The tail is trying to wag the dog.

And this isn't even a political post, it's more of a religious one.

Jerry Pournelle, over at Chaos Manor, isn't all that impressed with Windows 8: "Windows 8 is designed to take advantage of hardware you don't have yet. With what we have now, Windows 7 will do very well."  Spot on.

In general, operating systems have tended to play catch-up with hardware.  I realize that most of us who own obsolete computers believe it's the other way round.  But it's not; it's a question really of how much money you want to throw at your computer.  When I built my first XP computer, it was screamingly fast.  And all it had was a single-core AMD processor with 4GB RAM.  Naturally, as time went by (and I used that computer for five years as my main workstation), it slowed down, both in truth -- because of all the cruft Microsoft loads into your machine when you apply Windows updates -- and in perception, because I was using faster hardware at work.  Even in 2005 I could have bought a faster processor and more RAM, and if I had I might still be using that machine.

But when I started with it, XP ran very nicely and very fast on that box.  OS was catching up to hardware.

In the case of Windows 8, it's clear that Microsoft is trying to push the computing world toward new ways of controlling hardware.  But as Pournelle points out, the hardware isn't there yet.  I don't have touch screens on my desk and frankly I doubt that I ever will (but then, back in the DOS days, I never thought I'd have any use for a mouse, either).  The fact is that for what I do, a touch interface is probably not particularly efficient.  I type a lot of words every day and I'm not going to do that with a touch interface.  (Maybe with a voice interface, someday, if they ever get to where they work seamlessly with my software.  Maybe I should try Dragon.  Everybody I talk to who uses it thinks it's pretty good.)

Anyway, on one level I applaud Microsoft for trying to push the envelope.  Unfortunately I suspect their attempt is going to receive a lukewarm reception from the sectors where they need it to sell the most, e.g., business.  As I said when I first tested the MSDN developer's "first look" of Windows 8, they needed to offer a way to drop back to the Windows 7 shell for people who weren't going to invest right away in touch technology.  Since they've outright refused to do that, I think they will reap the whirlwind of non-adoption, and Windows 7 is going to be the next Windows XP, with Windows 8 playing the role of Vista.