Bought W8 Pro upgrade at the W/E

£25 as a download - I wonder if Microsoft are catching on with Apple a little?

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/windows/buy

It will initially download a small application that checks whether you are running Windows, whether your hardware is suitable and compatibility of your applications. A list is produced telling you what can and cannot be migrated (office 2003 professional is NOT W8 compatible!) and offers you the chance to upgrade over the top or create a completely new installation. If you select the latter then you can download W8 as a complete .iso file for burning to a DVD. I have been *told* that this file will install W8 on a virgin HDD, and does not require a pre-installed copy of windows to be present - I'll confirm later.

The idea of microsoft catching up with apple is not entirely tongue in cheek.

Apple's business model was that they were a hardware company who sold (highly restricted) software to promote their hardware business, hence the relatively low cost of OSX upgrades, iWork (not that it offered microsoft any real competition) etc. Their hardware was always well styled, even if they sometimes engineered the internals badly, and their software came with deliberate built-in obsolescence of hardware.

Microsoft have always tried to be as platform-agnostic as possible, running on everything, being compatible with (almost) everything or making versions that would work cross platform and supporting legacy hardware and operating systems for as long as feasible. In contrast their hardware was often forward-thinking (they had the first tablet computer) and worked well (various MP3 players had a reputation for sound quality) but their styling and user interface was pretty much a disaster.

And now they seem to have started modelling themselves on Apple.

At least, a bit.

They haven't quite shrugged off their microsoftishness completely, but they are working hand in glove with Nokia to create phones that reflect the microsoft phone they would like to have. The new surface tablet is reputed to be good, and that IS their own hardware.

Just a feeling, but I wonder if they've looked across the gulf, seen a small struggling competitor grow into a muscle-bound and aggressive behemoth and thought how they'd like a piece of that action too.

It's also interesting that Windows 8 and Windows RT/phone interfaces are genuinely novel (at least recently - subject to a lawsuit from someone who designed a tile-based interface about 10 years ago) in the way they interact, while OSX and W7 are effectively similar to what has been down for the last 15 years.

It will be interesting to see if Microsoft have finally discovered a way to design hardware that looks good and works well, along with a better way of interacting with the user.

Or maybe this will just be another Microsoft venture, doomed to eventual failure either through lousy final design, or through a market that doesn't want 'new and better' but instead 'old and comfortable'. Wouldn't be the first time.