“The public preview, first reported by win8china, will launch within the next few months, allowing existing Windows 8 users to test and provide feedback before Microsoft readies the final version of Windows Blue. We understand that Microsoft is aiming to only have one preview release for Blue. Features are still being prepared for Blue, but one of the biggest changes is an improvement to the search charm functionality.” Whatever. Windows Blue needs to address two things: application loading times and in-application performance, and the Mail application. Everything else is fluff.
Windows 9 already? Soon Microsoft will hit Windows 94 and there will be some confusion.
And what’s with this version craze? Not so long ago I remember using Firefox 3.6, yesterday wanted to use one extension and went to download Firefox — Firefox 19. What the hell.
Edited 2013-02-24 15:19 UTC
I don’t think it’ll be called Windows 9, they’ve sunk too much money too recently into making Windows 8 familiar in the household.
I kind of miss the XP days, when we were only getting a new version every 6-7 years. If they start releasing every year or two, I’ve got to constantly worry about whether all of my apps and drivers will still work, if I want to stay current. And most new features that they add, I either have in 3rd party apps already, or I just end up turning off.
Note what happened prior to XP: between 1998 and 2001 we had 98, 98SE, ME, 2000 and XP – five releases, four years.
What Vista really represented was accumulating all of that change into one very disruptive release rather than issuing change incrementally. Staying on XP represented the “calm before the storm” as it were.
I think Blue will probably share a lot in common with the 98 to 98SE transition, apparently it was a $20 update for Windows 98 owners – a slightly wider net of changes than a service pack, but not enough to result in a visible name change.
I am a happy Windows 8 user for the improvements in speed and I quite like the live tiles – but certainly have issues with crashing in metro apps and there’s a lot of functionality to be desired in Mail – though it is now my default email client because of how much I like notifications in Windows 8; same reason I use Xbox Music over my preferred Zune.
I’m interested though how Blue will fit with enterprise – a yearly update strategy makes no sense when we’re only now seeing businesses start to move to Windows 7.
I think we will see ESR releases.
Also I think there is a big push to make companies move towards BDD/TDD style development processes.
Businesses were skipping out anyway because they just completed Win7 transitions (and thank God, XP needs to go.).
I think things will work same as before. 3 year schedule for major releases with yearly maintenance updates.
Businesses can choose to target a major release if they’d like, or if they’re unhappy with the OS, wait until an interim update or the next major release. If anything it provides more flexibility.
Nope, they are going to a subscription based model with constant upgrades instead of monolithic upgrades every few years. This means the OS will be in a constant state of fail. By the time they stabilize one version, they will auto-upgrade you to the next, undoubtedly breaking all kinds of crap in the process.
Is it Windows 9 though? Or more on par with a Service Pack?
Perhaps a point release, i.e. Windows 8.1
Windows 8 SE.
Actually Windows 8 is Windows version 6.2:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms724832~*~…
Edited 2013-02-24 19:02 UTC
Windows NT 6.2. Although the version numbering started at 3.1 to coincide with Windows 3.1.
Windows NT 3.1
Windows NT 3.5
Windows NT 4.0
Windows 2000 aka NT 5.0
Windows XP aka NT 5.1
* Windows XP 64-bit (Server 2003 with XP GUI) aka NT 5.2
Windows Vista aka NT 6.0
Windows 7 aka NT 6.1
Windows 8 aka NT 6.2
* This one is usually not mentioned as part of the client OS versioning, as it wasn’t really a client OS. Just a client GUI over the server OS kernel.
The non-NT kernels had their own version numbers, along with the version of MS-DOS they ran on.
And, if you count the client kernel releases, you see why kernel version 6.1 is known as “Windows 7”.
Windows 8.5 or 8 Refresh. They seem to be moving to a yearly release schedule like Windows Phone. It’s not difficult to imagine what an achievement that is for an organization as ginormous as WinDiv.
Here’s what I expect (or hope) from Blue:
– Let me snap Windows 50/50
– Let me pin Metro apps to the Desktop Taskbar
– Implement IPC in a sensible way, and a JIT API so that 3rd party browsers can run on Windows RT.
– Flesh out the XAML stack. Feature parity with SL5 at least in the data binding department
– Unified Search View
– Implement Cloud Compiling of apps to reduce load times to nearly zero. WP8 does this to great effect.
– Allow Desktop Apps to use more of the WinRT Framework, make them more visible in the Store.
– Streamline the entire App submission/approval process, make it better, faster, etc.
– Support 7-8 inch tablets, portrait interfaces.
But will it blend?
Nice name, just like the color of its users’ most appreciated screen…
1 – Snap between two metro applications should not have a locked ratio (80/20), a user should be able to use 50/50, 60/40 or whatever they like.
2 – By default no start menu, but can be enabled in registry
3 – Allow metro apps to be opened within a window in the classic shell
4 – Allow plugins in Metro IE (I miss lastpass badly)
5 – Uncripple the email client
6 – MS Office as a metro application
7 – Oh and they are Metro apps, not windows store apps…license the trademark or get a better name
As long as they don’t pull a Windows Phone 7 and make the search charm take me to bing, I’ll be happy.
Worst change they’ve made to that OS IMO
The Charms Bar solves the problem of contextual search on Windows Phone.
Contextual search on WP7 didn’t work out because
a) Almost no one implemented it, there was no uniform interface to adhere to or any kind of implementation support like there is on Windows 8
b) Everyone implemented it differently.
Pressing the Search button on WP7 MIGHT take you to in-app search or MIGHT take you to Bing.
What if I was in an app with contextual search and wanted to actually go to Bing? I couldn’t. I had to exit the app (which on WP7.0 meant slow tombstoning).
I think Windows Blue is more along the lines of adding a single unified search pane in addition to the currently displayed results.
I think that on my HD7, the number of times I have intentionally hit the bing button can be counted on one hand (Bing is a lot less useful if you aren’t in the USA or UK) but the number of times I accidentally launched it and had to wait for it to exit so I could get back to my app number in the high hundreds. This was exacerbated by the ease with which a capacitive button can be accidentally pressed.
Unpredictable behaviour that sometimes gave me a useful behaviour (in-app search) and sometimes did nothing at all was preferable to that. (I never encountered it taking me to bing back then)
Rather than the bing behaviour, I and many of my coworkers would have preferred that the search button be completely and permanently disabled.
Edited 2013-02-26 22:01 UTC
I heard the settings are scattered between the Desktop and Metro parts in Win 8. I wonder if they are going to sort this out.
A guess is that they’ll just remove the desktop eventually.
Hopefully they fix the disconnect between metro networking and desktop networking.
It’s a pain to lose connectivity in my Metro apps whenever I VPN into work. I have to fire up outlook or thunderbird to see my mail/calendar. (not a big deal I know, but other apps die as well, weather, news, etc.)
Windows Blue? Sounds like a bad name, given the BSOD association.