Applied Sciences Group: Interactive Displays: Behind the Screen Overlay Interactions. Microsoft bets on Windows 8 to succeed where Android has failed. The battle for number two is about to get serious. A quick look through the halls of Mobile World Congress reveals an endless number of iPads, quite a few Android tablets, and almost no touchscreen Windows PCs. But Microsoft is here in Barcelona promising that balance will change dramatically by next year — the company just released Windows 8 Consumer Preview, a beta version of a radically new version of Windows built with tablets specifically in mind.
And while Windows 8 has a long way to go before it can challenge the iPad, it feels almost inevitable that Microsoft will quickly succeed where Android tablets have thus far failed — especially because Microsoft is aggressively courting developers to write apps for its new Metro interface. Google isn't sitting still, of course: Android head Andy Rubin promised this week that Google would "double down" in the tablet space this year and "make sure we're winning. " "We have the best app economics out there. " Windows Phone at Mobile World Congress 2012. Since CES we’ve been showing people how Windows Phone is simply faster at the everyday stuff that real people do on their smartphones.
And we’re doing it again here at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Rather than doing the same old trade show booth, we are taking on the competition on the show floor with our €100 challenge: #SmokedByWindowsPhone. In the US so far, we’ve won the vast majority of these challenges against all the “top” smartphones, like the iPhone 4S, Samsung Galaxy Nexus, DROID Bionic, Motorola Razr, and more. Mobile World Congress is the world’s biggest smartphone conference, so we consider this to be the “pro challenge” and expect the experts to take us on. One of the things we know people want to do on their phone is Skype. Today we’re sharing a beta of the much-anticipated Skype app for Windows Phone, bringing communication with Skype’s 200 million users to our platform (access the beta here). Not all platforms can make this claim about lower-cost models. Everything You Need to Know About Windows 8 in 8 Minutes. First Look at What's New in Windows 8. Things I like: -Speed: it's pretty darn fast (my desktop boots up and opens chrome in 37 seconds) -Metro theme: aside from some interface issues I have, it looks damn pretty -Price: $40 is so much better than the $200-something they used to charge for pro -Antivirus: since Security Essentials came out I've been enjoying it, it's pretty good -Task Manager: fucking awesome, thank you -Reformat/refresh feature Things I'm not fond of: -In search, I want settings and applications to be all together.
-App Store: I might grow to like it later, but right now it is just filled with apps that were pushed out way too soon and are basically useless. -Metro apps seem to have way fewer options, and I like lots of options. -I pretty much never want my apps to be full screen (aside from games) -I don't use Skydrive, so I hope they implement Dropbox or GDrive the same way.