Really? Utility, maybe - but usability? I've used an Asus tablet with Windows 8 on it and usability is far worse than iOS, at least where discoverability is concerned. It's too easy to get trapped in the faux desktop mode, and none of the gestures are as intuitive as they are on iOS. The gestures aren't difficult to use or clumsy - it's just that they're counter-intuitive for a new user (in my own anecdotal experience).

What they've done is certainly leagues more impressive than Apple's plodding, torturous attempts to wedge iOS concepts into its 20-year old WIMP model (seriously, go use Mountain Lion - its a complete mess - but no one attacks Apple as harshly as they do Microsoft... funny that.)

My impression of 10.8 is that OSX is being maintained by a skeleton crew who decide what new iOS features can be ported over to the desktop to warrant a new version. But I wouldn't call it a mess - not at all. Notifications and inline progress indicators are both welcome improvements. Reverse-scrolling is just wrong, but that's easy to turn off. Apple plods because OS X works - both OS X and Windows 7 are good at what they do.

Windows 8 isn't just a bit experimental - it's a groping attempt to stitch wings onto a monkey or a beak onto a cow. As a technical decision, there's no good reason to replace the start menu with Metro or to bring metro to an OS that's typically run on computers with multiple high-resolution displays. And there's no good reason to bring a pseudo-desktop UI, complete with tiny little touch targets, to a tablet other than to accomodate a hacky non-metro build of Office. But this isn't a technical solution - it's marketing strategy. This is the bridge that carries Windows over to the tablet, whether it belongs there or not.

Re: iOS vs W8 on tablets - here are the features I am interested in: 1) Multi-tasking: there are a lot of times on my iPad when I am say, watching a movie in Safari, and would like to chat to someone at the same time, but I can't, unless I change app, which would kill the running video. W8 promises to solve this.

2) App switching - on iOS you switch apps with a clunky four finger swipe, which means you have to stop holding the tablet with one hand and move your fingers and swipe across the screen. W8 uses a swipe in from the edge with your thumb, which is a very easy and natural gesture to use with the way you naturally hold a tablet.

3) Charms bar - iOS has two ways to access core functions or return to the home screen - the home button and a four finger swipe up. The four finger swipe up has the same problems as the app switching gesture. The home button is slow to press (one thing I love about my Lumia is how fast it is to tap the soft touch home button - the big clicky home button may be iconic but in my opinion it is slow and inefficient.) Anyway the idea of a quick

4) Microsoft's autocorrection and keyboard layouts: another thing I love about my Lumia is the word suggestion bar. Compared to iOS's autocorrection features it is incredibly superior. On iOS you get single pop-up suggestions above where your words are actually being typed, which you can only cancel by clicking on the target itself (so every time you need to cancel it you have to tap a different place = inefficient.) Furthermore, the suggestions are often wrong, no alternatives are offered, and there is no easy way to revert them. On WP7, if you tap on a word, it selects it instantly, and displays all the autocorrect options, and the original word if it changed it. On iOS, you have to tap a word, then wait... then tap again... then the stupid pop-over text control thing appears, then you have to tap "Suggest" (which sometimes doesn't appear!), then another little delay, then you have to find your original word... blech. Not sure how similar W8's tablet text input is to WP7, or whether the autocorrect bar and text selection features carry over, but if there's even half of these features, it'll be an incredible improvement from iOS. I can't overstate how much text entry sucks on an iPad. One more thing: W8 has multiple different thumb keyboard size options. iOS only has one. It's way too big for my thumbs on the wide iPad bezel. AND W8 has a skewed layout thumb keyboard, which maybe doesn't look as pristine as the iPad's version, but seems to me like it would work better with actual human thumbs.

5) People hub and sharing - one thing I do a lot of is sharing - especially links to friends. iOS sucks for this. There's a stupid share button in the Safari browser that lets you email a link or post it to your Facebook wall (with no option to post to friends' walls!) but in no way is sharing built in to the core of the system. On my Lumia, again, I love how it integrates with my entire Facebook friends list, and it makes sharing very easy. The Share charm integrated with the People hub on W8 sounds like, if it works as it should, an absolute killer feature to me, making it ridiculously easy to share anything from across the entire OS. I like how Microsoft seems to be really trying to integrate this sort of stuff into the core of the OS.

6) Livetiles - again another feature that is great on my phone. There's a lot more you can do with a homescreen than just rows of dead icons.

Windows 8 isn't just a bit experimental - it's a groping attempt to stitch wings onto a monkey or a beak onto a cow.

Well, that's your opinion.

this isn't a technical solution - it's marketing strategy.

First: yes, it is a technical solution. The scenario is like this: used to be that computers were big things that sat on desks. Used to be you kept all your files on one PC and moving them from PC to PC was difficult. Used to be that not everybody used computers. Used to be that the internet was a niche part of computer use. Used to be that no one had persistent online social networks integrated into their lives. Used to be that tablets weren't prevalent. Etc etc. Then all of these things changed - and now the world's most popular OS is changing in response to these changes. These are all technical problems (or whatever you want to call them) and W8 is an attempt to begin solving these problems.

Second: at the end of the day, the best marketing move Microsoft can make is to build great products that take advantage of all the possibilities of modern technology. I still argue that, after a period of relative stagnation, computer interfaces are starting to respond to the massive changes in computing technology and culture. Windows 8, whether it is particularly well-executed or not, whether it fits well with the legacy desktop or not, whether it breaks some parts of the desktop work environment PC model or not, is a step in that direction - the right direction.

I think a lot of this comes down to your preferences, and if Windows 8 on a tablet works well for you, then that's great. I think the article, which exposes 12 users to a Surface tablet in a controlled test carries a bit more weight, though.

Also, I don't know how much time you've spent with this generation of winrt devices, but if you think your iPad is 'clunky' and 'slow', you're going to be disappointed. The Asus tablet I work with here at work is slower, in response to user actions at least, than any iOS device I've ever used.

4) Microsoft's autocorrection and keyboard layouts

Yes, the winrt touch keyboard is very nice. The best typing score I've ever achieved was on an old LG phone running windows phone 7. The suggestions ribbon that winrt copied from Android is fantastic - Apple needs to license this from Google.

The scenario is like this: used to be that computers were big things that sat on desks. Used to be you kept all your files on one PC and moving them from PC to PC was difficult. Used to be that not everybody used computers. Used to be that the internet was a niche part of computer use. Used to be that no one had persistent online social networks integrated into their lives. Used to be that tablets weren't prevalent. Etc etc. Then all of these things changed - and now the world's most popular OS is changing in response to these changes. These are all technical problems (or whatever you want to call them) and W8 is an attempt to begin solving these problems.

No, it really isn't. W8 is an attempt to deal with what Microsoft believes is the existential threat of iOS and Android. I'm not going to argue the merits of Metro itself the way the article seems to because I like the Swiss design principles that seem to have guided the development of Metro and because I think Metro has generally been a technical success with windows phone 7 and would do at least as well on a tablet.

Metro on the desktop makes sense if you believe in the fairy-tale of tablet-PC convergence. I don't think that even Microsoft is foolish enough to believe this, which is why I think this is a cynical move to metastasize Windows and devour tablets the way Microsoft tried to devour PDAs with PocketPC. The Start Menu didn't belong in a PDA interface 15 years ago, and Metro doesn't belong on the desktop today. Tablet-PC device convergence would make sense if tablet-PC device use convergence made sense. Just the contradictory technical constraints on these two classes of devices - CPU/GPU power and precise UI control vs mobility and long battery life - tell us we shouldn't expect tablets and PCs to converge.

This isn't innovation - its the crude simulacrum of innovation. It doesn't make desktop PCs any better - if MS was interested in that, they'd bring proven fixes like pervasive desktop search (or at least a promoted UI element for the existing desktop search) or tiled window management to W8 - not Metro. Both of those features actually make desktop users on other platforms (and on Windows with 3rd party add-ons) more productive, right now.

Second: at the end of the day, the best marketing move Microsoft can make is to build great products that take advantage of all the possibilities of modern technology. I still argue that, after a period of relative stagnation, computer interfaces are starting to respond to the massive changes in computing technology and culture. Windows 8, whether it is particularly well-executed or not, whether it fits well with the legacy desktop or not, whether it breaks some parts of the desktop work environment PC model or not, is a step in that direction - the right direction.

It's not the right direction. At all. This is what kept tablets out of most users hands for so long - the notion that Tablet UIs should be similar to PC UIs. Remember Windows tablet PCs? Both of these classes of devices should be allowed to evolve in their own directions rather than being crudely stitched together to satisfy a wrong-headed convergence fetish. Apple probably knows this better than any other company at this point, given the backlash over tablet-esque features that were added to Lion. One would hope that Microsoft could learn from Apple's experience. Maybe like small children, this is something Microsoft has to learn for themselves through their own mistakes.

In my experience, the Win32 side of Windows 8 is still there with all the same power and functionality of Windows 7 (with plenty of improvements!). Right now, WinRT and Win32 are actually quite separated, and that lets me enjoy both without stepping on either sides toes.

Given that Microsoft wanted to introduce a radically new set of features/functionality, I feel like they did the best job that they possibly could have, and I'm having a great time!

That's not what I expected to listen from an iPad owner. Wasn't the iPad a huge step in that direction? From reviews, 'fluid and responsive' don't apply to W8 yet.

On OSX: the imported iOS features are out of sight, except for Mission Control, which didn't change that much. The default desktop has no clutter at all (menu-bars?). And since you asked, my mother (which was completely computer illiterate before) uses a MB without any trouble. It's naive to compare that to the radical changes that come with Windows 8, which even some long-time power users have difficulty adapting to.

Having spent a lot of time with the iPad, I'm not convinced it's the future. Sure, some apps are great, but the sandboxed app model is too limited. Okay, web browsing is pretty good. Okay, maybe you can do some interesting stuff with one of those music suite apps. Beyond that, it's really just a toy. In my opinion.

The time is right for a better take on tablets - all it needs is a competitor to actually become competent (apparently this is challenging...) and the market to get over it's silly Apple infatuation. Look at safari on the iPad for instance. Really, it just looks like normal desktop safari? I have to tap on little tabs, and thin text-label bookmarks in a little row? And I have to manage my bookmarks in a janky drop-down menu of nested folders (hilariously not even bloody wide enough to read the bookmarks!) Seriously, I understand Apple doesn't want to challenge anyone with anything unexpected, but come on... Surely they can do better than that. It's just a shame none of the third party browsers can compete with safari's internals - or that Apple doesn't allow 3rd party apps to integrate with or replace core functionality. Yeesh.

My takeaway: Apple isn't really all that great. They've just been the least retarded of the major tech companies - so far. We can do better.

LaunchPad is a joke, but other than that I find Mountain Lion to be very intuitive and easy on the eyes.

It integrates so well with Apple's lovely touchpad. Map it to your favourite hot corner, and suddenly all your apps are much easier to access.

2) Not to mention that gross effect when you change desktop spaces, and the whole desktop slides over - including the menu bar (that apparently static, foundational part of the UI) - to be replace by a new menu bar! The dock doesn't change, so why does the menu bar?

3) And of course that other gross effect when you click full screen on an app (that little full-screen button nestled oddly in the top right corner of the window chrome above all the other little static buttons) - and the whole thing morphs and bulges and slides into a new space. Yeesh.

4) And yeah, Launchpad. So now apps are scattered between the dock, the application folder, and the Launchpad. Great.

5) Also, the Finder seems to get worse with every generation.

Really though, it's the sum of all the parts that offends me. When I see people with their sleek Macbook Airs on their laps, then I look at their screens, and I see stacks and stacks of scattered windows of all shapes and sizing clustered over the desktop, and everywhere, fiddly little tiny click targets (in the menu bar, in the windows themselves, in the window chrome - don't get me started on those ghastly mini traffic light buttons for mini windows...) And they're moving their fingers around in that little touchpad controlling that little mouse pointer on the screen, tapping on the little targets or slowly dragging things around...

All of this stuff was fine when computers were big slow things that sat on desks, running a handful of low-res apps at a time, driven by a mouse and keyboard. Back then, it wasn't possible to implement the fast, fluid, colourful graphical design and interface features of Metro. Windows had to be static heavy things that you carefully dragged around, resizing individual edges one mouse drag at a time. Nothing had any momentum, the whole window stack just sort of sat there like a pile of lead sheets. But now that computers are in our laps, or in our hands, and our computer use is spread between multiple device, and more often than not the average person is using a touchpad or a touchscreen to browse the internet (which has expanded into something so huge it no longer makes any sense to bottle it up in a single browser window) - and especially now that touchscreens are about to become ubiquitous on every single laptop sold in the world - the old static clunky WIMP model needs to be shuffled off to the side in place of something that makes more sense.

I will note that Mountain Lion isn't qualitatively worse for this new stage of computing than, say, Windows 7. But I have no respect for the small attempts to modernise the OS with ported iOS features. It's putting lipstick on a pig (admittedly a pig that was very good and useful for a long time and still has a lot of value in many different contexts.) Microsoft's hard reset will ultimately produce the right OS for the times, Apple's slow tweaks won't. In my opinion at least.

> When I see people with their sleek Macbook Airs on their laps, then I look at their screens, and I see stacks and stacks of scattered windows of all shapes and sizing clustered over the desktop

> All of this stuff was fine when computers were big slow things that sat on desks, running a handful of low-res apps at a time, driven by a mouse and keyboard

I think this is exactly the wrong way around. This behaviour was never fine on a desktop with a mouse — but it is the best we have to cut through multi-app tasks on an 11"/13" laptop. With Exposé and an Apple trackpad, I have never felt overwhelmed even on my 1024x768 iBook, no matter how many windows I had open (and boy was Exposé fluid in 2005!).

Every attempt at using a "cleaner" screen layout on a laptop screen has failed spectacularly for me. How is Windows 8 any different from any other tiled window manager here? I see all my windows at once, but in exchange they are smaller (too small).

Maybe I'm getting old, but I like the slower pace that Apple has taken. Unity Shell and Windows 8 both strike me as highly ambitious but poorly executed attempts to dramatically re-imagine the desktop. Apple's approach has been more measured, and I hope it stays that way.

Maybe I'm just pessimistic about the future of touch-enabled desktop computers. I owned a tablet PC back in the day, and it was truly terrible. I have a 22 inch Cintiq which is great for art, but makes me feel like my arm is going to fall off after 20 minutes of web browsing. Touch makes perfect sense on tablets and phones, but I think that's where it ends. Only time will tell who's right.

As for clunkiness, I recommend a combination of Alfred and Moom for OS X. With a few keystrokes I can launch a half dozen applications and have them perfectly tiled across multiple desktops. Far from being slow and clunky, I've never felt more efficient!

It's a usability study, nothing more.