原创 World anticipates Windows 8

Microsoft has already released the developer version of Windows 8, its next-generation operating system. Right now, developers are working with it, writing applications and spotting bugs.

We still have no timeline on the official release date for Windows 8 (still the codename, not the official name, of the operating system, by the way). Rumours—as rumours tend to do—abound, with prognostications for the OS's street date ranging from late this year to late next year, or even later.

But even the most credible of these predictions are nothing more than educated guesses. In some cases, they are nothing more than un-educated wild guesses.

We simply don't know when PCs, tablets and other products running Windows 8 will hit store shelves. What we do know is that, when that does occur, it will be a huge driver for the electronics industry, spurring a massive PC refresh cycle and prompting many heretofore tablet sceptics to take the plunge.

Last week, Steven Sinofsky, president of the Windows and Windows Live Division at Microsoft, said, in essence, that Microsoft will release Windows 8 when it's ready, and not before. "We are going to be driven by the quality and not by a date," Sinofsky said.

Sinofsky's comments came in a keynote address earlier this week at Microsoft Build. The event was—no pun intended—built from the ground up to make Windows 8 seem like the best thing since refried beans. And that is exactly what it did.

Microsoft Build showed Windows 8 to be a very compelling product, introducing support for touch screens and rendering "metro style" interfaces and applications in a much more pristine, fluid and compelling way than Windows has in the past. The OS offers new, intuitive features that can streamline the way users use their devices and organisation information. It also takes advantage of the UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) spec to offer secure and rapid boot-up.

But it remains a work in progress. Several times during Build, bugs in the OS came to the forefront when presenters had trouble getting Windows 8 to do what they wanted it to. At one point, jokingly asking if Microsoft mentioned that the version of Windows 8 released Tuesday (Sept. 13) was a developer pre-release, Jensen Harris, director of program management for the Windows User Experience Team, acknowledged that the OS is in some ways still very rough around the edges.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has referred to Windows 8 as the riskiest product bet in the company's history, presumably because of the ramifications for Windows' popularity in the post-iPad, post-Android world. This week, Harris told developers at Build that the release is also the "single biggest developer opportunity in the history of the world" because of the sheer number of Windows PCs.

"Some of you are going to get rich," Harris said. "Some of you are going to build apps that are going to be used by hundreds of millions of people."

Microsoft is right to wait until all the Ts are crossed and Is are dotted before releasing the commercial version of Windows 8. This, of course, is just common sense, and would have been applicable to the release of Windows 1 through 7 as well.

But it seems especially prudent in this case. Windows 8 truly is different. With support for ARM-based chips, touch screens and a more intuitive, compelling user experience, Windows 8 represents the last best chance for Microsoft to truly get in on the explosive growth projected for media tablets and stem the tide of users showing the willingness to forsake the Windows experience they've grown accustomed to in favour of Apple's iOS and Google's Android.