Here are my notes from the Steven Sinofsky keynote at BUILD.

Keynote started with a video of developers, designers etc. working on Windows 8 giving their favorite features in Win8.

  • ~450 million copies of Win7 sold (1500 non-security product changes seamlessly delivered)
  • Consumer usage higher than XP
  • 542 million Windows Live sign-ins every month

Lots of change in Windows

  • Form factors/UI models create new opportunities (touch)
    • "People who say touch is only for small or lightweight devices are wrong. As soon as you use touch on a tablet, you're going to want to touch on your desktop & laptop."
  • Mobility creates new usage models – e.g. use while reclining on a couch
  • Apps can't be silos - "customers want a web of applications"
    • Apps to interact easily
    • Services are intrinsic

What is Win8?

  • Makes Windows 7 even better - everything that runs on Win7 will run on Win8
  • Reimagines Windows from the chipset (ARM work) through the UI experience
    • All demos shown today are equally at home on ARM and x86

Performance / Fundamentals

Kernel Memory Usage

Win 7 RTM 540 MB 34 processes
Win 7 SP 1 404 MB 32 processes
Win 8 Dev Preview 281 MB 29 processes

Demos

User Experience (Julie)

  1. Fast and fluid - everything's animated
  2. Apps are immersive and full screen
  3. Touch first - keyboard/mouse are first-class citizens ("you're going to want all three")
  4. Web of apps that work together - "when you get additional apps, the system just gets richer and richer"
  5. Experience this across devices and architectures
  6. Notes from Julie's demo
  • Picture password - poke at different places on an image (3 strokes) to login
  • Tiles on the home screen - each is an app - easily rearranged. Pinch to zoom in/out
  • On screen keyboard pops up
  • Swipe from right side to bring up Start screen - swipe up from bottom to get app menus ("app bar") - relevant system settings (e.g. sound volume/mute) also appear
  • Select text in a browser - drag from right side to see "charms" - these are exposed by apps. One is "Share" - shows all apps that support the "Share contract".
    • Think of sharing as a very semantically rich clipboard.
    • Target app can implement its own panel for information (e.g. login, tags, etc.) for sharing when it's the target.
  • Search
    • Can search applications, files - apps can also expose a search contract to make it easy for search to find app-specific data.
  • Inserting a picture
    • Shows pix on computer
    • Social networking sites can add content right into picture file picker
  • Showed settings syncing from one machine to another machine she is logged in on that is an ARM machine.

Metro-style Platform/Tools (Antoine)

  • Current platform a mixed bag - silo of HTML/Javascript on top of IE, C#/VB on top of .NET & Silverlight, and
  • Metro apps can be built in any language
  • Reimagined the Windows APIs - "Windows Runtime" (Windows RT).
    • 1800 objects natively built into Windows - not a layer.
    • Reflect those in C#/VB.Net/C++/C/JavaScript
    • Build your UI in XAML or HTML/CSS
  • Launch Visual Studio 11 Express - new app to build Metro apps.
    • Pick the language you want - pick the app template you want.
  • Enable millions of web developers to build these apps for Windows.
  • Code you write can run either locally or in a browser from a web server - just JavaScript and HTML 5.
  • New format - App Package - that encapsulates
  • Use mouse or touch seamlessly - no special code.
  • Modify button to bring up file picker dialog…
    • Also allows connecting to Facebook if the app that connects FB photos to the local pictures is there - every app now gets access to FB photos.
  • Adding support for the "Share" contract is 4 lines of JS
  • Use Expression Blend to edit not just XAML but HTML/CSS.
    • Add an App Bar - just a <div> on the HTML page.
    • Drag button into there to get Metro style where commands are in the app bar
  • Uses new HTML 5 CSS layout as Grid. Allows for rotation, scaling, etc. Center canvass within the grid.
  • Expression lets you look at snapped view, docked view, portrait, landscape.
  • 58 lines of code total
  • Post app to the Windows Store
    • In VS Store / Upload Package…
    • Licensing model built into app package format. Allows trials.
    • Submit to Certification
      • Part of the promise of the store to Windows users is the apps are safe and high quality.
      • Processes can be a bit bureaucratic.
      • Does compliance, security testing, content compliance.
      • Will give Developers all the technical compliance tools to run themselves.
    • The Store is a Windows app. Built using HTML/JavaScript
  • Win32 Apps
    • Not going to require people to rewrite those to be in the store.
    • Don't have to use Win8 licensing model.
    • Give the Win32 apps a free listing service.
  • XAML / Silverlight
    • Using ScottGu sample SilverLight 2 app.
    • Not a Metro app - input stack doesn't give touch access.
    • How to make it a Metro app?
      • Runtime environments between SL and Win8 are different.
      • Had to change some using statements, networkin layer.
      • Reused all the XAML and data binding code - it just came across.
      • Declare it supports "Search" and add a couple of lines of code.
    • Also can use same code on the Windows Phone.
    • "All of your knowledge around Silverlight, XAML just carries across."
  • If you write your app in HTML5/CSS/XAML, it will run on x86/x64/ARM. If you want to write native code, we'll help make it cross-compile to these platforms.
  • IE 10 is the same rendering engine as for the Metro apps.
  • Can roam all settings across your Win8 machines - including you app settings if you want.

Hardware Platform (MikeAng)

  • 8 second boot time - win7 pc.
  • UEFI
  • New power state called "Connected Standby"
    • Windows coalesces all the timer and network requests, turns the radio on periodically to satisfy them, then goes back to very low power consumption.
    • But because app requests are getting satisfied they are up to date as soon as you press "ON"
  • USB 3 ~4x faster at copying a 1 GB file than USB 2
  • Can boot Win8 from up to 256 TB drive.
  • Direct Compute API - can offload compute loads to GPU
  • Every Metro app has hardware acceleration UI baked in.
  • Doing work with OEMs on testing sensitivity of touch hardware
    • Windows reserves only one pixel on each side for the Windows UI, so sensitivity important.
  • Down to 1024 x 768 for Metro apps. If 1366 x 768, get full Windows UI (side-by-side snap in). Any form factor - about resolution.
  • Have a sensor fusion API - accelerameter, touch.
  • NFC - near field communication - business card can have a little antenna built in to send data to Win8.
  • Integrating device settings (web cam, HP printer, etc.) into Metro UI rather than as a third-party app.
  • Ultra Books
    • Full core powered processor in a super-thin and light package.
    • Some are thinner than legacy connectors - RJ45 and VGA - they are bumps.
    • These things are mostly battery.
  • Samsung PC giveaway - to all BUILD attendees
    • 64 GB SSD
    • 4 GB RAM (Steven: "so you can run Visual Studio")
    • AT&T 3G included for one year (2GB/mo)
    • Windows tablet + development platform.
    • 2nd generation core i5
    • 1366x768 display from Samsung - amazing
  • Refresh your PC without affecting your files
    • Files and personalization don't change.
    • PC settings are restored to default
    • All Metro apps are kept - others are removed.
    • Command-line tool to establish base image for this for pros.
  • Hyper-V in the Windows 8 client
  • ISOs get mounted as DVD drives.
  • Multi Mon -
    • Screen background extends
    • Task bar customizes to multi-mon - can have identical across two mons or have per-monitor task bar (show only apps running on that monitor)
    • Ctrl/PgDn to switch Metro start screen between the two monitors - develop on one, test on another.
  • Keyboard works the same - type "cmd" from Metro Start screen and are in search for CMD.

Cloud Services (ChrisJo)

  • Windows Live mail Metro client connects both Exchange and Hotmail.
    • Full power delivered by ActiveSync.
  • Windows Live Metro calendar app.
  • Bring together all the Friends through Linked In, Facebook, Windows Live.
  • Photos
    • Connected to Facebook, Flickr, local photos.
    • Written as a Metro app.
  • SkyDrive - 100 million people.
    • Every Win8 user, every Win Phone has a SkyDrive.
    • Also accessible to developers - access the same way as you would use local store.

Wrap

  • Used college interns to develop sample apps included in dev preview build.
  • 17 teams (2-3 devs per team).
  • 10 weeks.

Developer Preview (not Beta).

Learn more:

MSFT will let everyone download the Developer preview starting tonight.

http://dev.windows.com

  • X86 (32- and 64-bit)
  • With Tools + Apps or just Apps
  • No activation, self-support.