Win 8 Open for Discussion
Microsoft was relatively open with Windows 7, in particular through the "Engineering Windows 7" blog, which gave the public a detailed look at UI and core infrastructure designs and issues. I'm not sure if it was too late in the process to make key design changes, but at least the blog gave IT a chance to chime in.
Now the same thing is happening with Windows 8, which now has its own "Building Windows 8" blog. The very first entry was written by Steven Sinofsky, who led Win 7 development and now leads Win 8.
Sinofsky is still being a bit coy and is not willing to give out all the details he has clear access to. For instance, he's not sharing exactly what level of hardware will be needed for Win 8, and what percentage of older apps will still run on it. He did, however, say the goal is for the new OS to run on existing hardware and run existing apps -- just don't take that as a promise that it will.
Next month Microsoft is having its Build Conference, formerly the Professional Developers Conference. Programmers may actually get some working code to play with -- stay tuned for way more details.
I'll keep you posted.
Posted by Doug Barney on 08/17/2011 at 1:18 PM