Windows 8 tablets: How Microsoft can win this time

[Now that Microsoft has revealed Many details of Wndows 8, see my take on whether it has addressed the issues raised in this blog post in my follow-up analysis.]

Today, Microsoft plans to reveal how it will bring Windows into the world of tablets that today is so thoroughly dominated by Apple’s iPad, despite a strong challenge from Google’s Android and weak challenges from Hewlett-Packard’s now-dead TouchPad and Research in Motion’s PlayBook. Microsoft has flailed in the mobile arena for years now, with its Windows Mobile platform of a decade ago going nowhere after its promising debut, then with its successor Windows Phone 7 lacking many basic capabilities in its first incarnation.

A new Windows Phone 7 version (aka “Mango”) that may fix these smartphone gaps is due any day now, but Microsoft has been clear that tablets won’t run the Windows Phone OS. Instead, they’ll run Windows 8, the code name for the forthcoming new verson of Windows that will maybe — just maybe — break past the legacy shackles that have sunk a succession of Windows XP, Vista, and 7 tablets, presenting Apple’s iPad with its first competitor backed by a big ecosystem.

Microsoft’s strategy could really give Apple a run for its money, if Microsoft’s bite this time is as big as its bark.

Apple’s strategy is to have a common OS and, thus, app and services library across its iPhone smartphone, iPod Touch PDA, and iPad tablet; the iCloud service will further unify them. Plus, Apple is drawing Mac OS X and iOS much closer together, with developers using the same Xcode tools and many common libraries to develop apps, and with Apple integrating common capabilities across the two OSes, as the recent Mac OS X Lion and forthcoming iCloud both demonstrate.

In a sense, Microsoft has suggested it will follow a similar strategy, except that where Apple has all mobile devices using the same OS (iOS) and PCs a separate one (Mac OS X), Microsoft has PCs and tablets running a common OS (Windows 8), and smartphones will have their own (Windows Phone). As Xcode is a common demoninator for iOS and Mac OS developers, Visual Studio is a common denominator for Windows 8 and Windows Phone developers.

I believe Apple broke iOS out of Mac OS X so that its mobile devices would not be perceived as portable Macs — a strategy that proved brilliant as iOS devices have gained much more market share than Macs ever did, and indeed seem to be pulling Macs out of their decades-long ghettos. For Microsoft, Windows’ near-universal presence is a strength to be leveraged, so it makes sense to reinvent Windows as something that can extend to tablets, making it a no-brainer for Windows users to get a “compatible” tablet. (I would do the same for smartphones, but Microsoft apparently believes that smartphones are for entertainment and tablets for computing, so it wants a heavier OS for tablets, one more akin to a PC OS.)

The key here is “compatible.” Microsoft’s many previous attempts to gain a presence in the tablet market — it’s been trying for a decade longer than the iPad has existed — have failed because its Windows OSes weren’t designed for the context. Slapping a pen- or touch-based interface onto an OS designed fundamentally for mouse and keyboard input didn’t work. Apps, common libraries, and OS services all assumed those input devices, and what they presented users onscreen was simply unsuited for pen or gesture control. A few industries created special tablet apps that were pen-oriented, but in essence that reduced Windows tablets to dedicated app devices, keeping it out of broad-based usage. By contrast, Apple designed iOS for gesture-based input, and people took to it easily — and developers had to think in a gesture mind-set to even be able to deliver apps.

From the hints that Microsoft has dropped, it appears that Windows 8 is designed for gesture-based input, that its UI is not the standard Windows interface with some touch technology slapped on. In fact, Microsoft’s limited showing of the Win8 UI thus far indicate it’s based on the compelling Windows Phone 7 UI. If this is all true, and the touch UI is not just skin-deep, Microsoft may have finally removed one of the key barriers to successful Windows tablets.

But it risks breaking the experience on the desktop, where the vast majority of people still compute. (Although I believe we are moving into a post-PC world in which mobile devices will become dominant, that won’t happen overnight, and there will still be a place for old-style PCs as specialty workstations.) Microsoft’s pitiful touch-based version of Windows 7 showed how touchscreen PCs make no sense — the screen is in the wrong place, for starters.

Microsoft has hinted that users will be able to use the legacy (Windows 7) UI on the desktop if they choose, which could either allay these context issues or create a confusion as some apps use the old UI and new apps use the Win8 UI. Microsoft has to figure out how to have a common UI on each device at least. It’s fine if the UI differs between tablets and PCs, as they are used differently and thus should have variations. Apple has shown that beautifully in iOS and Mac OS X, which share UI approaches but remain distinct where it makes sense. Microsoft has to reach similarly smart decisions.

The other key piece is knowing when not to be compatible. An iPad can’t run Mac OS X apps, and Apple seems to have no plans to make that happen. That has let iPad apps be focused on the iPad’s capabilities, not be poor ports — the kind often seen in Web apps designed for universal deployment across PCs and mobile devices. It appears that Microsoft has reached the same conclusion as Apple: Tablets won’t run legacy Windows applications, so new applications are more likely to be designed afresh to be good tablet apps.

However, as it appears that Windows 8-based desktops will also be able to run these new apps, developers face a challenge that iOS developers do not: having the same app work across the two very different contexts of tablets and PCs. That could lead to poorly chosen compromises or apps that fit poorly on one platform or the other. Microsoft will need to provide the tools — and perhaps some incentives or penalties — for developers who choose unwisely.

If you remember the days when PCs were moving from DOS to Windows, you’ll recall the many apps whose Windows versions were just prettier than those on DOS — and these apps failed miserably, as anyone who used to use Lotus 1-2-3 or WordPerfect can tell you. (It’s no accident that Excel was a Mac application first or that Windows Word shared almost nothing with DOS Word other than file format.) Microsoft’s apparent strategy creates that risk for today’s developers. But it introduces a risk for Microsoft: A substantial set of poor Windows 8 apps could make the whole Windows 8 platform look bad, leaving the momentum with the iPad for tablet apps and, ironically, with legacy Windows apps for the desktop.

Similarly, Windows 8 will need to deal with the sensor-heavy capabilities of tablets — accelerometers, gyroscopes, location detectors, orientation detectors, cameras, light sensors, and microphones — so apps can exploit them but not be crippled when run on a PC. Apple’s separation of the desktop OS from the mobile OS naturally avoids this issue, whereas Microsoft’s use of one OS across PCs and tablets introduces this new risk, posing a challenge that desktop developers are not familiar with.

Then there’s a market issue: Businesses have only recently begun deploying Windows 7 in significant numbers. So it’ll be years before they’re ready to go through all that again to deploy Windows 8 — and if it’s really different, it’ll make cautious IT organizations even more cautious. Maybe Windows 8 on tablets will be attractive enough — especially to the many in IT who dislike Apple and wish there was something else users wanted than iPads — to get meaningful adoption and pull Windows 8 desktops along with it.

Or maybe developers will focus on consumer apps for Windows 8 tablets, making them less attractive to IT — and giving the iPad that much more time to solidify its existing business hold. Like it or not, the iPad is now considered as much as business tool as a consumer one, whereas Microsoft’s mobile efforts (the Kin, then Windows Phone) have been decidedly consumer-focused, with critical business security and management capabilities missing.

Microsoft’s different OS boundaries than Apple’s across PCs, tablets, and smartphones could give it a great advantage, but also be its Achilles’ heel.

This article, “Windows 8 tablets: How Microsoft can win this time,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more of Galen Gruman’s Mobile Edge blog and follow the latest developments in mobile technology at InfoWorld.com. Follow Galen’s mobile musings on Twitter at MobileGalen. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.