Mobile Opportunity: Fear and Loathing and Windows 8

Mobile Opportunity: Fear and Loathing and Windows 8:

Windows 8 is also designed with tablet-like tasks in mind. Productivity and information creation tasks are compromised to make the OS more attractive for content consumption. Microsoft was very explicit about this in some of its online commentary (link):

"People, not files, are the center of activity. There has been a marked change in the kinds of activities people spend time doing on the PC. In balance to “traditional” PC activities such as writing and creating, people are increasingly reading and socializing, keeping up with people and their pictures and their thoughts, and communicating with them in short, frequent bursts. Life online is moving faster and faster, and people are progressively using their PCs to keep up with and participate in that. And much of this activity and excitement is happening inside the web browser, in experiences built using HTML and other web technologies."

Let me translate that for you: "We're optimizing Windows for using Facebook and YouTube at the expense of performing productivity tasks." Which is fine; it's a design choice Microsoft is free to make. But it's going to have an impact on the large base of people trying to get work done with a PC.