Programming Windows: Anticip8 (Premium)

On the morning of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s third CES keynote, in January 2011, I received a tip from a source at the software giant: Microsoft was working on a new tile-based user interface for Windows 8 that was codenamed Mosh and might only appear on low-end tablet PCs that could compete with Apples iPad. It would also include a new app model, codenamed Jupiter, and these apps would be delivered to customers via a Windows Marketplace app in Windows 8. Jupiter apps would be Silverlight-based, as on Windows Phone 7 Series, and they would be “immersive,” which I later learned meant “full-screen and touch-based.”

I can now reveal that this tip came in the form of an audio recording of an internal meeting at Microsoft that featured Scott Guthrie answering questions from a Client Platform team that was frustrated by the direction the Windows team had taken. The Client Platform team was then responsible for Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Windows Forms, and Silverlight, but the Windows team had taken Jupiter for its own, and it had deprecated the Client Platform team’s products.

This was a bold power grab by Windows head Steven Sinofsky, and the Client Platform team—which was then part of the Microsoft Developer Division—was worried that it would “get pulled back into Windows.” Guthrie’s answer to this concern was met with laughter, indicating that the team didn’t understand the seriousness of the issue: they would be lucky if that’s what happened. But he also seemed to believe that the Windows team trusted them more then than they had three years earlier, and that they were partnering well in both directions. All they could do was hope for the best and give the Windows team what they needed and hope that the trust continued.

“2010 was a very, very exciting year for our company,” Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said at the start of his CES 2011 keynote address. “We launched Windows Phone 7, Office 2010, and Kinect, and we introduced Internet Explorer 9 and Office 365. We saw great growth in our Bing and Azure Services. And with the amazing success of Windows 7, it’s truly been a year like no other.” He then promised to share a little bit of what was coming next with regards to Xbox, Windows Phone, and the Windows PC.

Windows 7 was by then a blockbuster success. “Windows 7 PCs are the fastest selling PCs in history, selling over 7 copies a second, [and] they now represent more than 20 percent of all the PCs connected to the Internet,” Ballmer noted. Indeed, PC makers had sold 348.5 million units in 2010, up 13.7 percent (year over year) from the 300 million units sold in 2009. The PC market was back.

Ballmer then carted out Mike Angiulo yet again to show off some of the advances that PC makers had made in the past year. 2011-era PCs would be based on the second-generation Intel Core chipset, codenamed Sandy Bridge, and AMD’s Fusion, both of which incorporated both CPU and GPU onto the same die, improving performance and decreasing power consumption.

But the big news that day was that Microsoft would talk publicly about the next version of Windows, called Windows 8 and due in late 2012, for the first time. And it was a blockbuster: In addition to supporting Intel and AMD silicon, Windows 8 would support ARM-based System on a Chip (SOC) architectures from NVIDIA, Qualcomm, and Texas Instruments, the first time that Windows would run on a non-x86 platform since Intel killed off its Itanium product line.

Angiulo noted that Microsoft would not show the audience “the new Windows user interface,” implicitly confirming that Windows 8 would provide a new user interface, nor would he discuss any new Windows features. Instead, this was about platform support, and the hope that Microsoft’s PC maker partners would deliver new ARM-based PCs in late 2012.

“So, this is Qualcomm’s ARM system called Snapdragon, Angiulo said, showing off an early prototype device running what appeared to be Windows 7. “And this is the Windows client running on ARM. I can pull up the command prompt and show you the version strings for the kind of people that track that sort of thing, just to show that it’s real. I’ve got desktop pinning, I’ve got accessories launching. You could see I can open my photo library. I’ve got customization. I can change my desktop background. What I’m showing you here is the Windows desktop up and running live on an ARM system. That’s really the first time. This isn’t virtualization, this is Windows running natively on ARM.”

He also ran a native ARM version of Microsoft Word on a TI prototype running that company’s OMAP SoC. And after cutting and pasting some text, he connected a USB-based Epson printer and printed the document from the TI device. “That’s real Office working, that’s a real print driver working, and the print driver is just one of the subsystems that we have up and running,” he said as the seemingly mundane task occurred. “We can connect to cameras and storage devices, and other cool things like that.”

And then he showed off “Windows on ARM,” as he called it, on a prototype based on the NVIDIA Tegra platform, this time using PowerPoint and Internet Explorer 9.

Left unsaid, however, was why. Why would Microsoft go to the trouble of porting Windows, a product that had once been cross-platform but was by 2011 very much optimized solely for Intel/AMD’s x86/x64 architectures, to ARM, a low-powered mobile-focused hardware platform?

Microsoft’s press release noted that SoC architectures—not just those based on ARM, but also low-end Intel and AMD x86 designs—would “fuel significant innovation across the hardware spectrum when coupled with the depth and breadth of the Windows platform.” And it mentioned twice that customers would “demand” breadth and choice “across the widest variety of hardware platforms and form factors.” But the real reason was easier to understand: Microsoft was trying to better position Windows to compete with the new threat from Apple’s iPad, which ran on ARM-based SoCs.

“SoC architectures consolidate the major components of a computing device onto a single package of silicon,” Microsoft explained. “This consolidation enables smaller, thinner devices while reducing the amount of power required for the device, increasing battery life, and making possible always-on and always-connected functionality. With support for SoCs in the next version of the Windows client, Microsoft is enabling industry partners to design and deliver the widest range of hardware ever.”

With CES behind us, sources at Microsoft began telling me about Microsoft’s ever-shifting plans for Windows 8. Windows 8 would offer a so-called tiered user interface, with small form factor and touch devices getting the new tiles-based UI in addition to the Aero and Aero Lite UIs for mainstream PCs. Windows Explorer was getting a Ribbon-based interface, though it was incomplete in early milestone builds with placeholder graphics.

In March 2011, Rafael Rivera and I acquired a leaked build of Windows 8—6.1.7850.0.100922—and Rafael, a systems programmer, began tearing it apart looking for clues about the future. He found a lot Windows 8 would feature a new Welcome screen that was clearly based on the lock screen from Windows Phone 7. It would support some sort of pattern-based logon for touchscreen PCs, similar to a feature in Android. And its lock screen would feature extensible audio controls, so you could control music playback while the machine was locked.

Windows 8’s confusing new “immersive” UI was locked down by Microsoft. But Rafael discovered an immersive version of Microsoft’s web browser, Internet Explorer, that was not resizable. “It’s likely that this application is designed to run full screen only and that the limitations we’re currently seeing are because we’re running outside of its intended native Immersive environment,” I wrote at the time.

Rafael also found a second immersive app, a PDF reader called Modern Reader. It was packaged in a new package format called AppX that very closely resembled how Windows Phone 7 apps were packaged.

Microsoft’s biggest trade show, TechEd, was held in mid-May that year and it was surprisingly light on Windows news; indeed, I was told to expect “no hard news” at the show. Instead, Microsoft talked up a coming update for Windows Phone called Mango, MultiPoint Server 2011, Virtual Machine Manager 2012, System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) 2012, Windows Azure, Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials, Office 365, and a curious offering called Visual Studio Lightswitch that was billed as “the simplest way to create business applications for the desktop and the cloud.” It was aimed at business users, not developers.

A few weeks later, we learned why Windows was so absent from the TechEd news cycle: Steven Sinofsky had rejiggered the schedule for divulging Windows 8 information, just as he had before with Windows 7, when he moved WinHEC to occur after PDC. Windows 8, as it turned out, would bring a major “reimagining” of the Windows user interface. And given all the leaks that Rafael, I, and others had published in the previous few months, he decided to simply unveil the new UI while he could still control the narrative.

Unfortunately, he chose the wrong venue for that revelation: Steven Sinofsky appeared with Julie Larson Green at the D9 conference on June 1, which was hosted by tech’s least impressive commentators, Walter Mossberg and Kara Swisher, both of whom were Apple fans and antagonistic to Microsoft.

“You have missed a couple of things, your company has missed a couple of things that have gone on,” Mossberg started.

“We definitely didn’t do the iPhone,” Sinofsky responded.

“You missed the first wave of super smartphones, consumer tablets, etc. What’s going on? I know you have smart people.”

“There are always things we are doing well,” Sinofsky answered. “You picked two of the things we didn’t do particularly well. We’re not out of the game.”

“You don’t think it is a systemic issue?”

“I don’t think so,” Sinofsky countered. “On phones, we aren’t there yet. But we’ll just keep trying. As to Windows, we are going to be showing some things today.” When he went on to discuss legacy support—Windows 8 would not raise the hardware requirements from Windows 7, and it would run all previous Windows applications—Mossberg interrupted him.

“You mean like viruses or craplets?”

“Or printing,” Sinofsky answered. “Solid-state [drives] and disk support.”

Of course, all anyone wanted to see was the new Windows 8 user interface. And for that, Sinofsky once again brought out Julie Larson-Green, the person who was directly responsible for that work. Windows 8, we were told, was a “reimagining of Windows from the chip to the interface,” a phrase that Microsoft executives would repeat again and again over the next 18 months. And because of its unique, mobile device-like user interface, Microsoft would almost completely stop using the term PC and would now usually refer to the hardware that ran Windows as “devices.”

Larson-Green showed off the new Welcome screen—which she called a lock screen—which resembled the similar screen on smartphones, with at-a-glance status information. There was a new tiles-based Start screen that replaced the Windows Start menu. Those tiles were “live”—or, live tiles—and could display notification alerts and “always up-to-date information from apps.” For backward compatibility, the classic Windows desktop would sit behind the Start screen.

The Windows 8 interface was “fast and fluid,” another phrase we’d soon tire of because of the repetition, with a more natural way to switch between running apps (at least on tablets and touchscreen PCs). The new Windows 8 apps were full-screen only for the most part, but you could “snap and resize an app to the side of the screen, so you can really multitask using the capabilities of Windows.” This feature was actually quite limited and required a 1366 x 768 display or higher.

Developers could use HTML 5 and JavaScript to build Windows 8 apps, we were told, with “access to the full power of the PC,” but no one discussed more powerful native apps. “We have a whole developer conference” for that, Sinofsky said: its Build 2012 conference—the Windows team had killed PDC and replaced it with their own show—was set for September when developers would learn more.

(That said, Sinofsky did reveal one more developer-oriented detail during a Q&A: when asked where Silverlight it into Windows 8, he said, “There’s still a place for Silverlight. The browser that we showed runs Silverlight and it will still run on the desktop.”)

The new Windows 8 user interface was … awkward. It looked like something designed for a smartphone or small tablet that had been scaled up to PC-sized displays without any thought about how much more information those displays can relay. And it was completely different from the more powerful desktop interface that still lurked under the tiles. Even the non-technical Swisher immediately saw the problem.

“It’s just jarring,” she said. “It’s a jarring shift.”

Timed to the D9 appearance, Microsoft posted a short video called Building Windows 8 in which director of program management for the Windows User Experience Jensen Harris described the new interfaces in more detail.

Among the revelations: this new user interface would not only be used on tablets and other touchscreen devices, it would instead be used by all Windows 8 PCs. There was also some kind of onscreen overlay that could appear over the apps which displayed wireless and battery life indicators and the time and date. And on the right, there were icons for Search, Share, Start, Connect, and Settings. There didn’t appear to be any hubs, as with Windows Phone 7, but many of the apps were landscape-oriented panoramic experiences.

On June 3, Mike Angiulo appeared at the Computex trade show and provided more information about Windows 8, which he said was designed to meet new industry trends like immersive Internet computing, ultra-portable devices, and touch screens.

“Windows 8 is a reimagining of Windows,” Angiulo said. “The web has been driving a lot of this. Changes in the way we work, the way we play, and the way we connect with other people. And of course the kinds of devices that people use to connect to the web are different too … Developers want to be able to build and sell applications that are tailored for that web experience and run on those devices. That was the reason for Windows 8. That was our driving motivation to do this.”

The new full-screen Windows 8 apps were “chromeless,” Angiulo said, “putting Windows in the background.” Microsoft had stepped back from the phrase “immersive apps,” replacing that with “tailored apps.” This was the language I had heard a few months earlier.

Angiulo also discussed Windows on ARM, noting that only those devices would be capable of a new “mode” called Always On, Always Connected. This would work as do smartphones, where they would wake up from sleep instantly,  exist on standby for long periods of time with low power drain, and get great battery life, all while staying connected to wireless networks all the time. Windows on ARM devices would also feature a hardware Windows button that would toggle the display between Start and the desktop.

Indeed, the hardware makers in the audience would want to pay attention to Microsoft’s new hardware guidelines, which would stipulate the types of touch displays and capabilities that Windows 8 compatible PCs would require. There was a new kind of BIOS coming, too, called UEFI, that would one day be mandatory.

In July 2011, Microsoft killed the terrible Games for Windows – LIVE brand and decided to simply use the Xbox brand on both consoles and the PC. As such, Windows 8 would include a new Xbox app, and it would redesign the Xbox 360 console dashboard to more closely resemble the panoramic interfaces found in Windows 8.

In August, Sinofsky kicked off his Building Windows 8 blog, a follow-up to the wordy Engineering Windows 7 blog. Over the next few weeks, he revealed a few interesting tidbits. Windows 8, for example, would support USB 3.0. It would feature major performance improvements for file copy operations. It would natively support ISO and Virtual Hard Drive (VHD) files and integrate them into the file system. And it would include a client version of Hyper-V, the hypervisor-based virtualization solution that Microsoft had first shipped in Windows Server 2008.

We also learned, via leaks, that users would be able to sign in to Windows using their email addresses. And that it would ship with Internet Explorer 10, then in developer preview. Speaking of which, the first public pre-release version of Windows 8 was due soon at Build. But this wouldn’t be called a Beta, as had been the case with Windows 7. It would be called a Developer Preview. Sinofsky’s Windows team was changing everything yet again.

More soon.