Five reasons why the Windows desktop isn't going away1. Four million desktop apps need to run somewhere. Back in 2010, at the International CES in Las Vegas, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer noted that four million desktop programs run on Windows 7. All of those programs run on Windows 8, too. Backward compatibility is the lifeblood of Windows. The idea that those legacy apps will be orphaned in a single release is ludicrous.
2. Corporate customers and OEMs would mutiny. Corporate customers need to write custom apps that run on Windows. Those apps need to do things that aren’t possible in the highly constrained Windows 8 app model. And those corporate customers with their volume licenses pay billions of dollars in license fees to Microsoft every year for Windows. Say what you want about Steve Ballmer, but don’t try to tell me he’s going to willingly give up one of Microsoft’s most lucrative revenue streams. And if you think that, well, then you probably think Richard Stallman is next in line to be Chief Technical Officer of Microsoft.
3. Refactoring old-fashioned dialog boxes into a more touch-friendly interface is an evolutionary step. The whole point of Windows 8 is to enable touch as a primary user input mechanism, alongside the mouse and keyboard. That makes it possible for Microsoft’s PC-building OEM partners to build hybrid devices that can smoothly shift from conventional PC to tablet and back again. (I looked at three such devices just a few weeks ago.) In the first release of Windows 8, a limited selection of Control Panel functions were converted to the new modern/Metro UI. Did anyone not expect that the long-term goal was to move more and more of these functions to the modern UI? Yes, that means the old desktop Control Panel is being deprecated, and that Windows users will probably need to drop to the desktop less often in Blue. It doesn’t mean the desktop is vanishing.
4. Removing the desktop would be more trouble than it’s worth. Many hundreds of thousands of words have been written about the complexity of Windows. Windows developers have spent years making the OS simpler, and more modular, with some success. But ripping out the desktop completely is, if not impossible, at least highly unlikely. Maybe in a decade the need for the desktop will vanish. But that day won’t come this year or next.
5. Microsoft already has a “no desktop” option: Windows RT. When Windows 8 shipped last October, Windows RT shipped right alongside it. Microsoft is committed to both platforms. One has the ability to run Windows desktop apps; the other doesn’t. Does anyone really believe that Microsoft would dump the OS that sold 60 million copies in its first two months and put all its chips on the one that has sold perhaps a million or two copies in the same period? If so, I want to play poker with you.
