People who attended the Gates/Ballmer interview during the D6 conference were given a sneak peek at the up and coming Windows 7 – which is scheduled to be delivered to consumers in late 2009. In the demo they showed the full screen multi-touch interface that is embedded in the operating system. There was also a demo of the Surface-like application that is used to organize photos.
Aside from a glimpse at a touch-enabled Windows task bar, that was it. The interface. The coat of paint on top of the multitasking engine, the file system, the security, the device drivers…the foundation that the UI is built on top of. After the demo, many asked him why he showed just the UI and didn’t discuss the underpinnings. His explanation: “It’s hard to show more in only five minutes…the security, the speed…” And Ballmer had said, earlier in the evening, that the biggest pushback Microsoft got on Vista from customers was not around its security systems or its drivers, but rather on its interface.
But many really want to believe that customers–or failing that, at least the techie D6 audience–is able to see beyond the surface. There are so many more important things to worry about, both for users and for Microsoft. Cloud computing is obviating the need for much of what the OS does, yet users want to maintain control and ownership of their personal data. Network-delivered user interfaces can do a lot of what the desktop UI has traditionally done, but only when the user is online. We were really hoping for Ballmer and Gates to address the changing nature of computing, and not fight Apple for the design award.
Make no mistake, multitouch is cool. And it may, eventually, be important. Apply the technology at a personal level, to the manipulation and visualization of complex data structures like a Facebook social network, and it could be a game changer. Furthermore, support for this interface method does belong in the operating system, because you need device driver support for it. But even if you buy that logic, I believe the multitouch project is inconsequential when compared with the bigger things we need from an OS. And I think the audience, both here at D6 and elsewhere, deserves to know what’s really changing in Windows at a deep level. We can wait a bit before we worry about the surface.
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