10 hidden features in Windows 8
Windows 8 is coming in 2012: Here's an early look at 10 major new features and areas of improvement. … Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer finally confirmed what tech pundits knew all along: the next generation of Windows will be out in 2012.
Context & Ripple Effects
Microsoft has spent the past few months peeling back the curtain in stages: Steve Ballmer put a 2012 ship window on the next generation of Windows in late May, and the company gave the public its first look at the code-named Windows 8 at the D9 Conference. A same-day preview and January's State of Windows 8 rundown had already sketched the direction; this ITworld piece consolidates it into ten concrete features.
The timing matters because Microsoft has scheduled a dedicated developers conference for mid-September 2011 after weeks of silence, so this roundup lands just as third-party developers and hardware partners are deciding what to build against. One circulating claim — that Microsoft wants chipmakers targeting tablets to work with no more than one PC maker each — remains unconfirmed.
First-order effects
- Ballmer's 2012 confirmation gives OEMs and enterprise buyers a planning horizon: with licenses still Microsoft's bread-and-butter revenue, procurement cycles can now be timed against the next Windows rather than extended indefinitely.
- Developers get a concrete runway — the mid-September 2011 developers conference becomes the deadline for tooling decisions before the platform details harden.
Second-order effects
- If the unconfirmed one-PC-maker-per-chipmaker rule proves real, it forces tablet-oriented silicon vendors to pick exclusive OEM allies, reshaping partnership maps in the same market where Apple's iPad sets the benchmark.
- Rival tablet and PC makers must respond to a Windows that is visibly being repositioned for touch form factors, pressuring their own roadmaps toward 2012.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Windows evolves from a desktop-only franchise into a single platform spanning PCs and tablets — a structural bet that the license-driven model analysts describe as Microsoft's core revenue can stretch across device categories.
The trend: Microsoft is converging its desktop operating system with the tablet form factor, using staged previews and a fall 2011 developer conference to pull partners onto a 2012 timeline.