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.
Re:Windows 8 for tablet hands on
by Tyrannosaurs on Wednesday September 14, 2011 @06:49AM
(#2995666)
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.
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.