Well I will not remark on wether or not Microsoft will or will not shift us completely to the cloud. There are good reasons to do this and good reasons not to do this. I am not sure what camp Microsoft is in. one thing I will say though is I fermly believe that windows pro is heading for a phone device near you. Microsoft windows phone has failed. In fact quite frankly I don’t think it was ever intended to really do all that well. the whole idea behind windows phone was to keep the name Microsoft in the mobile market. Microsoft has been waiting tell such time as the phone devices were powerful enough to power a full fledged computing operating system. When you could get a reasonable battery life out of such a beast. Well the chips are powerful enough now. There is enough flash memery now. The batterys are here now. This means that windows pro has to come to a phone. This means that Microsoft will be launching a updated version of its operating system this year. They have to. Windows 9 maybe. What ever it is I am guessing from now on Microsoft will provide free updates to users of windows 8 and above from hence forth. The operating system is not the cash cow for Microsoft that it once was. They will do the operating system as a distribution system just as android is for google. At some point they will probably deal with the fact that there really are not a lot of modern apps and more for IOS and android buy allowing android apps to run on windows. I do think you will see more and more cloud apps yes. I don’t think though that windows will go completely to the cloud. I don’t really think that most people are really comfortable with this idea, and I don’t think they will ever be so. Second if you had a outage of any kind your operating system just would not boot. Nope don’t see it. finely your last point if screen reader companys are thinking about this. doesn’t matter at some point Microsoft is going to have to build a screen reader in to the kernel of windows that will perform all the tasks of a screen reader running at the process level. The arguments against this no longer apply. So the screen reading companys might want to be thinking about celling there technology to Microsoft and highering on as consoltance or doing something else altogether. The days of the screen reader ceperate from the operating system are numbered.
From: RicksPlace [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, January 14, 2014 1:35 AM To: GW Micro Product Discussion Listserv Subject: Ready For The Cloud? Hi: Here is an article about the Microsoft plans for the Windows Operating System in the next 2 or 3 years. I dont think the current state of screen readers are anywhere ready for this change but perhaps we will hear something from GW about this planned quantum change since we know how the current state of screen readers work with things like cloud computing, google and other CMS Style internet interfaces. Here is the article I read: 8 is approaching its one-year birthday, and while that usually means a new version is in the works for most products, Microsoft usually puts a few years in between versions to keep things steady. However, the company may be speeding things up, as, according to Geek.com , it’s rumored that Windows 9 is planned for release sometime next year. According to an anonymous source who goes by WZOR (and who has been behind numerous Microsoft leaks in the past), Windows 9 will see the light of day in 2014. No other details were provided, other than the claim that Aero would be making a comeback in Windows 9 after disappearing in Windows 8, since it was a hot feature that many avid Windows users missed. Details on Windows 10 were also provided, with claims that the future operating system will be a “cloud OS,” meaning that all of the processing and computing would be done on Microsoft’s servers, and be streamed to your computer, completely eliminating the need for a powerful rig and only requiring the basic bits to run peripherals and such. Windows 10 would essentially just be a new cloud service for Microsoft, on top of Office 365 and the new Xbox Cloud on Xbox One , pushing the company further into the cloud ecosystem. Of course, we would like to remind you to take these rumors with a grain of salt, as WZOR says he received the information from a third party, which means the info could’ve easily gotten misinterpreted on the way, similar to a game of telephone that you used to play in grade school. The technology for a full cloud OS is certainly there, but it definitely needs a bit of work before Microsoft can make it a mainstream product. Here’s hoping that the company can pull it off, and by then local storage may be a thing of the past. Until then, we’re still waiting for Windows 8.1′s release in October , so let’s not get too ahead of ourselves. DT. Well, gang, how well does WE work with 365, Google and with other internet cloud based projects like word processors, database managers and now it looks like operating systems - Google Chrome etc... comes to mind. Lets hope the Screen Reader companies are doing their homework! This will be a quantum change in the underlying code base and accessibility issues and especially surrounding legacy Operating Systems me thinks. Rick USA If you reply to this message it will be delivered to the original sender only. If your reply would benefit others on the list and your message is related to GW Micro, then please consider sending your message to [email protected] so the entire list will receive it. GW-Info messages are archived at http://www.gwmicro.com/gwinfo. You can manage your list subscription at http://www.gwmicro.com/listserv.
