Multimedia

9/25/11

Developers See Bright Future in Windows 8

windows 8 In the years since CEO Steve Ballmer's infamous "developers, developers, developers" battle cry, Microsoft's relationship with developers has been a vital component of the company's strategy. If early developer enthusiasm is any indication, Microsoft appears to have done well with Windows 8.

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Developer response to Windows 8 has been very positive in the wake of last week's Build developer conference, with many coders expressing eagerness to try out the upcoming OS. Foremost on their minds is the operating system's emphasis on touch-based interactions, a move that many believe could give Microsoft a much-needed shot in the arm in the tablet computing space.

[ See InfoWorld's Windows 8 preview visual tour. | Galen Gruman outlines how Microsoft may finally be making Windows winners. | Keep up to speed on the key Microsoft news and insights with InfoWorld's Technology: Microsoft newsletter. Sign up today! ]

"This is a major rewriting" of Windows, says Thomas McCormick, software and systems developer at ECI Innovations, and other developers view it as an important response to Apple's iOS and Google's Android.

Central to this rewriting is the operating system's new Metro UI, which some believe will enable developers to create the kind of immersive, full-screen, touch-centric applications that are driving the tablet revolution.

Microsoft's bold move

For many developers, the Windows 8 preview came across as a bold, if not essential, step forward for Microsoft. "I think it's the most aggressive [move] they've done in the post-Gates era," McCormick says, adding that Windows 8 will "absolutely" help Microsoft in the tablet space. "The UI is very polished."

Meanwhile, HP software architect Kevin Barnett sees Windows 8 being the biggest change to the platform since Windows 95. "It's a big shift in just about every dimension," Barnett says, citing the importance of the new application model for Windows 8, the operating system's new UI, and the fact that Windows 8 could make Microsoft a significant player in the ARM processor arena.

Noble Edward, senior architect at mobile CRM applications builder Consona, says he will be talking to his employers about supporting Windows tablets. "I develop applications for Android and iPhone, and in our company, we never even included Windows Phone as part of the target," Edward says.

metro ui Windows 8's emphasis on touch-based interactions impressed Brendan Forster, a developer at development firm Readify: "I love that they said they are putting touch first."

Developer Chris DiPierro, director of software development at data collection services provider Mi-Co, agrees. Windows 8 presents "an incredible opportunity for us," DiPierro says, citing strong interest among Mi-Co customers for software targeted at the tablet form factor. "Our response thus far has been to do Web applications, but there are inherent limitations you get out of that," such as reliance on HTML5 local storage, he says. "[With Windows 8] I feel like we can port a lot of what we already have -- native .Net apps -- over to this."

DiPierro's coworker David Nakamura, director of quality assurance, likes the device span of Windows 8. "What's really neat about Windows 8 is it goes from high-end desktop machines all the way down to smaller-size tablets and slates," Nakamura says.

Analysts also chimed in on the convergence theme. "With this release, Microsoft is taking the first steps to converge the mobile world and the PC world," says Al Hilwa, an analyst at IDC. "Early indications are that Windows 8 will talk browser applications natively along with other programming models, and so [the OS] promises to bring many walks of developers under one umbrella. Converging mobile and PC developer ecosystems is what Microsoft has to do to thrive in the post-PC era."

Windows 8 reality check

But without any hands-on experience with the operating system, Windows 8 enthusiasm can only go so far. "I'll have to wait until I actually get to play with the software, the devices, and see what the experience [is like], but in theory, it looks pretty good," says HP's Barnett.

For some, even the much-needed UI makeover has room for improvement. Consona's Edward, while otherwise enthusiastic about Windows 8, found the UI layer inferior to that of Android and iOS.

Readify's Forster questioned how Windows 8 would affect existing applications. But IDC's Hilwa liked the OS's ability to accommodate Silverlight applications. "The last thing that impressed me is that you can take Silverlight apps and, with minor tweaks, get them to work with the Metro UI and also to make them available to Windows Phone," Hilwa says. "Allowing developers to leverage their code across phones and tablets will be a tremendous boost to both Microsoft's phone and PC platform."

Developer tools could be key to success

visual studio While Microsoft has yet to reveal a general availability date for Windows 8, the company did release its Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview at last week's Build conference.

Formerly called vNext, Visual Studio 11 is tuned for building Windows 8 and HTML5 applications. The toolset includes templates for building Metro-style applications with JavaScript, C#, VB, or C++. Windows 8 supports XAML applications as well.

ECI's McCormick came away impressed with the developer tools on offer for Windows 8, calling them "very polished, very excellent-looking at this stage of the game."

Meanwhile, Microsoft's.Net Framework 4.5 will enable developers to write faster code, said Jason Zander, corporate vice president of the Visual Studio team at Microsoft, in a blog post. "Support for asynchronous programming in C# and Visual Basic enables developers to easily write client UI code that doesn't block, and server code that scales more efficiently," Zander wrote."The new server garbage collector reduces pause times, and new features in the Parallel Computing Platform enable Dataflow programming and other improvements."

This article, "Developers see bright future in Windows 8," was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Follow the latest developments in business technology news and get a digest of the key stories each day in the InfoWorld Daily newsletter. For the latest developments in business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.

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Samsung Windows 8 Tablets Surface on eBay

By Ian Paul, PCWorld Sep 20, 2011 9:16 AM

Samsung Windows 8 Tablets Surface on eBay If you're dying to get your hands on a Windows 8 tablet, right now for $2,000 or more on eBay you can pick up several Samsung Series 7 700T tablets running Windows 8. The one-panel slate was handed out for free to all 5,000 developers who attended Microsoft's recent BUILD conference.

Now, at least four enterprising conference attendees are looking to profit off Microsoft's largesse. With all the excitement around Windows 8 right now, these tablets are likely to be popular items. In fact, one was sold while this article was being written.

Nevertheless, you still have time to check these tablets out if you're interested. At the time of this writing, only one of the four Windows 8 tablets included a "Buy It Now" option (for the ridiculous price of $3,500). The others were all being auctioned to the highest bidder, with minimum bids ranging from $2,000 to $2,300 depending on the seller.

The Samsung tablets were first discovered on eBay by WinRumors.

So what do you get for a minimum of $2,000? Well, for starters you'll get a piece of hardware that is similar to what is scheduled to hit store shelves October 2 -- albeit running Windows 7. On top of that, the base 700T running Windows 7 will retail for a suggested $1,100, nearly half what you'd pay on eBay.

So why not just wait a few weeks, buy the Windows 7 tablet and download and install the Windows 8 developer preview for free directly from Microsoft?

Well, it's not clear how much tweaking Samsung and Microsoft did to get Windows 8 running on Samsung's reference model, so perhaps it's worth it to overpay for this version of Samsung's Windows tablet.

But trying to find a bargain on this device is hardly the point. It's the first tablet you'll find that comes preloaded with Windows 8. And, as any technology geek knows, it's always fun to be the first on your block with a flashy new toy.

Samsung Windows 8 Tablets Surface on eBay Image courtesy of eBay

The device

The Samsung Windows 8 tablets for sale on eBay feature an 11.6-inch display with 1366-by-768 resolution, 1.6 GHz Intel Core i5-2467M Sandy Bridge processor, 4GB RAM, 64GB hard drive, USB port, microSD, and HDMI port. The Windows 8 tablets on eBay also come with a Bluetooth keyboard, a dock that includes USB, HDMI and Ethernet ports, and a touch pen. Most sellers, but not all, are offering the free 12 month, 2GB-per-month AT&T data plan that came with the device.

What to expect

Assuming you're lucky enough to get your hands on Samsung's Windows 8 tablet, you'll have a lot to look forward to, but there are also some serious downsides, according to PCWorld's hands-on look at the Windows 8 700T.

You can expect image and text rendering to be better than the iPad and Android tablets such as the Galaxy Tab 10.1. You also get to use Microsoft's intuitive and responsive Metro-style interface, inspired by Windows Phone 7.

But the 700T is much heavier than other tablets, weighing in at about 2 pounds, compared to the 1.35-pound 3G iPad. You can also expect a lot of noise from the device's fan as it tries to cool down what is essentially a PC slapped into a one-panel slate form factor. And you need to keep the charger nearby as current battery life for the device is around 2.5 to 3 hours.

The good news, however, is that Microsoft plans to continually update Windows 8 during the developer preview phase, so battery life and other performance issues may change in the coming weeks.

Samsung's 700T running Windows 8 sounds like an interesting device to own, but is it worth the $2,000 right now? Probably not, but it's fun to check it out anyway.

If you want to give Windows 8 a try right now but can't stomach the Samsung tablet's price, you can download the Windows 8 developer preview from Microsoft for free.

Connect with Ian Paul (@ianpaul ) and Today@PCWorld on Twitter for the latest tech news and analysis.

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Windows Server 8: The Microsoft Server Fork

Windows Server 8 is categorically different than its predecessor versions. There’s an argument to say that it’s not actually Windows. It's pre-beta, and it's an enormous statement covering many positions on the chess board. Windows 8 Server editions are preferred to be run, according to Microsoft spokesperson last week, in Server Core format, although Windows GUI will be available if desired. Headless operation can also be used. It's just not Windows by default anymore, but instead, a "cloud operating system" specifically poised towards competing with VMware.

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[TECHNICAL DETAILS: Windows Server 8: To the Cloud!]

I'm pretty sure that VMware's Paul Maritz would have been hung in effigy at the server workshop I attended last week (under heavy secrecy) if it could have been done. Each Windows 8 version can be strongly PowerShell-controlled, and optionally with traditional GUI. Microsoft’s lead server architect is also the “inventor” of the PowerShell scripting methodology, whose command list will exceed 2300 native commandlets in Windows 8. In a way, it’s Microsoft Server 8, and optionally Windows Server 8 and breaks Microsoft's naming convention, as well as Microsoft's established version release timing. No one would speculate when it would arrive, only that it was pre-beta and about to go beta-- but not feature complete.

While seemingly radical for Microsoft, there is much pressure on operational efficiency, coupled to increasingly complex control options and infrastructure character of the operating system. Administrators familiar with Microsoft’s MMC won’t need to fret, as familiar contexts will remain for them, but the center-thrust of Windows Server administration was encouraged to be PowerShell-driven, rather than through the maze of administrative GUIs that have been the mainstay of Windows Server versions for nearly two decades. There are script-managing tools, and Microsoft has evolved a "community" sharing of PowerShell scripts and procedures designed to control Server in a way that's increasingly competing with Unix/Linux/BSD/Solaris scripting languages and procedures-- but in a distinctly Microsoft way.

windows 8 Underneath the control surface is Hyper-V, and Microsoft listed many features poised towards increasingly “automagic” functionality, although they tended to use the patented Steve Jobs phrase, “It just works”. Heavy attention towards ease of OS instance movement (along with requisite IP address management and resiliency options) within the constructs of cloud were mentioned in the early-stage release that will be available to developers and architectural analysts. Many of the items we saw in the reviewer's workshop were specifically poised towards side-by-side comparable features in VMware's latest version, vSphere 5-- recently released. Of course, underneath Server Editions will be Hyper-V. How the latest cut of Hyper-V will play atop other hypervisors remains to be seen.

Indeed Microsoft called Windows Server 8 a "cloud operating system" but models weren't clear about IaaS, rather, they spoke to organizational PaaS as in the Azure model-- which to date has been slow to release and slow on the uptake. How business partners and MSPs would provide value seemed to be missing data. The cloud components fit a customer mold, we were told.

How the Metro UI plays into the scheme of things appears to be a new layer-- the UI layer. Imagine for a moment where there's a user interface, and underneath application UI, there's a middleware layer that is a communications transport. In turn, there's a back-end that's designed to be application infrastructure, in a three-tiered model. Servers are the back-end substrate, busily doing work and getting shuffled around to meet demand.

The entire Windows Server 8 is a markedly different endeavor for Microsoft, as radical as Windows 2000 was. Microsoft was fighting for server share back then, and reminded us that they believed we're looking at a third generation, and that Microsoft often takes three generations to get it right.

Microsoft Looks to Join Apple as World's Biggest App Censor

By Katherine Noyes, PCWorld

It seems safe to say that a sizable proportion of Linux PC users in the world today installed the free and open source operating system on hardware that originally came loaded with Windows. After all, while there are preloaded systems available, it often ends up being cheaper to buy a Windows PC and load Linux yourself.

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windows 8 Once Windows 8 starts shipping on PCs, however, that may no longer be possible. It turns out that a new feature included in the operating system in the name of security may also effectively make it impossible to load Linux on officially Windows 8-certified hardware.

“It's probably not worth panicking yet,” wrote Red Hat developer Matthew Garrett in a Tuesday blog post on the topic. “But it is worth being concerned.”

'It Won't Be Installable'

The problem derives from Microsoft's decision to use a hardware-based secure boot protocol known as Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) in Windows 8 rather than the traditional BIOS we're all familiar with. Microsoft principal lead program manager Arie van der Hoeven explained and demonstrated UEFI in a talk at the company's BUILD conference earlier this month, and that explanation is still available in the video below.

Your browser does not support iframes.

Essentially, the technology is designed to protect against rootkits and other low-level attacks by preventing executables and drivers from being loaded unless they bear a cryptographic signature conferred by a dedicated UEFI signing key.

“There is no centralised signing authority for these UEFI keys,” Garrett explained. “If a vendor key is installed on a machine, the only way to get code signed with that key is to get the vendor to perform the signing. A machine may have several keys installed, but if you are unable to get any of them to sign your binary then it won't be installable.”

Microsoft has said it will require that Windows 8 logo machines ship with secure boot enabled. Most likely, Windows on such systems will be signed with a Microsoft key, Garrett predicted.

Other operating systems, such as Linux, won't include any such signatures in their current state, of course. So, unless deliberate measures are taken to make them available, “a system that ships with only OEM and Microsoft keys will not boot a generic copy of Linux,” Garrett explained.

'Kernels Will Also Have to Be Signed'

Options for Linux include providing signed versions of the operating system, but there are several problems associated with that approach, Garrett pointed out.

First, a non-GPL bootloader would be required. Grub 2 and Grub are released under the GPLv3 and GPLv2, respectively, he noted.

Second, “in the near future the design of the kernel will mean that the kernel itself is part of the bootloader,” Garrett added. “This means that kernels will also have to be signed. Making it impossible for users or developers to build their own kernels is not practical.”

Finally, if Linux distributions sign for themselves, the required keys would have to be included by every OEM, he said.

It may turn out to be the case that Microsoft will allow vendors to provide firmware support for disabling this feature and running unsigned code, Garrett acknowledged. Even so, however, it's unlikely that all hardware will ship with that option, he added, posing problems for at least some Linux users down the road.

It remains to be seen how this situation will play out, of course. For my part, though, it sounds like one more good reason to choose hardware with Linux preinstalled.

Will Windows 8 PCs Shut the Door on Linux?

By Katherine Noyes, PCWorld

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“It's probably not worth panicking yet,” wrote Red Hat developer Matthew Garrett in a Tuesday blog post on the topic. “But it is worth being concerned.”

'It Won't Be Installable'

Your browser does not support iframes.

Microsoft has said it will require that Windows 8 logo machines ship with secure boot enabled. Most likely, Windows on such systems will be signed with a Microsoft key, Garrett predicted.

'Kernels Will Also Have to Be Signed'

Options for Linux include providing signed versions of the operating system, but there are several problems associated with that approach, Garrett pointed out.

First, a non-GPL bootloader would be required. Grub 2 and Grub are released under the GPLv3 and GPLv2, respectively, he noted.

Finally, if Linux distributions sign for themselves, the required keys would have to be included by every OEM, he said.

It remains to be seen how this situation will play out, of course. For my part, though, it sounds like one more good reason to choose hardware with Linux preinstalled.

Make Your Browser Start Screen Look Like Windows 8

By Chris Brandrick, PCWorld Sep 19, 2011 9:49 AM

Microsoft gave a taste of what you can come to expect from Windows 8 at last week's BUILD conference. The most obvious change is a new touch-friendly user interface known as Metro. If you want to try Metro for yourself, you can download the developer preview of Windows 8, or wait until the final release candidate arrives. Or you can get a taste of it by installing an add-on for your browser.

EIGHT, a plugin for Firefox, Chrome, Opera, and IE 8 offers up a Metro-inspired interface for your browser's start page.

The mod, created by Ľubomír Krupa, provides quick access to your favorite websites, and works similarly to the default start screens featured in a number of modern browsers. What's different about this browser start screen, though, is that instead of more traditional website thumbnails, you will see Metro-style tiles. Check it out in action in the below video:

Your browser does not support iframes.

To get this add-on working, all you have to do is download it and then set the local file as your homepage in your browsers settings.

If you know a little CSS and HTML, you can even tweak the start screen to your liking, by adding new links, changing background colors, and more. Krupa has an FAQ along with a live demo of the unique start page over on his site, which is worth checking out if you want to try it before you download it.

[DeviantArt via YouTube]

Windows 8 Boot Screens Get a Classy New Look

By Elizabeth Fish, PCWorld Sep 22, 2011 2:41 PM

Photo: MicrosoftOne of the many notable new features in Windows 8 is how quickly it boots--it can start up in under 7 seconds, in fact. With such a short booting time, what will you get instead of a ton of speeding BIOS text?

With Windows 8, Microsoft does away with the scrolling BIOS messages of the past. Instead, with Windows 8, all you'll see is a high-resolution logo of your PC's manufacturer. As Microsoft explains on its Windows 8 blog, "Firmware renders the logo during POST, the logo persists on screen when Windows boot takes over, and remains through OS boot. In effect, we are bridging two experiences (firmware + operating system) to deliver one experience..."

("Bridging two experiences"? Holy mother of buzzwords, Batman!)

The loading screen isn't the only tweak to the startup process. If you try to boot from a USB drive, for example, you no longer have to delve into BIOS menus--you can get to device boot options directly from the login option menu. And if you have a dual-boot setup, you'll also get a simple option menu asking you to pick which OS you want to use.

Both are featured on a straightforward Metro-style blue screen. The awkward loading text is more or less hidden from the interface, unless you choose to use the command prompt.

Check out the video below for a visual explanation of the new booting user interface:

[Microsoft via Gizmodo]

Multimedia

9/25/11

Developers See Bright Future in Windows 8

Microsoft's bold move

Windows 8 reality check

Developer tools could be key to success

Samsung Windows 8 Tablets Surface on eBay

The device

What to expect

Windows Server 8: The Microsoft Server Fork

Microsoft Looks to Join Apple as World's Biggest App Censor

Will Windows 8 PCs Shut the Door on Linux?

Make Your Browser Start Screen Look Like Windows 8

Windows 8 Boot Screens Get a Classy New Look

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Multimedia

9/25/11

Developers See Bright Future in Windows 8

Microsoft's bold move

Windows 8 reality check

Developer tools could be key to success

Samsung Windows 8 Tablets Surface on eBay

The device

What to expect

Windows Server 8: The Microsoft Server Fork

Microsoft Looks to Join Apple as World's Biggest App Censor

Will Windows 8 PCs Shut the Door on Linux?

Make Your Browser Start Screen Look Like Windows 8

Windows 8 Boot Screens Get a Classy New Look

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