Here’s an application for your jailbroken iPhone that replaces the very attractive and functional with an out of place Metro UI home screen from Windows Phone 7. If you don’t appreciate your iPhone, like putting ugly themes on iOS or just really want to be a Windows Phone 7 user; then this is the app for you.

It’s pretty cool that this developer has managed to build a pretty solid clone of Metro UI but it’s even more upsetting that everyone on the internet thinks this looks good.

But, the biggest insult? Giving Safari the icon from some god awful hack job internet browser.

source.

I’m sure everyone has the seen the to the cloud ad before, the one where the couple are sitting at the airport and decide to go “to the cloud” to access recorded TV shows from their home computer. It seems somewhat idealistic, but we all know it’s just not going to work at all.

The problem is that those recorded TV show files are HUGE, around one gigabyte for an hour. So could imagine transferring a gigabyte via your home internet connection? Not to mention these people are on a airport WiFi hotspot which was designed for Facebook and YouTube browsing; not saturating a pipe with WTV files.

Microsoft should of looked at this situation and thought that maybe the whole remote desktop solution to access your media centre is not really what the cloud is all about. Microsoft should of noticed the unfriendliness of this decided that a true cloud would allow Media Center to be accessed over a web interface or even a media extender client for Windows (which after 5 years still doesn’t exist despite the popularity of people owning multiple computers).

What’s even more weird about the lack of “cloud” for Windows Media Center is that Microsoft hired the developer of WebGuide to work for the WMC team. If you check out WebGuide you’ll find a complete package for enabling Windows Media Center for Vista to stream content off your box over the web. Did Microsoft just hire this guy and make him work on the pointless desktop client?

If both teams had sat down and reviewed that ad you would think that a lightbulb would go off in the head of someone there and released there’s nothing “cloud” about Windows; it’s all just terminal services with some fancy new features.

Considering the state that Windows tablets were back when Windows 7 was touted as a touch capable operating system, I have to admit I'm very impressed in the jump from Windows 7 to the developer preview of Windows 8. It's very exciting to see Windows losing its reliance on the start+taskbar paradigm that we've seen since Windows 95.

Metro

It's a design concept and I hope it's one Microsoft is going to invest heavily in training/education/certification to allow developers to understand how to develop applications that actually suit Windows 8 and suit touch gestures. I'd say it would be better for Microsoft to loosen the focus on .Net certification and ramp up the emphasis on great design in Windows 8 applications.

JavaScript+HTML+CSS

With the demise of WebOS I thought we would be waiting a few year before we see another platform enable web applications to be first class citizens on a platform. It seems with the WinRT layer JavaScript joins the ranks of C# and C++ for enabling Windows developers to build rich applications.

I think web development and design is an exciting realm to be in and with Microsoft opening Windows up to JavaScript API calls it is only going to strengthen the importance of open frameworks and web development. I hope it exposes more and more students to JavaScript as an alternative to the dry "Intro to Java" curriculum we see now (or even the awful institutions that still teach VB).

Change at the .Net shops

I'm curious to see how the .Net shops respond to not only JavaScript as an increasingly power language but also the Metro concept. Based on my small experience in .Net consulting companies most of them aren't interested in the UI development stage; it's all about the code and maybe a simplistic design template.

I hope they realise that a Metro styled application isn't just the default template provided by Visual Studio; it's about building applications that suit the method of input, designing screens that aren't cluttered and making the app something a user wants to use and not something they are forced to use to get the job done.

The worry

I really hope the default state of Windows 8 (at least on tablets) is that you never see that awful Windows 7 desktop no matter how hard you tried; I hope Microsoft pushes developers to change for new paradigms and not just rely on the old concepts that have existed since Windows 95.

I'm a little worried about the consulting shops that will understand Metro enough to use the templates but not enough to actually put the effort in to build distinct apps that conform to Metro but don't feel like any other Metro app. I think this is the beauty of iOS where I can jump from Facebook to Tweetbot and be in two amazing different world; I'm worried that Metro will be just a feature that developers enable and never care about.

One things for sure

I'm excited to see Windows 8 replace those awful touch displays at shopping centres, it seems killing Flash is a joint effort from all parties (except RIM...).