First off let me say that I love Microsoft products. I am a Microsoft advocate. I have been selling or supporting Windows products my entire career. The point here is I want to continue doing so long into the future.
OK, with that said, I want to outline some thoughts I have been repeating (a lot) lately for those who care. I am passionate about the tablet space because it offers so much more. Tablets are more intimate, available and portable. They will most likely impact PC sales in a big way over the next 5 years. So, I have a keen eye on what I think it would take to make Windows a success on the platform.
They often say a picture is worth 1000 words. This one is no exception. There is a lot behind this statement: Windows 7 will not work as a tablet OS.
Let's start with why I am sitting here typing you this post on my Android device instead of Windows. That unfortunately can be summed up in one word. Security.
My laptop is updating a day zero attack most likely that would render my laptop to a brick if some hacker wanted to exploit it. So what Windows is doing is essential, albeit a disaster for a mobile OS intended to compete with the "instant on" devices like Android or iOS. Yes, Windows could trickle in those changes and apply them in the background without rebooting, but the fact of the matter it does not.
Which leads me to the next point, which is one of the reasons why Windows cannot trickle the downloads and patch them silently which is battery life. If Windows could be in sleep all the time, then the OS could wake and perform critical update tasks (in a redesigned way, see later in this email) on-the-fly. However, since the horsepower necessary run Windows at a level that is an acceptable customer experience sucks battery power like a fire hose does water the viability of a background update solution I am describing is limited.
The sad irony about this is even iOS of the future will not be able to compete with the current Nerdvana, and here is why. Sooner or later as the iPad becomes popular, it will also become the target of attack. Apple will be forced to "patch" the OS. So the seamless, uninterrupted experience we have today is an Eden that we will all be banished from by hackers in the not-so-distant future.
With all of this said in a way Microsoft is way ahead of Apple in this race. They already have the mechanisms in place to patch the OS daily. The problem is that they need to find a way to do it without interruption of service. That probably means a re architecture of the OS to eliminate reboots to kernel or driver updates. Currently file in use issues cause reboots all too often. Windows needs to find a way to perform a state save (which probably means standardizing how applications save and invalidate data in memory) and shutdown of just the services associated with file locks when the machine is idle to allow for file replacement without having to completely power down the workstation. This is a lot of work and will take time, but if Microsoft solves this problem, they will be ahead of the competition.
The reason I have been talking about this a lot is because we develop Windows applications. As a result we have been evaluating business cases for developing applications on top of Windows for tablets. And yesterday I read an article (see the link for this post) that eludes to Microsoft building on the Windows 7 cornerstone to create a tablet UI to compete in the tablet space. This article makes me shake my head because as you can see I don't believe the cornerstone is not the right size for this building. People will use PC's if they want to use Windows. Tablets are a different story that already has a better story teller. Microsoft needs to focus on reading "See Jane Run" (i.e. address the issues raised above) before they develop another layer on top of Windows 7 for tablets.