I agree. For most existing users, especially power users, this will probably be as insignificant on the desktop as Active Desktop and Active Channel were in Windows 98 or maybe desktop gadgets in Windows Vista. I mean, who even remembers that stuff?
For some users like my dad, the tiled interface with a touch screen should make it easier to use the computer. He doesn't use them enough to learn the whole stacks of windows metaphor and all the operations involved with it, but he can pick up an iPad and use it just fine.
The real significance I see here is that Windows mobile developers with just the skills of a web developer can now target desktop and tablet users fairly easily with the same exact code and a similar UI. If Microsoft releases their own App store for Windows 8, then that provides a unified platform for developers to sell the same product to every kind of Windows user from kids with smartphones to grandparents with a desktop PC.
And if the tiled interface takes off with the not so computer-literate, there'll be a great new demand for applications that fit into it's metaphors to prevent the jarring experience of being thrust back into a classic Windows-like environment, kind of like the demand for GUI applications after Windows supplanted MS-DOS.
For some users like my dad, the tiled interface with a touch screen should make it easier to use the computer. He doesn't use them enough to learn the whole stacks of windows metaphor and all the operations involved with it, but he can pick up an iPad and use it just fine.
The real significance I see here is that Windows mobile developers with just the skills of a web developer can now target desktop and tablet users fairly easily with the same exact code and a similar UI. If Microsoft releases their own App store for Windows 8, then that provides a unified platform for developers to sell the same product to every kind of Windows user from kids with smartphones to grandparents with a desktop PC.
And if the tiled interface takes off with the not so computer-literate, there'll be a great new demand for applications that fit into it's metaphors to prevent the jarring experience of being thrust back into a classic Windows-like environment, kind of like the demand for GUI applications after Windows supplanted MS-DOS.