Reply To: Windows Blue by mid-2013

For people like me who constantly check tech sites, this is all old news. 😛 Right at the start of specualation about Blue (Win 8.1), which I think began end of last year, there were rumours (I don’t believe MS confirmed it) that Windows was moving to a more regular update schedule, and possibly costing less per hit because of it (obviously you couldn’t keep the prices as they even are now, despite having dropped considerably, if it were a yearly update). There are advantages and disadvantages to that system, and the one MS employed in the past, and none of it is confirmed. I’m not sure how reliable the sources are, either.

I guess we’ll find more out when 8.1 is released later this year.

But 8.1 won’t “fix” the WinRT and Win8 divide. Some conspiracy theorists (who might be right, for all I know) believe MS deliberately made WinRT purely to get the push on to Intel to make more competitive CPUs for mobile usage, as they were lagging considerably. I’m curious to see if Haswell changes much. Of course, for people like me who are more aware of this stuff, I know that it’s a product I will likely want (I’ve held off buying a tablet mostly due to current Intel CPUs being still impractical). However, can MS overcome the general view that people seem to hold about them, how their products are used and what they are for? I guess only time will truly show this.

As interesting as they are, I’m a bit sick of all the rumours. Trying to help move their products up the chain, I’ve tried to push MS to fix a few of the issues in some of their products (apps, basically), but they are very unresponsive. I guess we’re stuck with rumours for most things with MS, as they don’t seem to concerned about providing much detail about anything to the public, unless it’s a buzzed up blog post by a senior employee, and/or a marketing statement (usually the same). A pity, too!

And .. that’s probably all I have to say. It’s all rumours at this point. 🙁 Not sure about the mid-2013 either. I’ll believe it when I see it, but I personally suspect it’s more heading for end of third quarter or a bit after, which would be close to the one year mark of Win8 release.