Och under nästa år kommer om allt går som det ska Windows 8 lanseras, och det verkar ju inte vara fy skam.
Saxat från FROST's hemsida:
Windows 8 from a Musicians perspective.
Yesterday I attended a live stream of the Windows build conference and the premiere presentation of the next release of Windows - Windows 8
I didn’t know much about it before, It looked like Microsoft had put a skin on top of Windows 7 to make it look a bit better and user friendly, and it was supposed to boot really fast. Well those things aren’t exactly new when it comes to marketing new versions of Windows, so I didn’t have any expectations really. Well, after just 15 minutes into the presentation I was totally blown away, Microsoft has really done a stunning piece of work and i was smiling for the rest of the two hours that the show lasted.
So what’s the big news? Well the first thing that Microsoft promised several times was that “anything that runs on Windows 7 will run on Windows 8” This means that we can all safely continue to buy Windows 7 software and just keep on working, we don’t have to worry about the future. Also, developers of music software don’t have to start developing new versions of their software, but can just keep on going making the current ones better and smootly transfer them into the Windows 8 ecosystem.
Secondly, Windows 8 is fast, really really fast. They showed it on a two year old Atom CPU netbook computer, and compared it to the same one running Windows 7. The CPU usage was a lot less, and the memory usage was cut from 400MB down to half. This means that the computers we use today will perform even better on Windows 8. Normally it’s the other way around, so this is really good news.
But what amazed me the most is how Windows 8 supports completely different hardware. It support’s the ARM architecture (Used in phones and tablets with processors like Qualcomm, Nvidia etc) to high end supercomputers using the x86 architecture from Intel. And guess what, it looked and felt exactly the same on all these different kinds of hardware thanks to excellent programming work from Microsoft. That’s amazing work and really shows the companies strenght - supporting a diverse digital hardware society for different users and different needs.
All these different kinds of hardware kan be synced, controlled, shared, networked with just a single live account and a PIN - truly amazing. Windows 8 also has a new visual interface called metro which is optimzed for touch, but you can use a keyboard and mouse as well the old style. Anything you want, and it’s really easy to manage. Applications can work together and share information in a new way which Microsoft calls App Webs, and it looked really simple and intuitive as well.
So what will this mean to us musicians? Well we can just relax and go on as usual for now. For the future I think we might see really cool features in how we can use a digital studio in a completely new way. Hook up your studio controller, your tablet, maybe even your phone and just use everything together. Browse around programs and control surfaces with your fingertips, and just switch to the keyboard and mouse for more precise editing. It’s all built in, it’s all synced, it’s all supported.
I’m looking forward to Windows 8 with a smile on my face. This is the coolest operating system I’ve ever seen and can’t wait to use it and provide solutions running it to all you musicians out there.
Peter Benisch
Founder Frost
