Displaying items by tag: Internet Explorer 10

It looks like we might have done our Windows 8 coverage the wrong way around as we are now seeing a host of articles that are showing off the new look of the desktop, the Metro UI News, Sports and Weather apps and more. This is very odd as we have been talking about much this since the Build Conference. Still it is very possible that some of these sites are now listing these items in a new PR push for Microsoft. After all the most recent one we saw on the new Desktop Look had a direct quote from them on Aero and the “vista” look.

When Microsoft first announced that only Microsoft based products would have access to the “desktop” mode in Windows on ARM (Windows RT) we began to wonder just how long it would take for Mozilla, Google, Opera and others to chime in about how wrong this is. We now have heard from Mozilla who seems to feel that this lock out from the desktop is nothing more than Microsoft being unfair to the competition and, according to Mozilla, is in violate of the promises Microsoft made to both the EU and the US DoJ.

Windows 8 will be released for both x86 and ARM tablets in Q4 of this year (2012). We have talked about what that means to both Apple and Google and managed to ruffle more than a few feathers in the process. Today we read an interesting story that shows the New iPad is scoring the same as the iPad 2 when it comes to Futuremark’s Peacekeeper benchmark. This test is meant to test different browsers and their ability to perform different tasks. According to the results page the New iPad scored just one more point than the iPad2. This does not mean that the hardware is slower, in fact is means just the opposite considering a few important factors.

Microsoft is doing the hard sell on Windows 8 features and in particular they have made a valiant effort to push past some of the bad press (and consumer grumbling) about Metro UI and the way many of the apps are locked down. We have talked a little about this and even touched on it during some of our gaming coverage. Although you can launch “desktop” applications from the Start Screen (The Metro UI interface) you are not actually running them there. The only apps that will run in Metro UI Mode are ones that are downloaded from the Microsoft Store. This limits the functionality of the OS in many ways. Sure you can get some applications to interact with each other, but even then there are limitations.