My Microsoft Life » A summary of today’s Windows 8 keynote

A summary of today’s Windows 8 keynote

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13/09/2011

BUILD, Internet Explorer, Windows 8, Windows Live, XBox

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Dynagen

Well how was that for you? I’m not quite sure what to say nor indeed where to start with my coverage of Windows 8 now that is has been announced and demoed. It was easily the best keynote I’ve ever seen and has left me somewhat speechless as to what to say.

Windows 8 is pretty much everything I expected it to be and also everything I hoped for but more that it added things that far exceeded what I thought Microsoft was going to announce let alone demo. The short demo of Windows 8 from D9 didn’t really do the OS and its usability justice but today’s many demos really did make the OS looks fantastic, especially with so much Metro.

The keynote kicked off with some talk about Windows 7 and how it has sold over 450,000,000 licenses so far and now has a larger usage share than Windows XP according to Windows Update stats. However, the keynote quickly moved on to Windows 8 and lots of demos of the UI showing more of the OS than we’d seen previously.

For me the “Charm” bar (not a name I am a fan of) that appears when a user swipes in from the right looks great with its contextual settings for the apps that a user is in and the OS wide settings like brightness, network etc. Then there’s the search charm that not only lets a user search their entire PC but also apps can be searched within too. The devices charm will allow quick access to connected devices (surprisingly) such as printers and the share charm will allow the user to share content from an app extremely quickly and easily through other apps. This idea of apps working with the OS and the other apps is Microsoft’s idea for a “web of apps” which I think is a fantastic idea.

Next we were shown Internet Explorer 10 which, to quote Microsoft, looks super-smooth and very nice indeed. The whole chrome-less is very nice. This isn’t really something new though as we all knew this would be in built into Windows 8. However, we didn’t know that OS wide spell checking would be inbuilt into the entire OS, thankfully though that is exactly what Microsoft is doing and only yesterday I said I thought that Microsoft were going to do that.

Following those demos it was time for developing and Microsoft showed how easy it will be for Win32, Silverlight or even HTML developers to create apps for Windows 8 and even how easy it is to then make those apps into Windows Phones apps. The Windows ecosystem is beginning to look very nice now. To show how much belief Microsoft has in the new programming languages it has added to Windows 8 the company has written the Windows Store in HTML, this store acts a lot like the Windows Phone Marketplace and is very Metro.

There were also some small announcements in the keynote such as Windows Defender having been beefed up with anti-virus, anti-malware etc to better protect Windows users. Steven Sinofsky did say though that it will still be possible to use a different anti-virus if a user wishes to do do. There will also be a new power saving mode in Windows 8 that will bring phone like techniques to the OS to give Windows 8 devices as long as possible battery life. Microsoft also showed off how quickly Windows 8 PCs can boot up and resume from sleep. NFC was also a quick announcement with a brief demo but it will allow PC to PC sharing which could be fantastic.

Towards the end we were shown how Microsoft will be using Windows Live to make Windows 8 even better. We were first shown some of the Windows Live apps that are very similar to those found on Windows Phone in their Metro look and their aggregation of various online services. But perhaps more important than those apps was the fact that SkyDrive is being used to keep a user’s settings and customisation consistent across all the Windows 8 PCs they use. Microsoft will also be allowing developers to access APIs to leverage the power of SkyDrive; this should be one of Windows 8 best features. It’s something I have been asking for for quite a while.

It wasn’t all about the new Start Screen and Metro apps as Microsoft has also worked on some new things for the classic UI in Windows such as bringing much better multi monitor support to Windows 8. Users will be able to have a single wallpaper across two or more screens and will also have an extended taskbar.

One other thing to point out is that Xbox Live will be coming to Windows 8 and it wont just be games but all kinds of entertainment. I wasn’t sure at first if this was an “accidental” showing of the Xbox Live tile but this has since been confirmed by Major Nelson of Xbox.

Perhaps the most exciting thing though of all today is that in about 5 hours time people all around the world will be able to download Windows 8 in the form of the Windows Developer Preview. This will be very much a preview release with some of the features shown today not being available but the most significant things, such as the Metro UI, will be in the preview. If you missed the live stream of the keynote today then you’ll be glad to know that is already available to watch on http://www.buildwindows.com/.

I plan to write some more articles tomorrow and I’m looking forward to getting up early and installing the Windows Developer Preview on one of my desktop PCs.

What are your thoughts on Windows 8?

Anonymous

Great article Michael – a lovely summary of just some of the major announcements. Of course, there was so, so much more in the keynote, and like you, I too was blown away by the whole event – from the volume and density of information to the range of features already being exposed and explained so comprehensively at this stage.

As Steven Sinofsky himself pointed out, at this stage of Windows 7 development, even the modest UI improvements from Vista to 7 hadn’t been made, and many major features were far from finalised. Given that Windows 8 is still believed to be a year from launch, it’s amazing that the product is already so fleshed out – that’s encouraging for three major reasons: 1) it means there’s plenty of time to make what already looks like a phenomenal product even better; 2) the ‘completeness’ of Windows 8 at this stage suggests that major progress is already being made in excellent time, which bodes well for the rate of development over the next twelve months; and 3) it gives the community an amazing opportunity to build an extraordinarily rich and diverse ecosystem of apps and experiences in time for W8′s public launch.

Like you, it’s almost difficult to know where to begin with digesting all of the information – and it’s clear that the story of Building Windows 8 has barely begun – but the overwhelming majority of what I heard was exceptionally positive, and I eagerly await the next stage of development from the W8 team. For now, I feel like I need to re-read everything I’ve already gone through, just to take it all in properly!
http://mymicrosoftlife.com/2011/09/14/missed-yesterdays-build-keynote/ My Microsoft Life » Missed yesterday’s BUILD keynote?

[...] But again I understand that some of you might be at work and not able to watch YouTube videos at your desk so I’ve compiled a list of articles about Windows 8 from a wide selection of publishers. I have written my own summary of yesterday’s announcements. [...]
http://typographyandsquares.com/2011/09/14/windows-8-goes-metro/ Typography and Squares » Windows 8 goes Metro

[...] in case you hadn’t already seen it but Microsoft is making Windows metro which is very exciting. You can read all about Windows 8 and my thoughts about it on MML but I thought I’d share with you some of the images from yesterday’s [...]

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