In between all the triple-overtime action of the opening game of the Stanley Cup Finals between the Boston Bruins and the Chicago Blackhawks Wednesday night, surely you noticed the new Windows commercial highlighting the single operating system that works on everything from your smartphone to your all-in-one.
This 30-second spot dubbed, “Windows Everywhere,” starts with a single Metro tile for Internet Explorer 10, “the first Web browser built for touch,” and goes on to list all the other Windows-centric features like Skype, SkyDrive, and Xbox that eventually makes up the Windows 8 Start screen. Using touch gestures to transition from a single live tile to the Start screen, the same interface first pops up on a Surface tablet, then a Lenovo desktop PC, and then ends on a yellow Nokia Lumia Windows Phone 8 smartphone. It ends with this tagline: “Windows: One Experience. On every device. For everything in your life.”
The idea that the “new” Windows experience is (mostly) the same across devices in various form factors is hardly a new concept, considering the fact that Windows and its partners have been steadily releasing new Windows Phone 8s, tablets, convertible laptops, hybrids, and desktops since last October. Since the new Mac OS X Mavericks for computers and iOS 7 for mobile devices were just announced this week at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, perhaps Microsoft just wants to remind consumers that Windows offers something different and more seamless than the Apple offerings.
Unlike Windows, Apple decided to keep its desktop and mobile operating systems separate and different, even though it had an opportunity to introduce a more unified interface like Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 at this past WWDC. The Cupertino company also didn’t introduce any tablet-laptop hybrid or jump on the touchscreen bandwagon for its line of computers to take advantage of new form factors that the Intel chip supports. (On the computer hardware front, Apple only announced that it is refreshing the 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Airs with the Intel Haswell processor and Gigabit Wi-Fi, in addition to unveiling a gorgeous but not easily expandable Mac Pro desktop.)
Of course, Microsoft’s implementation of this single Windows experience across all devices is hardly perfect. Perhaps that’s why Apple isn’t going down the same tricky route and sticking with what it knows. Check out the commercial below and let us know what you think.
