Matt Homan has an early review of today’s Windows 8 Consumer Preview. He loves it.
There are several touches in the new Metro UI garnered from Apple’s OS X Lion and iOS. Full screen apps, multi-touch gestures and and icon-driven launch screen are just a few. Microsoft has implemented them in their own way, though, and that invokes a tension between the new Windows OS on the one hand, and OS X and iOS on the other.
Consumers will have a tough choice of flavor in their gesture- and icon-based OS. Meanwhile, we’re back to the good ol’ days of Microsoft vs. Apple, only in a good way this time because they’re both strong, consumer-focused companies.
The new mobile computing era is shaping up quite nicely.