Microsoft kicks off its Windows 8 blog

By Tom Warren, on 15th Aug 11 7:25 pm with 34 Comments

Steven Sinofsky at CES 2011

Microsoft kicked off its building Windows 8 blog on Monday.

Steven Sinofsky, President of the Windows Division at Microsoft, unveiled the first blog entry in what will become a catalogue for the building of Windows 8. “Building the next release of Microsoft Windows is an industry-wide effort that Microsoft approaches with a strong sense of responsibility and humility,” said Sinofsky. The big focus for Microsoft’s Windows 8 play is “reimagining” how Windows will work on new and old devices.

“Windows 8 reimagines Windows. That’s a big statement and one that we will return to throughout this blog. It is also important to know that we’re 100% committed to running the software and supporting the hardware that is compatible with over 400 million Windows 7 licenses already sold and all the Windows 7 yet to be sold.”

Sinofsky also addressed Microsoft’s lack of Windows 8 details and developer frustration at its confusing HTML5 vs Silverlight strategy. “We’ve heard people express frustration over how little we’ve communicated so far about Windows 8.” said Sinofsky. “We’ve certainly learned lessons over the years about the perils of talking about features before we have a solid understanding of our ability to execute.”

Sinofsky finished his post by promising to listen to feedback on Windows 8. “Feel free to send us your thoughts via comments or email—we can’t respond to every question we receive, but your suggestions for blog topics are welcome,” he said. Microsoft has also created @buildwindows8 with shortened Urls of http://win8.ms. The company plans to unveil all of its Windows 8 details at the BUILD developer conference in Los Angeles next month. Stay tuned for live coverage at WinRumors.

http://www.searingarrow.com AlienSix

Next month will be epic
http://www.searingarrow.com AlienSix

Next month will be epic
- Guest
  
  Or the usual MS letdown.
- Aaron
  
  The usual letdown? I didn’t feel let down with Windows 7, Windows Phone, xbox + Kinect, SkyDrive, Live Mesh, IE9, Office 2010. There are a lot of MS products that are great. Maybe you are still using Vista and IE7 or something?
- Joe
  
  HAHAH! I was thinking the same thing Aaron, well said!
- Aaron
  
  I hope you are right. But too many overpaid tech “journalist” (PC World, ZDNet, ect…) have staked their reputations on bashing the concept of a fully functioning OS on a tablet form factor. I don’t expect them to eat crow no matter how nice Windows 8 is. So I think there will be a lot of people screaming “VISTA!” which means Windows 8 has to be all the more better in order to get past media bias.
Grannyville7989

RSS that shizzle.
- Stevfey
  
  gotta love the stuff
  
  EasyCap driver
Grannyville7989

RSS that shizzle.
http://twitter.com/teusje teusje

So no more Engineering Windows 8 ( http://blogs.msdn.com/b/e8/ ) like Engineering Windows 7 ( http://blogs.msdn.com/b/e7/ ) ?

(that /e8/ was available and reserved but a few days/weeks ago they disabled it and redirected it)
- Guest
  
  I think they changed it from engineering to building to compliment their “BUILD” conference. It’s not like they would call a conference “ENGINEER”…
http://twitter.com/teusje teusje

So no more Engineering Windows 8 ( http://blogs.msdn.com/b/e8/ ) like Engineering Windows 7 ( http://blogs.msdn.com/b/e7/ ) ?

(that /e8/ was available and reserved but a few days/weeks ago they disabled it and redirected it)
Anonymous

Access Denied? Nooooo
Guest

There’s a lot riding on W8. If Sinofsky gets it right and manages to make MS competitive in tablets while defending existing PC share against Mac, Chrome, etc, he’s got a shot at being Ballmer’s replacement. Otherwise, he’s the guy who Ballmer will throw under the bus to save his own miserable skin.
http://twitter.com/oolong2 oolong2

“We’ve heard people express frustration over how little we’ve communicated so far about Windows 8.”

“We’ve certainly learned lessons over the years about the perils of talking about features before we have a solid understanding of our ability to execute.”

Soo instead of at least mentioning .Net which has been your platform of choice for nearly 10 years. You decide to talk about HTML5 and Javascript?

It sounds like Microsoft hasn’t learned ANY lessons about communication at all.

How can they have any possible solid understanding of HTML5 and applying it to WINDOWS application when the rest of the industry hasn’t even fully standardized it is beyond me.
- Aaron
  
  +1 to this. And please, no one needs to respond to this with “dont you know you can still run .NET in legacy mode?” Of coarse we know they still allow and even support .NET in Windows 8. That is not the point.
- Candid Calum
  
  You might be able to use .NET for the new immersive apps as well; Microsoft hasn’t told us whether we can or not, they just mentioned HTML5/JavaScript development because it’s the new part of their platform and they didn’t have much time (according to a ZDNet article I saw which quoted a Microsoft employee).
- Guest
  
  .Net and C++ will be first class citizens. MS has put together a new collection of technologies – WinC++, Silverlight, Direct3D, DirectDraw, Ahead-Of-Time compilation for .Net. Don’t forget the app store. Windows is not going away no matter how many times bloggers, even Paul Thurrott and Mary-Jo Foley say otherwise.
- Aaron
  
  +1 to this. And please, no one needs to respond to this with “dont you know you can still run .NET in legacy mode?” Of coarse we know they still allow and even support .NET in Windows 8. That is not the point.
- Guest
  
  Maybe they’re not ready to talk about what other languages you can use because they don’t yet have a solid understanding of their ability to execute.
  Either way, I honestly don’t think that they’re going to say yes or no until build now anyway, as it isn’t that far away.
Anonymous

That tiles UI ruins everything it runs on, Windows 8 will be such a failure.

Whoever came up with that UI will be responsible for ruining Microsoft.
- Anonymous
  
  nope
- Anonymous
  
  nope
- Anonymous
  
  For every one of you that doesn’t like the UI, I hear 50 more that like/love it. Can’t win em all.
- Anonymous
  
  Sales numbers disagree.
- Anonymous
  
  You troll too many sites. Is that a graph for Nokia? or for your recent employment status?
- Candid Calum
  
  The sales numbers do not tell us how many people like the tile user interface and how many people do not! Hardly any of my friends even know that Windows Phone exists, and a lot of other people are listening to stupid customer assistants in phone shops that tell them not to get a Windows Phone (there have been articles proving this happens, and I’ve seen it happen three times in UK).
  
  Your comment might work if all of the Android and iOS users knew what Windows Phone was, and if they all knew about Windows Phone’s features, but very few of them do, so your comment is ridiculous.
- http://twitter.com/laserfloyd Lewis McCrary
  
  Not enough time to establish a foothold in the market. Come back in a year or so.
  
  Plus Nokia stock jumped after the Google/Motorola deal. Time to update your avatar.
- Candid Calum
  
  It doesn’t ruin everything. The tile user interface is one of the elements that makes Windows Phone the best smartphone platform (remember, I said “one of;” there are still many reasons why Windows Phone is the best smartphone platform).
- Tuxplorer
  
  Metro UI is the most beautiful, productive and elegant UI EVER. iPhone and Android UI suck balls.
- Guest
  
  Ban him, his children and his children’s children.
  
  Unless you really think you get more ad revenue by people having a poor experience, rather than by a better one.
http://twitter.com/michaelantj Michael James

I hate this statement “We’ve heard people express frustration over how little we’ve communicated so far about Windows 8.” Apple don’t reveal f**k all about there products until the very last minute and everyone’s excited when it comes to it. They just need to focus on the product and not say a word, that way everyone’s excited and Microsoft has loads of features to show off.
- Joe
  
  However much I hate waiting for the juicy details and leaks about Windows 8, you’re completely right. They need to learn that no info creates more hype for a product than “controlled leaks”.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Prachi-Desai/100002704672517 Prachi Desai

As Microsoft keeps of Windows 8 blog, will windows 8 be able to attract users, check this:
http://alldailyupdatesandnews.blogspot.com/2011/08/microsoft-launches-windows-8-blog.html