Bill Gates Talks Windows Future, Touch Interfaces

Nerval's Lobster writes "In a YouTube interview released by Microsoft, co-founder Bill Gates offered a few hints of where Microsoft plans on taking Windows in coming years. 'It's evolving literally to be a single platform,' he said, referring to how Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 share a kernel, file system, graphics support, and other elements. At least in theory, that will allow developers to port apps from the desktop/tablet OS to the smartphone OS with relatively little work. The two operating systems already share the same design aesthetic, with Start screens composed of colorful tiles linked to applications. Gates also praised natural user interfaces — which include touch and voice — while taking a subtle dig at Apple's iPad and other tablets on the market. 'People want to consume their mail, reading, video anywhere, and they want it to be awfully simple,' he said. 'But you want to incorporate touch without giving up the kind of mouse, keyboard capability that's just so natural in most settings.'"

Comments

Re:One or the other

[wicka_wicka]

Have you actually tried using Windows 8? It's still very easy to navigate the new UI with a keyboard and mouse. They've adapted a lot of old hotkeys/shortcuts to Metro and added a few new ones. After about 15 minutes I felt nearly as productive as I normally am in Windows 7.

Re:Like Apple?

[doti]

apple borrowed from bsd, not linux

Re:Anti-trust suit weakened Microsoft

[sribe]

After that anti-trust investigation and suit in the 1990s, Microsoft has been waiting for other companies to take innovative steps so that it can adopt them later.

Microsoft was doing that long before that antitrust action.