After Steve Ballmer, Julie Larson-Green took the stage. And I know that it might not be politically correct to say it, but I love that it is a woman stepping on stage doing it. It is good for the industry, and everyone agrees with that, but pointing it out is apparently a problem to some. And the fact that she does it with a confidence that just outshines most of the people doing the TechEd keynotes is just awesome.
Unfortunately, I think she was dealt a somewhat bad hand. The stuff that she was showing off was cool, but very far from game changers unfortunately…
Her presentation started off with talking about form factors. Kind of where Ballmer had already been. She highlighted how Windows 7 had spawned the creation of the ultrabook, and how Windows 8 now had spawned a whole new set of tablet, and convertibles and so on. And she is right. It is kind of cool that those 2 Windows version kind of changed the way the hardware manufacturers built things. At least it seem like it. Windows 7 might just have coincided with the Mac Book Air getting a lot of attention, and those changing the hardware peoples outlook on things…who knows…?
She then highlights that there have been more than 800 updates since the release of Windows 8 last November. 800 updates ranging from performance and efficiency “tweaks” to design refinements. Design refinements that has for example resulted in a new way to use the onscreen keyboard. As of Windows 8.1, you can select the word suggestion you like by swiping sideways on the spacebar key, and then tapping it. So while typing you get word suggestions on screen, hanging under the current word. Swiping on your keyboard will changed the selected word, and tapping it will select it.
I think that as soon as you get used to it, this will be a great way to work with the keyboard. It should enable much faster typing. However, to be honest, I rarely even use the word suggestions. So I am not sure how much it will help me out. But it is a cool idea…just as Dvorak keyboards…
The other feature being added to the on screen keyboard is the ability to swipe on keys, giving you other characters and numbers. And tap and hold will display the options for you. This is also something that is an awesome theory. Removing the need to switch keyboard to write numbers instead of characters. But I guess it will require some training to get it to work. But considering how kids are using their phones today, I’m pretty sure you will see some ridiculously faster typing being done on tablets in the future…
Ok…what else…?
The Email app will get an update, but it isn’t included in the preview release. The updates are regarding getting more efficient mail handling. Being able to “sweep” mails for example, which basically a bit lite Outlook rules on steroids look pretty sweet. And the ability to flag e-mails. And some other things. But in the big picture, I’m not sure an updated Email application is Keynote worthy.
And on top of that, being able to move e-mails to folders using drag-and-drop, still seems to be missing. And that is one of those features I would LOVE, as it would make it much easier for me to triage my e-mail on the couch, while watching TV. The current App-bar way is just too cumbersome…
The OSs search feature has been reworked to include the power of Bing. And it looks very good. I wish I could see more of that part right now. It seems as searches being made end up in a custom built page with the information displayed in a beautiful way. It’s not just lists of search results anymore… And if you search results contain music information like bands and the likes, you can just share it with the music app, and Xbox music will build a playlist for you.
The last part once again looks cool on stage, but how many people are actually going to use it? Having that said, it might be cool enough for a keynote, but only as a side note while showing something else. And that was how it was shown, but given a little bit too much time.
Next she told us that all devices will be touch in the future, which I do believe is pretty accurate. Maybe not ALL, but most at least. And also that all-in ones are going to be common through peoples houses, which once again I do believe, as soon as they come down in price a little…
What else…? Hmmm…
Yeah, the lock screen is getting reworked in a few ways. You can for example have it show a slideshow of your images, which I think is brilliant. It makes that large all-in-one machine become a large digital photo frame when not in use.
What I don’t like on the other hand is the new ability to answer incoming Skype calls, and take picture, without having to unlock the device. I know it makes sense, especially the Skype part, but still….I don’t want people to be able to answer my calls, or take pictures, if I leave my computer. If I lock it, and leave it, I want it to be unusable. And I assume the feature can be turned off… And if that is the case, then kudos for adding it. It works fine when integrating the all-in-on into your household.
With that lock screen update, you also get custom image backgrounds on your start screen, and even animated ones. Useful? No. Gimmicky? Yes. Making device personal? Yes. Bit news? No…
She also showed off the updated start screen functionality where you can swipe from the bottom to get a searchable, and filterable view of all your apps in one go. Kind of the view you get when you start typing an application name on the current start screen. And yeah…the background can react to movements, giving you for example a parallax like view similar to the iOS 7 one…
Then there was some talk about some updates to the SkyDrive integration, and some new simple photo editing capabilities in the image app. But what caught my eye during that demo was actually some new touch based controls that enables you to select values using a control that resembled a volume knob on a stereo… (sucky way of describing it, but best I come up with…)
Windows 8.1 also comes with a cool feature that is demoed in the new Bing Food and Drinks app. And that is hands free paging. By using the camera, the system can detect swipes with your hand, and by using that, you can page through a recipe for example, without messing up the screen. Yet another cool, and good feature, but still a bit gimmicky. And it seems like some people are having problems to get it to work properly. But it is just a preview…
And then…out of nowhere, came the first mention of Xbox One. It was only there for a brief moment, showing how easy it is to stream video to other devices, like the Xbox One. And that is definitely one of the reasons I am getting the Xbox when it is released…
Then she gave desktop apps some love by saying "We love the desktop. We are proud of the desktop", which feels good to us .NET people… Then there was the dreaded start button demo. And by dreaded, I mean dreaded by me. I want it out of there…now… But having that said, the new way that it overlays the tiles on your desktop looks pretty nice… But still…. pressing the Windows key does pretty much the same thing… So having the Windows key show the start screen like this when in desktop mode, and the old way in Windows 8 mode would have sufficed for me…leaving me more room on my taskbar.
I also thought I saw some new tile sizes, but that wasn’t mentioned…
Then she went on with the second to last new feature she talked about, which was being able to use multiple apps, side-by-side, on multiple menus. A feature that will be VERY useful I believe. And really had to be added at some point.
And last but lot least, she showed off a preview of the alpha of PowerPoint for WinRT, which looked good. It was only a viewer, but I think that is ok, at least for now. It included some new transitions, and I believe it was a bit less resource intensive, but other than that, it was just a PowerPoint viewer. But being a preview of an alpha, it is still VERY early on. I’m even curious of why it was shown at all, as I assume it will take some time before being released. But I guess it is important to show people that there is an RT version of Office on the way…
Oh…yeah…being that it is a Store App, it also means automatic updates through the store and so on, which is great.
So all in all, there were quite a few things that Julie Larson-Green showed off. Unfortunately, I found most of hem to be a bit too “gimmicky”, and let me down after Ballmer’s large vision, which brings me back to why I said she was dealt a bad hand. I think she should have had a few more heavy features to show off.
It all makes me come back to the question regarding whether a tight release cycles is a great thing. It rapid releases only mean little new stuff, then Build will lose its “magic” a bit. I’m not saying that it is bad, but it is hard to drum up any large hype around some new apps and changes to the on screen keyboard… Luckily there are some cool stuff in the 8.1 release as well, but once again I think the stuff shown by Larson-Green was a bit of a let down after Ballmer.
Ok, that was it for that part of the keynote! I guess splitting the keynote in to multiple posts might be overdoing it, but I just felt there was too much to cover in one post… On the other hand, I need to find time to do the rest of the keynote… Maybe on the plane home from Madrid…
Cheers!