Seems like they've taken Windows 7 and given it two interfaces: One for conventional apps and another for HTML5 touch apps. The result seems schizophrenic to me. If I'm making a Win 8 app, do I design it for a touch interface and mobile ARM processor, or do I design it for keyboard and mouse and a beefy Intel CPU? Do I have to design it twice?
Another challenge is the portability to ARM. From what I understand, apps made in managed code such as .NET and Silverlight will move right over with little effort. But most of the really powerful Windows apps are unmanaged code, which will take a lot of work to rebuild for ARM. Don't expect to be using Photoshop on your Windows 8 tablet anytime soon.
There are some good ideas here. I like the tiles and the split keyboard mode. I just think MS might have been better off extending WinPho 7 into a tablet OS than slapping a Windows Phone paint job over Windows 7 and calling it a tablet OS. Tablet users will get an OS billed as being "full Windows" which can't actually run everything a Windows desktop can, and the apps it can run may not be optimized for touch. Desktop users will get a bunch of UI chrome designed for touch use before they run off into the familiar Win 7 "ghetto."
"The worst part about these reviews is they are [subjective]--and their scores often depend on how drunk you got the media at a Street Fighter event." — Mona Hamilton, Capcom Senior VP of Marketing
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