Archive for March 2011
Thoughts on Windows 8
As an experienced user of Windows and a perennial tester of beta software I have begun to take an interest in the next version of Windows which, for obvious reasons, I’ll refer to as Windows 8. There are a number of articles out there spreading rumours about Windows 8 and if you’re interested in those then you can probably find most of them linked to from http://windows8news.com/.
Over the past few years I have developed a habit of posting blog posts that were a mix of predictions and desires for future versions of software, most notably Windows Live. The blog post you’re reading right now is from that same vein because I want to talk about a feature that I hope is currently under development. Allow me to explain.
The most interesting Windows 8 rumours that I have heard so far are:
A Windows 8 app store coupled with Live ID logins really interests me. This is of course a very similar scenario to Windows Phone and that makes me wonder whether the Windows Phone and Windows 8 app stores might actually end up being the same thing. Moreover I wonder, given that Windows Phone apps are written in Silverlight and Silverlight also runs upon Windows, whether we will be able to run Windows Phone apps as “mini-apps” on Windows 8. Certainly Windows Phone apps would be a step-up from Windows 7’s current variety of mini-app (i.e. gadgets).
So here is my big hope and request for Windows 8 – please give us the ability to replace our Windows 7 gadgets with Windows Phone apps. This would also require a way of syncing data between the two because we don’t want to have to maintain the same data in two places – but that is a story for another blog post!
Jamie Thomson 