Ash Owen Davies: Touch Enabled Desktops

id='post-body-8757908206141907152'>

Today I got the chance to try out the new Developer Preview of Windows 8, something I've been looking forward to since the first announcement of the project some time ago. After initially attempting to load it onto my VMWare 7 setup, I was presented with a new style blue screen, a refreshing remodel of the classic. Through some forum trawling I had found that the release only works on the most recent version 8 of VMWare. A trial version of VMWare is available from the publishers website, like most trials it lasts for 30 days, and requires an arduous license request process, but the end result is a good solid sandbox environment.

Windows Metro UI

The installation was fairly quick, despite only sharing a portion of the computers resources, but that doesn't really hold much necessity bearing in mind you only need to install once. Now disregarding the numerous benefits and improvements brought about in Windows 8, such as ARM processor support, Windows to Go, and the rumours of a new file system, there were many changes that I felt simply were not welcome for a desktop. Being that my own specialities lie in the design of user interfaces this is generally what I focus my attention to first, biased or not I think that the new Metro UI is probably the largest change to be brought about in any revision of Windows.

Many believe that we are now in the post-pc era, with the sudden evolution and adaptation of touch enabled devices such as tablets, smart phones and laptops, eclipsing the use of desktops. However I believe that desktop computers still make up a huge proportion of computer users and are still the workhorses that drive the industry. In anticipation of this operating system manufacturers are keen to develop a platform that works for all devices, whilst I can see this is a beneficial feature, I've always believed that something that boasts an ability to perform many tasks does so poorly in comparison to something that delivers a single purpose.

Microsoft isn't the only company to show this, Google's upcoming version of Android (code-named 'Ice Cream Sandwich'), also attempts to shoe-horn the facilities relevant to touch enabled devices into an all-rounder operating system. Whilst I believe that Google will do a better job (this being down to my own preferences) I still feel its the wrong outlook to have.

Though I hold a personal resentment towards Apple and their following, they have achieved one thing correctly, the IOS/OSX holds the same style of user interface across all platforms, whilst keeping the features relevant to the capabilities of the device, this is however one benefit of being able to manufacture the target device along with operating system, a benefit that is not shared amongst it's competitors.

I don't boast to know the ideal solution, should manufacturers segregate the versions of their operating systems to allow for multiple devices? Would this create resentment towards the feature set or a compulsion to own the latest version? Unifying operating system versions may even be the correct solution

In short, desktops aren't touch enabled (or at least they shouldn't be) and trying to fit a solution around that just won't work, Microsoft learn't a big lesson in the wake of Windows Vista, and that showed just how capable they were at listening to user feedback with Windows 7.

Source: http://ashowendavies.blogspot.com/2011/09/touch-enabled-desktops.html