Lewin's remarks apparently occurred June 7 at the Launch: Silicon Valley 2011 event, hosted by Microsoft at its Mountain View, Calif. campus to help showcase new startups. According to his corporate bio, Lewin (pictured) has executive responsibility for that campus and is responsible for Microsoft's global relationships with startups and venture capitalists.
The revelation wasn't reported until earlier today, however, when Mary Branscombe of U.K. website TechRadar.com quoted Levin as saying the following:
"We will be in market -- if you look at the crystal ball and just say what happened in the past is a reasonable indicator of what our forward looking timelines will be and just speculate -- we've made the point about having a developer conference later this year, and then typically we enter a beta phase, and then in 12 months we're in the market, so let's make that assumption."
The developer conference Levin referred to is Build, scheduled to run from Sept. 13 to Sept. 16 in Anaheim, Calif. If Windows 8 does ship a year later, it should be on the market for the 2012 holiday season.
As we review later in this story, Microsoft already used the June 1 AllThingsD conference to show off features of an operating system it coyly described as being "code-named" Windows 8. The new goodies include a tile-based start screen that's easily customized, the ability to run both legacy apps and new full-screen ones written using HTML and JavaScript, and compatibility with devices ranging from "small slates to classroom-sized displays."
According to Branscombe, Levin also addressed the issue of why -- to the surprise of some -- Microsoft's tablet strategy isn't being based on adaptation of the existing (Windows CE-based) Windows Phone 7 or Windows Embedded Compact 7. "Our strategy is a statement about phones and tablets being more or less the same thing. I think tablets are big phones, more or less and I think they will want, over time, some of the capabilities that PC architectures have," she quotes him as saying.
"They want the security, they want the manageability -- especially if you are an enterprise buying large volumes of these things, but I think consumers over time want to know about those things as well. Our approach with the tablet play being based on PC architecture, rather than [adding to] the phone architecture, I think is the right one," Levin is said to have added.
Background
At the AllThings D conference, held by The Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif. Steve Sinofsky, president of the company's Windows and Windows Live division, promised his audience Windows 8 will run on all types of device, including those using either x86 or AMD processors, and hardware requirements won't be any more stringent than Windows 7.
The x86 version of the operating system will run just about every legacy Windows program, but the ARM version won't -- an emulation layer "turns out to be technically really challenging," he added.
Windows 8's start screen
(Click to enlarge)
Notably, Windows 8 will feature a tile-based Start screen, as pictured above. This replaces the Windows Start menu with a customizable, scalable full-screen view of applications. It will also provide fully touch-optimized browsing, with "all the power of hardware-accelerated Internet Explorer 10," according to Microsoft.
Following the All Things D event, Microsoft staged a followup event a few hours later on the morning of June 2 at the Computex show in Tapei. According to a report from Taiwan by Engadget, Foxconn, Quanta, and Wistron have all developed reference systems -- with chips from Nvidia, Qualcomm, and TI -- for the ARM version of Windows 8.
Engadget's Vlad Savov reported that the ARM prototypes came in both tablet and notebook configurations, were shown to resume from sleep "immediately," and were demonstrated with an ARM version of Microsoft Office. While ARM Windows won't run legacy apps written for Windows 7 on x86, Windows 8 apps developed using JavaScript and HTML (see later) will all be cross-platform, officials were said to have noted.
While it clearly draws on the "Metro" user interface employed by Windows Phone 7, Windows 8 also derives from work Microsoft did earlier for Windows Media Center Editions and for the Zune HD. The upgrade has been in the works ever since Windows 7 shipped in July 2009 -- several months before Apple's iPad was first shown -- wrote Ina Fried in a story All Things D posted to coincide with the operating system demo.
Windows 8 will be able to run old and new apps side by side
(Click either to enlarge)
According to Sinofsky and Larson-Green, Windows 8 will run traditional Windows applications with their standard user interfaces. Users will be able to snap and resize apps to the side of the screen or shrink them into a live tile using their fingers -- or, if they're wrinkly enough to insist -- a mouse or keyboard, the company adds.
New apps created specifically for Windows 8 will run full-screen, and have "access to the full power of the PC," though they'll be built using HTML5 and JavaScript, according to Microsoft. Silverlight wasn't touted as a development tool (though Sinofsky noted that Internet Explorer 10 will run it), which has caused some developer angst. However, the Within Windows blog has plausibly reported that Silverlight will be supported in Windows 8's .appx application packages.
A future version of Internet Explorer running full-screen
Source: Within Windows
(Click to enlarge)
According to Microsoft, Windows 8 will offer "effortless movement between existing Windows programs and new Windows 8 apps. The full capabilities of Windows continue to be available to you, including the Windows Explorer and Desktop, as does compatibility with all Windows 7 logo PCs, software and peripherals."
Larson-Green reportedly added that Windows 8's new tile-based interface can't be turned off, though users can choose not to use it if they don't want to. Users or enterprises will be able to customize exactly how the screen appears, she's said to have promised.
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