Will Windows 8 Be Ready For Release In 2012?

MrSeb writes with an excerpt from an Extreme Tech article on the Windows 8 release timeline: "...A Microsoft vice president announced that the Windows 8 beta would begin in late February 2012. The beta will be feature-complete and will allow developers to begin listing their apps in the Store. The timing of the beta is curious, and ultimately quite telling. ... The first public build of Windows 8 ... emerged in mid-September 2011; by the time the beta rolls around, it will have been ruminating for more than five months. If we follow the timeline forward — it took 10 months for Windows 7 to go from beta to public release — then it's possible that Windows 8 might arrive just in time for Black Friday 2012, or perhaps not in 2012 at all. Will its late arrival affect its chances of cutting out a swath of the tablet market from Apple and Android? Or will Windows 8 be different enough that it will do well, no matter when it arrives?" In related news, an anonymous reader notes that IDC predicts Windows 8 will be irrelevant to the traditional PC market.

Comments

It's because of those XP EOL users

[tomhudson]

The "traditional market" is a combination of consumers and bulk business users. The consumer market doesn't use XP much any more (outside of the Asian pirate community). The businesses still stuck on XP are slowly migrating as their old hardware dies, or switching to other devices ... BUT ... (there's always a "but") Windows 8 fulfills Microsoft's goal of moving back to a more frequent release model, thereby enabling them to EOL earlier versions quicker.

They don't want a repeat of XP, where an old OS cannibalizes future sales, ever again. You'll see annual "new versions", same as the iPhone (Balmer steals another Apple trick).

more importantly...

[roc97007]

Do we care?

Office

[tekrat]

If this is the Microsoft I'm familiar with, it'll probably be: "Windows isn't done 'till Office won't run." I mean, we are talking about an entity that cannot keep interfaces consistent across divisions of the same company.

I am forced to work with Outlook 2007 under Windows XP. What a nightmare. Copy/Paste doesn't even work consistently within the application itself. Sometimes you'll copy text out of a message and paste into a reply of the same thread, and either the OS or the App will add extra returns and spaces/tabs for no apparent reason. Annoying.

Worse still is Outlook's annoying habit of "are you sure" for EVERYTHING. Find an email with an attachment, open it, close the email. Windows/Outlook asks "Save changes to attachment?" NO. All I did was OPEN it, I didn't change squat! Why the app can't figure this out is a MAJOR FAILURE of Q/A.

So trust me, it'll be Office that breaks under Win8. Or something else critical. Or maybe it'll be by design so that everyone that "upgrades" to Win8 will be forced to buy new copies of Office.

Re:Windows 8

[SpryGuy]

Windows 8 offers you roaming profiles, single-signon, profiles on a USB-key, dramatically faster boot times and resume times, lower power useage, higher security, better modern device support (USB 3.x, very large drives)...

Metro as a UI offers tablet users a better touch-friendly experience, as well as a "unified' UI look and feel across Microsoft Phones, Tablets, Desktops, and XBox.

Anything you can do in Win7, you will continue to be able to do in Win8.

Win8 will also enable usable Tablet form-factors.

The Metro apps shipped with the current Win8 developer preview are just little "demo" apps, written by MS Interns over a weekend. They do not show the full range of capabilities of Metro apps. Over time, you can imagine all of MS Office, and a ton of games, will be offered as metro style apps. So you'll have more than just "weather" and "stock" apps, if that's what you're concerned about. And Metro apps are sandboxed in a way that makes them very secure.

Windows 8 is offering a lot, but I think most people are getting completely distracted by the Start Screen, an unfinished UI, and a hand-full of simple "demo" apps... it'll be more obvious I think once the beta is released. Then we'll have a better handle on the strengths and weaknesses.