Demostration of Windows 8
- Lots of great stuff going on with Windows 7 installs
- Touch First, Mouse Second – Wow, that is going to be interesting
- Demo of a netbook from two years ago running Windows 8 using only 380mb of RAM, nice. Steven even said it was his daily use machine for a year, Microsoft needs to buy him a nicer machine.
- Windows 8 Start still feels like Windows Mobile and Windows Media Center had a child
- We decided every time they said “SUPER”, we are drinking
- They are very nervous and the quality is not as polished as Apple
- The UI speed is amazing. Swiping is so responsive
- Wow, she reverted to saving it is “pre-release software” after only a few seconds of delay
- They need to get this lady off the stage
- Windows 8 gets Flair! They call them Charms, but they are definitely Flair
- Spell Checking throughout the OS! I hope Office vNext uses the same dictionary as the OS
- Wow, very unpolished presentation. “I can launch the Bing app…’No, skip it’”
- It’s Alive! “WINDOWS 8 BECAME SELF AWARE ON SEPTEMBER 13TH, 2011”
Now to Building Apps for Windows 8
- Drum Roll Please
- WinRT – Windows Runtime – 1800 Objects in their new API
- Unified Tools Set, You Pick the Language
- I must admit, I am a little scared and happy at the same time
- Definitely time to learn a new platform to get up to speed with WinRT instead of CLR/.NET
- Expression Blend gets HTML support
- Live DOM in Expressions allows drag-n-drop movement of elements
- Windows Store integration looks very cool, straight from Visual Studio
- XAML/Silverlight Now
- Moving away from Silverlight to Windows 8 to make your app look “metro”
- What about WPF? They show Silverlight and Phone migrations with a few code changes, but nothing with WPF
Hardware for Windows 8
- Startup Times are Amazing!
- Rootkit Virus demo, UEFI stops before machines can be compromised, for now
- Idle power on turn off in a few seconds.
- USB 3.0 demo was amazing!
- All apps and hardware us the hardware acceleration for graphics
- Windows reserves one pixel around the border for the API, you get the rest
- SensorFusion API! Awesome, where are my Legos WinRT
- Printer Controls within Print dialog instead of after market drivers
- ASUS and Toshiba show some great devices, ultra thin and under 2.5 lbs
After this point, I had to walk away to dream, but it looks pretty awesome. I am definitely excited about Windows 8 and development within.