It's hard to relate to the excitement when the demo was chock-full of usability failure. How many times did the presenters struggle to register their gestures?

Someone will no doubt say "it's a developer release – we'll fix all that". My response to that is "Apple would never let that see the outside of a top-secret lab".

Also, am I the only person who thinks this is the polar opposite of "post-PC"? Desktop, start menu, right-click, etc. Maybe "touch PC" is more apt?

Apple also locks down the iPad to allow me to only do with it what they bless as appropriate.

The Apple model is just different. It's not "the right way" it's just "the apple way." High emphasis on developing in secret and only showing a locked-down finished product.

The fact they are releasing an OS a year before it hits shelves allows millions of developers to get a crack at building new apps.

Apple has also been shipping iPads for the past 17 months.

How interested are developers going to be in developing apps for a "maybe" platform when they can be developing for an installed base of 50-odd million iPads right now? What if this is a TouchPad? It doesn't seem like a good bet on the tablet side given the history.

Windows is a "maybe" platform? cmon...

One of the most attractive aspects of this to me is that I would not be developing just for a single device tablet OS. The applications will run across both tablets and desktops, and even a Microsoft "failed" Windows release is sure to see a massive uptake, especially as it will be the default OS on the vast majority of new computers.

As a tablet it's a maybe platform.

It's not as if Microsoft haven't tried to do this before and failed and they're taking a pretty different approach to what's working in the market at the moment.

It's possible that Win 8 can be a success on the desktop / laptop but fail as a tablet OS.

On the flipside, you're more likely to be developing for a lot of different versions of that OS, and – over time – you'll be developing for the lowest common denominator among them.

The presenter struggles because on the one hand he has a camera and the other he uses to swipe/touch.

I'm not suggesting the beta/dev preview version is without bugs, I believe you're reading too much into this.

I'd argue that's "presentation" failure. This is something that can be practiced so as to keep the focus on the product and not on the sloppiness due to lack of preparedness.

I'd argue that you can hand an iPad to your grandmother with severe arthritis or your toddler for the first time and they wouldn't have nearly as much trouble as the presenter in the video.

Why would you give your grandmother a prototype tablet that will never see a production release?

Why would you demo a prototype?

Gee, I don't know...maybe to give the millions of people who are interested in it an idea of what it might be like.

You've got to wonder why Engadget can't invest in a tripod.

I might be confusing this video with the one on This Is My Next. I watched them both today.

I just watched it, and more than anything, it seemed like it was slow. It seemed like he would swipe and nothing would happen, so he would swipe again, but it was actually just that the tablet was still processing stuff, so then it would eventually process both gestures. I think it would be quite normal for a developer release to be slow.

As far as your point about whether Apple would allow people to see this, well, that's just the Microsoft vs Apple marketing philosophy. Apple typically presents things that are very highly polished and nearly complete, whereas Microsoft says "Hey, check out this thing we're working on." All else being equal (I'm not saying it is, but if it were), they both seem like viable strategies.

Ditto. Hats off to Sinofsky for having the balls to push this through. Looks like an amazing release. I think he'll take over from Ballmer if Windows 8 is a success.

This makes me really excited about the future of the 'desktop' ( => tablet). Microsoft has really nailed it in terms of user experience and performance. This is a good example of out innovating the competition and no other company is better suited to execute on this than Microsoft.

How do you know they nailed it in terms of performance? It's running on a Core i5, on which even Vista or Windows 7 runs well. We don't know how well it will run on Atom or ARM yet, which will be the "tablet optimized" chips, with higher battery life. The Core i5 will give 2 hours of battery life, especially in such a small package compared to a notebook.

They did show an ARM tablet as well. Besides by the time it is released, processors would have gotten even better.

Just see the keynote again. It actually uses less resources even today as compared to Windows 7 SP1.

What kind of battery life does Windows 7 SP1 get on tablets?

The $550 Acer Iconia W500 tablet (which comes with an attachable keyboard base) got 4:06 on a Cnet video playback battery drain test.

http://reviews.cnet.com/tablets/acer-iconia-tab-w500p/4505-3...

Acer isn't exactly known for brilliant power engineering, so a better vendor could likely do better. But this also wasn't exactly a high-powered chip, either. So this is probably a plausible baseline for battery usage in Win 7.

They need to beat this by quite a bit in Win 8, or the tablets will be a tough sell.

Given that the iPad 2 gets 11 hours + in similar tests I don't think that's a tough sell, I think it's an impossible sell.

Don't know. A quick search brought up this page where the tablet gets a 7 for battery life. So I am guessing its ok.

http://reviews.cnet.com/tablets/acer-iconia-tab-w500p/4505-3...

I did not really understand what was meant by this. What is it about Windows 8 that is going to provide a better user experience? It certainly looks a bit different from other offerings, but I cannot discern what it is that people think is better.

Here's what I am excited about as a developer. Access to live service such as skydrive etc. Ability to release the same app on windows phone with minimal changes. =Touch enabled apps in a marketplace where Microsoft does not take a cut as opposed to the 30% cut that Apple takes. What's not to be excited about?

Why would a user care about these things?

Here's why: No cut to microsoft so cheaper prices of apps Familiar apps on both my phone and on my tablet/PC. No learning curve and settings/progress/data is shared Live services integration means my app roams with me to another PC when I buy one.

I am not sure we will see lower prices. Firstly, prices in Apple's store already are, let's say, 'affordable' for most apps.

Secondly, I think many apps are priced to what the market will bear, not to recoup costs plus some profit.

Thirdly, running that store will cost MS money. They are not a charity, so I guess they will try and recover the costs in some way. What that way is, I do not know, but I would guess it would be in adverts, non-free options with better exposure and/or in the cost of Windows.

"With ... OS X Lion, Apple gave us a glimpse at what a post-PC operating system might look like"

Cheat Sheet for People Who Type Stuff for Engadget And Want To Be Good at Other Things Too:

iOS = post PC

Lion = first step in bridging PC and post-PC

Windows 8 = [strikethrough] your grandpa trying to rap [/strikethrough] second step to bridging PC and post-PC