the old fashioned way, by building better Windows, Office etc. What happens in the mean time, happens in the mean time, & while it's worth following, planning etc., not a whole lot of utility in worrying about it. :)

The peak days of the tech kings/queens IMO are sadly over... most of the people who've made it big, & many of those who will make it big in the future are not Page & Brin, but biz folk who employ [& discard] tech expertise. ZDNet is a shadow of its former self, & those T-shirts saying: "No, I won't fix your computer" are becoming more an expression of hope than frustration at being overwhelmed. Many game devs were I think disgusted, maybe not a little frightened by win8's Metro, because it was a sign that maybe their customer base just got a LOT smaller -- how does someone without lots of cash & resources compete writing & debugging tons of game code when competition with a fraction of their knowledge can churn out several app store games a week? And make more money in the process. A century ago you had better know a bit about how cars worked in order to drive one -- now you hop in, push a button to start, & off you go. In the early 90s DOS vs. *nix command lines weren't that different, & you had to know something other than where the On switch was located -- today most people can pick up a smart phone & use it immediately out of the box [once charged of course :) ].

People who maybe never could use a PC in the *old* days are using them now to do stuff on-line for example that doesn't require anything on the order of the Windows apps we've come to rely on. I could just as easily be typing this using the Bluetooth keyboard & my 7" tablet, but I'd still be sitting at my desk drinking coffee & my PC's screen is larger so why not use it? OTOH if I'd known I'd be typing this when I got up this morning maybe I would have used the tablet & saved the electricity required to run the PC. The world has shifted -- I now have that choice. Running more involved software, knowing a small bit of how PCs & Windows work, I've woken up discovering that I'm now part of a [albeit large] market niche, one that might not always be courted in the future.

I [we] are courted today -- there's billions of us running software that requires the desktop -- but there are billions more that maybe never will... combined with those PC users who make the switch, that maybe never really needed a PC but never before had the choice, & our niche could shrink considerably. Luckily, paraphrasing from LOR, Today is Not that day. :)

And, while I'm typing, I'll admit that I'm not a fan of "the cloud". If you can't touch your data storage then you don't actually own the data. At best, all you have is a limited right to access the data.

I think there's a big difference between *The Cloud* as it's sold to consumers & using the cloud/cloud services FWIW... A biz might use the cloud adding capacity that they're not sure they'll need in the future, or can't get ramped up fast enough -- in that respect it's similar to a retailer hiring temporary help during the Christmas shopping season. Using the cloud/services internally on hardware they own also can add flexibility, and make services available across a wider variety of hardware, e.g. cell phones/tablets owned by the company &/or employees. And it's a step towards the old idea of dumb terminals that everyone hated except a bunch of folks in IT -- I think many in IT view their users as the greatest problem, the biggest source of their headaches, & so very much desire limiting what they can do & the amount of trouble they can cause.

That's different than what's sold consumers IMHO... For a variety of reasons, including attracting investors betting on the future, many businesses use a strategy of build it quickly/cheaply, attract an initial customer/user base, then figure out how to make it pay [e.g. F/Book after its IPO]. For that the cloud may be ideal -- if thing's don't work out you've got minimal investment. And you can offer whatever it is you're offering to a much larger range of potential customers by being hardware agnostic from the start, rather than say porting software to iOS, Android, Windows etc...

There are real benefits, such as WR's posting his game screenshots vs. setting up his own server, but much [most?] of the hype is just that, an attempt I think to make users believe whatever company or organization is using the cloud because it benefits someone besides that company or organization. I think subscription services OTOH are a different animal -- similar because the cloud might enable easier DRM for example, but different.

Adobe's one reason I say that... Adobe would rather you paid by subscription, same as many other companies I assume because they make more $ that way, but customers can't very well upload video files taking up hundreds & hundreds of GB -- the bandwidth just isn't there. So Adobe's model is use the cloud to manage subscriptions & DRM for the software you download, install, use. Autodesk likes the cloud for DRM, seeing it as more bulletproof than more traditional methods including dongles. I feel Microsoft is trying to sell folks on the cloud as a means to sell subscriptions, since previous attempts at selling subscriptions minus the cloud didn't work very well -- we're not all stupid. :) So to get you to buy a subscription they *Have* to present something different than the boxed Office on store shelves to get the transition started.

interesting.

First, with apologies to WR, there will always be a desktop. The question is whether Microsoft will be involved.

It's no secret that Microsoft has wanted to move us to annual subscriptions for our software for years. They see much profit in charging $100 per year for your copy of Office, $50 per year for your OS and so on. Gone, they think, are the days where your single contribution to Redmond is the purchase of a PC and all its glorious software. In their eyes you're not a customer, you're a never-ending revenue stream.

There used to be a great deal of animosity between the big dog at Sun and Bill Gates. AFAIK, it bordered on hatred. The good news for us is that it spawned "Open Office" so I'd be watching Wine and other similar projects. If Microsoft wants to leave over a hundred million users underserved then somebody will fill the gap. Any competent business person knows, again with apologies to WR, that you should always "mind the gap".

And, while I'm typing, I'll admit that I'm not a fan of "the cloud". If you can't touch your data storage then you don't actually own the data. At best, all you have is a limited right to access the data. Nope, sorry, access is denied, you need to buy a new key. Fortunately, they're on sale...

It comes as no surprise to anyone who reads my stories that I hate Windows 8's Metro interface. I'm not alone. Lots of people hate it. But instead of switching back to an Aero-style interface, perhaps the most respected technical Windows writer out there, blogger Paul Thurrott, looked at the leaked Windows Blue release and thinks Microsoft is planning on dumping Windows Desktop mode entirely. No!
winsupersiteblueleak-200x136Will Metro be Windows' only interface soon? Some experts think so.

I've thought all along that one way Microsoft could save Windows 8 from its current market malaise if it would make its desktop mode the primary interface instead of Metro.

That isn't what Thurrott sees happening though. In fact, he sees the exact opposite.

Thurrott wrote, "All the action in this build is in PC settings, and if you were looking for any further proof the desktop being eased out going forward, look no further than this. As noted in the previous report, there are a ton of new settings in there now, including many items that were previously only available in the desktop-based Control Panel interface. This is clearly an indication of how we get from here (Windows 8) to there (Windows 9, with potentially no desktop)." As further proof, he observed, "The default apps interface has been completely Metro-ized in this release."

Some observers, like ComputerWorld's Preston Gralla, agree with him: "There's a reasonable chance that Microsoft will finally get around to killing the Desktop in Windows 9," Gralla writes. "With Windows 8, Microsoft did its best to make the Desktop at best an afterthought, relegating it to a tile on the Start screen. Windows 8 has been built for touch and the horizontal orientation of a tablet, and the Desktop has no place in that world."

Others, such as Byte's Larry Seltzer, disagree: "Can anyone actually believe this? Earth to Paul: The Windows desktop is a major strength of the operating system, 'especially' as compared to the competition. There is an ocean of expertise and customized software out there on the Windows desktop, and Microsoft would never alienate these people."

I'd agree with Seltzer, except... well, Microsoft is already alienating those users. I know some Windows 8 PC users. The majority of them zoom past Metro and get to a normal Windows Desktop as fast as possible. If Thurrott is right, Windows users will be locked into Metro once and for all. That will fly as well as a lead brick.

One source close to Microsoft told me he can't see Microsoft dumping the desktop anytime soon. "There's the little, itty-bitty problem of hundreds of thousands of desktop applications that will take years, if not longer, to migrate to WinRT API-based apps. Just bringing Office alone to WinRT will be a Manhattan Project."

Of course, Microsoft does have one way around this problem: Move all its business apps to the cloud and make them software as a service (SaaS) apps. This fits in nicely with Ed Bott's vision of Microsoft's future as a cloud-based service provider with its own hardware line, Surface.

If moving its business applications to the cloud really is the plan, then Microsoft could indeed leave Windows 8's desktop mode behind. I wouldn't be happy about it, and I don't see that I'd ever like Metro, but a combination of cloud services and Windows-based devices with Metro interfaces could win for Microsoft.

It's beginning to look more and more like if you want a traditional desktop, you're going to need to use Linux. Who'd thought it?

As a long-time desktop Linux user, that's fine by me, but I wonder if Windows users really want to follow me to Linux, or if they'd rather just have a working, Aero-style desktop instead of a cloud-based Metro device? I'd bet they'd really rather have their fine old desktop anyday.

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