Steven Sinofsky, Steve Ballmer, Julie Larson-Green, and Michael Angiulo: Windows 8 Launch


Editor’s Note – October 25, 2012 –

Clarification to the remarks below: Microsoft collaborated with PC makers Asus, Lenovo, Dell and Samsung.

STEVEN SINOFSKY: Welcome, everyone, to Windows 8. We are so happy to be here today and to celebrate the global availability of a new era of Windows and Windows-powered PCs.

We’d like to welcome all of you here today in New York City from all the major PC manufacturers, hardware and software developers, and of course those of us live or streamed.

There’s so much excitement and potential for the future of computing to improve how we work, learn, and entertain.

Windows 8 is a major milestone in the evolution and the revolution of computing. Having surpassed over a billion people using Windows, it is now that we’re looking forward to the next billion.

We want to start today with where we are with Windows. Three years ago this week, our industry collectively released Windows 7. Since that time, Windows 7 has become the most successful, widely used, and widely praised OS ever. Together with PC makers, our industry has seen unprecedented adoption of Windows 7 and the technology and services that make up the complete Windows experience.

As of today, we’re pleased to share with you that Windows 7 has sold over 670 million licenses to businesses and consumers. (Applause.)

In fact, Windows 7 has seen the fastest adoption of any OS in business ever. As of today, more than half of the enterprises have deployed Windows 7, a demonstration of the reliability, security, and business readiness of the Windows platform.

Windows 7 was the first release of Windows to build on the use of cloud services as an important part of the overall experience. These Windows services are the most widely used, scalable cloud services available globally.

Let me just give you an example. SkyDrive has over 200 million customers storing data in their free SkyDrive. It’s accessible from PCs, Web browsers, mobile devices, your Windows Phone, everywhere. Today, SkyDrive has 11 billion photos, 550 million documents, storing over 14 petabytes of data, and, every month, two petabytes of data are added.

Windows 7 and services such as SkyDrive, Outlook.com, Skype, and more form the foundation upon which we began the creation of Windows 8. We know starting from the foundation as robust and available as that has many, many advantages.

You know, as familiar and productive as Windows 7 is for customers today, the world that led to Windows 7 began back in the early 1990s when familiar concepts like the Start menu were first conceived. Familiar today, but completely new when it was first released. That technology world was so very different than the world we experience each and every day.

Looking back, we see a world that was without the Internet, without email, without smartphones, no test messages, no digital cameras. We lived in caves. (Laughter.) It was a world we could hardly imagine today.

You know, our PCs were so remarkably different. We were tethered to a 15-inch CRT monitor. It showed less on that screen than the phone on our pocket does today and had 1/100th the storage. Even something as basic as networking was a luxury for most of us.

You know, today the world is very different. You know, we’re connected all the time. Our PCs used to be about managing files, and today we know that people and communication are the center of all of our activities. Work and play are intertwined seamlessly as you move between them. The stuff that we create and consume is not just on PCs, but also cloud connected. That clunky desktop PC has been replaced by one or more, more sleek, more powerful, more mobile PCs with vastly more storage and computing at a fraction of the price.

In creating Windows 8, we shunned the incremental. We boldly re-imagined Windows. From the chip set to the experience, Windows 8 is the next generation of Windows, computing for the next billion people.

Creating a release of Windows is a unique product development journey. No product is used by so many people and developed with such a breadth of global participation. This transparency and openness is an important part of how we approached the key partnerships across thousands of companies and millions of people involved in our industry.

From the earliest demonstrations of Windows, we showed off the bare CPU boards running ARM processors. New user interface long before it was even done. And we’ve worked to re-imagine Windows for this new era and invited participation in the process.

We’ve had 16 million installations of the prerelease builds of Windows. Developers have been actively engaged in learning how to create new types of apps for Windows 8 since our BUILD conference a year ago.

We’ve forged unique collaborations with hardware, software, and peripheral companies to bring this re-imagined Windows to market.

We’ve even blogged about the development of Windows 8. Some of you might have read the 650 pages of blogs we’ve done detailing our bold approach.

And at the same time, building Windows, especially such a bold release of Windows, reminds us of the responsibility we have for so many. So many rely on Windows in so many ways. We’re incredibly humbled by that responsibility. It’s a big part of how we design and how we approach building Windows.

So it is today with great pride that we unveil this new generation of Windows. Starting at 12:01 a.m. local time worldwide, the next era of Windows computing begins. Today we’re pleased to share with you three important product announcements: First is the availability of the upgrade from prior versions of Windows to Windows 8 in stores, online, and downloadable. Windows 8 is simply the best release of Windows ever.

Second is the grand opening of the Windows Store and the availability of a new generation of PCs designed for Windows 8. The Windows Store is apps developed exclusively for the new Windows platform running on PCs from tablets to Ultrabooks to all-in-ones, powered by the latest generation of Intel processors.

And third is the experience of new PCs powered by Windows RT. This is a Windows 8 experience optimized for PCs built with the ARM processor.

We built Windows 8 starting on the foundation of Windows 7, but we took that foundation and we made it better — much, much better. No matter what your computing needs are, everyone benefits when the core aspects of using a PC just get better. And that’s just what upgrading to Windows 8 is all about. When you upgrade a Windows 7 PC to Windows 8, you can see potential improvements across the board. You can see improvements such as battery life extended by up to 13 percent, boot time improved by up to 36 percent, and on new PCs, by the way, cold start times of under 10 seconds.

Memory usage can be reduced by 22 percent. And of course through all of this work, a strong collaboration across hardware partners, software partners, we can deliver compatibility with existing Windows 7 logo hardware and software. That’s millions of devices, millions of desktop apps.

And to validate this work, of course, we developed Windows 8, while we were developing Windows 8, we released three broad product previews of the product. In total, Windows 8 has been through 1.24 billion hours of prerelease testing in public, spanning over 190 countries. No product anywhere receives this level of external testing and usage prior to release.

The Windows 8 upgrade is available today for download, online, or in stores. We believe so strongly in this release that we’ve made it easier than ever to upgrade your existing PC to Windows 8 with upgrades starting at $39.99 here in the U.S.

Windows 8 is also about the best PCs ever. Today is an amazing day for the evolution of PCs. While PCs have become increasingly portable, more powerful, the basic interaction with a PC has been unchanged for the history of the graphical interface. The keyboard, the mouse, and later the touchpad have defined interaction with a PC.

Today, we’re at the start of a new era of interaction with your PC. The addition of a native touch interface and apps designed for touch. Windows 8 was designed, of course, to work equally well with existing PCs or new PCs that use only a keyboard and mouse. But add a touch display, and Windows 8 ushers in a new era of scenarios and apps.

Almost every screen we use in daily life is touchable. For most of us, our PC, the screen we rely on so much, is not yet touchable, and that shouldn’t be. Today, your new Windows PC is about to benefit from a fast and fluid interface designed for touch. We made this new touch interface intuitively powerful, accessible and scalable, personal and alive with the activities that matter the most to you.

Even with all of that which is new, the heart of the Windows 7 desktop still remains. It continues to function as before, launching programs in the task bar, switching between Windows, even keyboard shortcuts work exactly the same.

But to ease the move to Windows 8, every new PC and copy of Windows 8 will come with a simple “how to.” It’s offered the first time you sign onto your PC. There’s no need for manuals or hidden track pad gestures, just touch the screen and click naturally and just don’t worry about it.

Today, we are pleased to share that over 1,000 new PCs have been certified for Windows 8. Certified with higher standards across the board, and new high standards for multitouch interaction. These PCs come in a wide variety of screen sizes, configurations, and designs. And in keeping with the root of what makes PCs so broadly used, we will see fully capable PCs for Windows 8 that cost under $300. That’s so much cheaper than leading tablets. And these new PCs are thinner, lighter, and better than ever.

Today, we’ll see the interaction of new Ultrabooks powered by the latest third-generation Intel processors. Ultrabooks represent state of the art in portability, power, and design. Also coming today are thin, light, powerful Ultrabooks with touch screens, and they’ll debut as well.

The new combination of Windows 8 user experience and new apps are perfectly suited to a new age of tablets and convertibles powered by Intel’s latest Atom processors known as Clover Trail. With these PCs, you get all the benefits of a Windows 8 tablet experience — the UI, the apps, touch interaction — a long list — compatibility with the world of existing software designed for Windows 7.

Now, for the home and office, Windows 8 powers a new generation of all-in-one PCs featuring beautiful, large touch screens that are living room, kitchen, and board room friendly. These showcase unique industrial design that uses touch screen as an integral part of your desktop PC in addition to a keyboard and a mouse.

All these PCs that we’ll see here today and that will be available all around the world represent the highest level of collaboration we’ve ever had across Microsoft, PC makers, Intel, and AMD. These are the best PCs ever made.

You know, while Windows powers these great new PCs, apps have always powered an individualized experience. Windows has consistently maintained the broadest and deepest selection of apps for consumers, businesses, business apps and enterprise apps as well, millions of apps.

With Windows 8, we’re introducing a new way for developers to build apps that are touch enabled, connected, and mobile. We’re just getting started today, and today represents the grand opening of the Windows Store for customers around the world. These apps are built on a re-imagined set of APIs, tools, and services for developers. And taken together, we’ve delivered the simplest and fastest way to develop mobile, connected, fast, fluid, fun, and uniquely beautiful apps for Windows.

We created this platform and tools so apps can tap into the power of the touch interface, be mobile, but at the same time make use of the productivity heritage of Windows by using peripherals like printers, audio, video, and input devices. Access to the vast ecosystem of Windows-compatible hardware is at your fingertips.

The grand opening of the Windows Store represents a major new opportunity for developers. Since all new and upgraded Windows PCs can run Windows Store apps, the potential market for apps is the largest of any platform. Developers using the Windows Store for their apps have the most control over their business, the most favorable terms, and the most flexibility in their code, all to address the largest run rate of devices available.

Now, you know some might rush to start to count apps or look for their favorite apps to arrive in the store. You know, we see today as a grand opening, and a very solid one. On the screen behind me, you can see some of the thousands of new apps that are available today around the world. Developers everywhere are adding hundreds of new apps every day and that rate of addition is increasing as well.

Similarly, thousands of new developers are joining the Windows Store ecosystem each and every week, and all of this is happening in 231 markets in 109 languages around the world. At our grand opening, the Windows Store has more apps than any competing app store had at its opening.

Today also marks the availability of a new and exciting member of the Windows family, Windows RT. Windows RT is architected from the ground up for the ARM processor, the most ubiquitous mobile processor in the world.

ARM brings with it the long battery life, low power consumption, bandwidth operation, all coupled with integrated graphics that can be packaged into the smallest, lightest tablets and mobile PCs.

Windows RT brings to life these attributes of the ARM processor — all-day battery life, thin and light tablets, convertibles, and mobility. And Windows RT brings with it the full richness of the new Windows experience — apps in the store and touch and the whole experience. It also includes power-efficient and touch-optimized Office 2013 apps — Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote.

Powering Web browsing in Windows RT is Internet Explorer 10, which has also been touch optimized, and it also shows an improvement in performance and reliability and security that are part of the overall release.

Now, Windows RT is different than Windows 8. It doesn’t run programs designed for Windows 7. Windows RT runs a suite of built-in apps for mail and calendar and people along with photos and Xbox-powered music, video, and games. And it runs a beautiful set of powerful information-based apps powered by Bing.

Now, of course Windows RT can run and it only runs the apps you can acquire from the Windows Store. This approach by building on new software of the Windows architecture for apps that are easily acquired, easily removed if you want, that respect and protect your data and your privacy, and build on the improved security of the new Windows run time. This assures you that your Windows RT PCs will maintain great performance and reliability over time. It will be just as stable and reliable a year from now as it was on the day you turned it on.

In fact, because the store makes it easy to upgrade your applications, your PC experience only improves over time.

Because of the shared heritage with Windows 8, your RT PC can use existing peripherals seamlessly. So here are some examples of that. 50 of the top 53 printers globally work just by plugging in your USB cable, which is standard on all Windows RT PCs, or connecting wirelessly. You know, in fact, 100 percent of the best-selling printers in the U.S. currently work out of the box with Windows RT.

In total, Windows RT supports over 420 million existing hardware devices from mice, keyboards, external storage, Bluetooth-connected devices, displays, and many more. Out of the box, connect to or plug into the largest ecosystem of peripherals anywhere.

Now, to create Windows RT PCs, we developed a new type of engineering collaboration between ARM chip makers such as NVIDIA and Qualcomm and PC makers such as Asus, Lenovo, and Samsung. This partnership leads to a new generation of ultra-high-quality PCs designed from the chip set up for great battery life through thoughtful design and an amazing expression of Windows.

Of course the best way to experience Windows 8 new PCs, the grand opening of the Windows Store and new Windows RT PCs is to see some demonstrations. I’d like you to join me in welcoming Mike Angiulo. He leads the Windows ecosystem team who runs the engagement with partners who are represented here today, and Julie Green, who leads the program management team who really created this re-imagination of the Windows product.

Thank you very much, everyone. (Applause, cheers.)

(Break for video segment.)

MIKE ANGIULO: Thank you very much. Julie and I are proud to get to show you today a combination of some of the best hardware and software that’s ever been made.

JULIE LARSON-GREEN: You’re going to see all the things that Steven was talking about. You’re going to see Windows 8, a great bunch of new hardware, the grand opening of the apps, and the new world of Windows RT.

MIKE ANGIULO: We’re going to start by showing Windows 8 on some Windows 7 PCs that we’ve upgraded. Now, Julie, the tablet you’re going to use, that’s the Windows 7 tablet that you’ve been using to demo all year.

JULIE LARSON-GREEN: Right. This one is from Samsung. I’ve been using it most of the year to show demos. And here’s the beautiful Seattle skyline. I swipe to go in. I have my fun, new way to password protect my PC. I’m just going to login really quickly with a picture of my kids. And we get right to the beautiful Windows 8 desktop.

I can see all the things that I want to start and use. And Windows 8 is really easy. Everything you need is right under your thumb, right here, all the important things that you want to go do at any point in time is just right there. And Windows 8 is fun, too. Here I am flipping through all the apps, just right there under my thumb. And we know that when you’re having fun, you’re more likely to want to go and explore and maybe try the other edges too. Just like that.

Let’s talk about this screen for a second. So this is my desktop. And everything on here is mine, the apps that I use all the time, the friends that I connect to that I want to stay connected to, the Web pages that I use — and it’s all alive with activity, updating with feeds and things that are happening in my life. And so at a glance, I can see everything that is important to me.

So, Mike, are you rearranging my personal PC?

MIKE ANGIULO: Yes, sorry about that, Julie.

JULIE LARSON-GREEN: I need to go ahead and change the lock screen and maybe the background too.

MIKE ANGIULO: Sure. I’m going to go into settings here, and I’m going to show you just changing a couple of settings can change sort of the personality of the PC.

So here for the lock screen, I’m going to go to pick a picture. And something that’s neat is that you can get a picture from any one of the apps you have installed that makes pictures or in this case just something from your library.

So I’ll pick a picture; it looks like from a vacation. I’ll go to the start screen. I’ll pick a different background color and a background picture. You can see with just a couple of clicks, I sort of changed the way it feels.

JULIE LARSON-GREEN: Great. Thanks, Mike. And Windows 8 comes with everything you need right out of the box. There’s mail, calendar, photos, and a great touch browser in Internet Explorer 10.

So here’s Mike, he’s got all 10 of his fingers on the screen. Look how smooth and beautiful that is right inside the browser. It’s going to enable a whole new class of Web pages to get built.

Here he is in one of those Web pages, flipping with his finger, just naturally using the tablet to browse the Internet.

We also have the newly launched Xbox Music and Video Service. This provides free streaming to all Windows 8 customers, and there’s over 30 million songs in the library. And Xbox Video, super-fast streaming, you can use your own collection, you can rent, buy, any kind of movie or television that you want. It’s a really great upgrade for all Windows 7 PCs.

MIKE ANGIULO: And it is a great upgrade for all PCs. We showed it here on this tablet. Next I’m going to show Windows 8 on my upgraded Ultrabook. Now, this is a Lenovo that I use at work, it’s a ThinkPad Carbon X1. Super thin, super fast PC, Windows 7 PC. When I installed Windows 8 on it, when I installed Windows 8 on it, this PC boots 33 percent faster.

JULIE LARSON-GREEN: Right.

MIKE ANGIULO: It uses 42 percent less memory. (Applause, cheers.) IE10 boots 35 percent faster, all of that just from putting the upgrade on the PC.

JULIE LARSON-GREEN: On a Windows 7 PC.

MIKE ANGIULO: On a Windows 7 PC. Now, this doesn’t have a touch screen. I can still navigate around Windows. You see in the zoom there, you can see I’m moving the tiles just by moving the track pad. If I swipe from the right edge, you can see how the charms come out just like when you were swiping on the edge of the PC. In fact, I can even zoom in and out just like you were doing. So I can get around Windows, I can use all of the new stuff, and my PC just gets better. Of course the fastest way to get to an app for me is just type, boom, and I’m in one of the new apps.

JULIE LARSON-GREEN: Mike, why don’t you bring up the desktop and we’ll talk about that for a minute too?

MIKE ANGIULO: Sure.

JULIE LARSON-GREEN: We made the desktop in Windows 8 even better than it was in Windows 7. All the things that you know how to do, all the apps that you use are all still here and work exactly the same way. And we showed you both how to access and get to start with the mouse and under your thumb, but we’ve also added shortcuts to the bottom left-hand corner right where Start has always been to make it easy for you to get back there.

MIKE ANGIULO: I just point the mouse to the corner, and I get Start. And Start in Windows 8 is even better because I can just zoom up, and I see all of the running apps. And for power users, I can right click and get to a list of all the system tools that you’re used to using. I can click right here, for example, and get to the File Explorer. Files copy faster, the UI is cleaner. But importantly, when I’m getting work done, here’s Excel, for example, it works just like the desktop I’m used to —

JULIE LARSON-GREEN: Excel 2013.

MIKE ANGIULO: That is, this is new Excel 2013, two weeks, it’s just been out for two weeks. I can side by side run the desktop and those new apps. I can run these apps together at the same time. So you can see my desktop can be made smaller, and I get icons, or I can make it bigger. I can come over here and save a file to SkyDrive. Notice my SkyDrive shows up right in that list. This is the same SkyDrive that uses your Microsoft account to store all of that stuff that Steven was talking about — your mail, your calendar, your contacts, your files and your photos. It’s all synced up across this PC.

JULIE LARSON-GREEN: Right. It also includes your social feeds, your Xbox games, music, video, and not just on that PC, across all your Windows devices, including your Windows Phone 8.

MIKE ANGIULO: So we have a couple of these new Windows Phones. These are brand new, they were just announced this month. Next month, you’re going to see a whole new wave of innovative hardware coming — phones, PCs — they’re going to be coming to market, it’s going to be the biggest wave ever.

You know, three years ago almost to the day —

JULIE LARSON-GREEN: Almost to the day.

MIKE ANGIULO: Almost to the day three years ago we were launching Windows 7. And we were here in New York, I was showing off state-of-the-art PCs at the time. There was one that was just under 10 millimeters. I had one that booted in 15 seconds. That was a big deal. I had a PC that was running the brand new Core I7, the first generation.

Three years later, these PCs that were designed and built for Windows 8, they’re thinner, they boot in half the time. In some cases, they’re one-third the weight, and with the third-generation core processor, for media and gaming, these PCs are up to three times faster.

So I have a couple of examples here, these are a couple of favorites of mine.

JULIE LARSON-GREEN: Yes, these are really the best PCs that have ever been made. There are over 1,000 systems that are already certified for Windows 8, and you’re sure to find one that you’re really going to love.

MIKE ANGIULO: Let’s start by showing this Lenovo tablet. Lenovo has just announced this excellent tablet. This is running Windows 8 Pro. This is running on Intel Atom processor that Steven was talking about, Clover Trail. This processor is capable of doing connected standby. So when you put your PC to sleep, like your phone, it stays in sync in the background. It also enables really high efficiency. Ten hours of battery in a 600-gram package. Now, this is a really full-featured PC.

JULIE LARSON-GREEN: OK, here we go.

MIKE ANGIULO: It’s got 3G, 4G LTE, Wi-Fi direct, NFC, TPM for enterprise encryption — it’s all the things that you would expect in a full-power Lenovo that’s enterprise ready. In fact, this PC even has ink. So if I launch OneNote, I actually have real ink. So all of that is built into this Windows 8 tablet. (Applause, cheers.) Come a long way since the tablets that we were demoing on.

JULIE LARSON-GREEN: Exactly. And now this one’s from Acer, and I really love this PC. It’s super thin and light, it’s made of aluminum, it’s under 2.3 pounds, fits in any of my bags, but it’s also very powerful. It comes with a Core i7 processor, it has a TPM chip so it’s enterprise ready. It’s just a gorgeous, gorgeous device. And look how fast this resumes.

MIKE ANGIULO: So almost as fast as you open the lid, it’s restored. Now, this PC is also already reconnected to Wi-Fi. In Windows 7, we made Wi-Fi reconnect a lot faster, average of 15 seconds. In Windows 8, it averages one second, and this is reconnected to the Web. (Applause, cheers.) We were tired of waiting for that.

JULIE LARSON-GREEN: And the screen is really, really gorgeous. It’s super bright and beautiful, and it’s 1080 high definition, it’s great. And it’s got touch too.

MIKE ANGIULO: 1080p with touch.

JULIE LARSON-GREEN: And once you get one PC with touch, you’re going to want every PC that you have to have touch. You just can’t stop touching your PC.

MIKE ANGIULO: Let’s show you some more of these great PCs that are worth touching. We’ve got a whole set of PCs over here, PCs with AMD and Intel processors, PCs from all of our top partners. You’ll see a whole wave of these touch-enabled Ultrabooks that are going to come out that are super sleek and portable. In fact, you’ll be able to get a touch notebook on day one for only $499. I feel like it’s a commercial here, but that’s a great, great value. You can have a touch PC that starts at $499, and there’s a whole range.

You’ve got another Clover Trail design, which is super thin and light, and at the other end of the spectrum, you have the third generation Core i7.

JULIE LARSON-GREEN: This is good.

MIKE ANGIULO: This is a really powerful PC. This is Dell’s XPS One. This was rated — I think PC Magazine’s editor’s choice award for high-end PCs. It’s got USB3 and Blu-ray and all kinds of things. But the beautiful thing is this 27-inch screen. This screen is 2560 by 1440 with that same full touch that we’re talking about.

JULIE LARSON-GREEN: What you’re really seeing here is how the Windows experience scales across all these devices. So from the smallest tablet-sized screen to the large all-in-one, you can see so much more here in the tile. And our partners are really taking advantage of the flexibility of Windows to provide all kinds of new and innovative designs.

Here’s another one from Dell over here that I want to show you. It’s really cool. You press on the screen, and it flips out, and you flip it down, and it goes from a laptop to a tablet just like that.

MIKE ANGIULO: That’s pretty cool. It’s one of a whole set of convertible PCs that our partners are making that kind of embraces that no-compromise PC. These are just a couple examples of all of the categories of PC. There will be new tablets, new convertibles, new notebooks, new all-in-ones like this Sony, which I think is pretty cool.

JULIE LARSON-GREEN: No wires on that.

MIKE ANGIULO: You’ve seen that before; I think it’s neat. Our partners are making all kinds of new hardware because at the same time, we have the grand opening of the store. And the store will have a whole new set of apps. The Windows Store is so important, we’ve been working with developers for over a year. And that’s one of the reasons that the apps in the store have doubled in just the last couple of weeks.

JULIE LARSON-GREEN: There are so many apps. And as you get more and more apps, it’s going to make you love your PC even more, so go shopping, go find something you love, and we’re going to show you a couple.

MIKE ANGIULO: Sure. I’ll show you how easy it is to go to the store, get an app, try it, uninstall it. I’m going to go back to my PC here, and let’s say I was watching video. So I will go and start my video, usually while I’m watching some kind of TV or movie, I’m looking at my email at the same time. I’ve got my email snapped over on the side. Oh, I see you sent me something about a Wikipedia app.

Watch this, I’m going to make my video smaller, but it’s still playing. I don’t have to put it away to go check out this app. So first I’m going to go to a Web page. And watch this, when I go to the Windows Store, it’s going to be one click to install this app, and usually before I can even get back to my video, Wikipedia is installed.

Now, here’s the thing. I’m going to go search, and I’m going to do that by pulling up these charms. Again, you can just mouse into the corner. We were searching before, I’m going to search on the Space Needle. And so I click search, type “Space Needle” and I can see in Wikipedia a page on the Space Needle.

The cool thing is that search is powerful not only across the Web, but across all of the apps I have installed. So if I want to see where the Space Needle is, I just click map. Now, that app knew to put itself in the search list. So this is an example of the more apps you use, the better the system gets.

Let’s say I’m done with that app. I tried it; I can click on it. I can come down here to uninstall, and with one click, all of these apps are under your control. Uninstalled, it’s gone. No registry or files left on the PC. So that platform is what gives you the confidence to go and try an app and see if you like it.

JULIE LARSON-GREEN: So here is another great app, Urbanspoon. I can use it to find what I want to go do, find a movie — sorry, find a restaurant. Go see the ratings and reviews. And the great thing about it, like Mike was saying with search, I can go and share this right from here with any of my friends, or any of the other places that I can share.

So I’ve shared with Tami before. I want to tell her about this place. And just like that, Tami is going to get a mail with Urbanspoon right to this location.

There’s a lot of really great apps already for Windows 8. Here’s the travel app from Bing. And this is a gorgeous app.

MIKE ANGIULO: It’s pretty.

JULIE LARSON-GREEN: It has really pretty pictures, has all kinds of things — oh, here’s New York. Go look at what’s in New York. I’m in a panorama here.

MIKE ANGIULO: Look at that.

JULIE LARSON-GREEN: I can slowly go around and I can zoom out or zoom in and take a look at what’s in there. And it makes it really great to find and kick around.

So since I’m going to be in New York for a while, I think I will keep this around. Let’s go back to travel. And I’m going to pin it to my Start page.

Now, the biggest category of apps, or most activity that’s happening right now —

MIKE ANGIULO: I think the largest number.

JULIE LARSON-GREEN: Largest number of them are games. So here we are in the games apps. One that I can actually sort of play.

MIKE ANGIULO: You’ve been practicing.

JULIE LARSON-GREEN: Well, yeah, I’m not as good as my 12-year-old son, though, that’s for sure.

MIKE ANGIULO: Well, games are a really popular category because Windows 8 is a great gaming platform. And if you go to the store, you’ll see there’s so much more. Beyond games, there are news apps, education apps, social, sports — and these apps form the basis of the rest of the Windows experience. And the cool thing is that these apps also run on Windows RT, that’s the newest addition to the Windows family.

Steven was talking about Windows running on ARM chips. Well, this version, Windows RT, enables PCs that are thinner, PCs that have much longer battery life, and PCs that have that software quality that improves over time.

JULIE LARSON-GREEN: And with Office 2013 built in and the full set of SkyDrive services, these devices are ready to go right out of the box.

MIKE ANGIULO: So let’s show you, there are five of them from Microsoft and from our partners.

JULIE LARSON-GREEN: So this first one here is from Lenovo. It’s called the Yoga. Looks like a regular laptop, it’s light, it’s thin, but it’s got a twist. You turn it right into a tablet, set it down for easy viewing, it’s a very cool device.

MIKE ANGIULO: That’s cool. You showed that Samsung. I’ve got here the Dell XPS 10. Now, this one is a really cool combination of mobility and productivity in the same device. It’s got a full-sized USB port here, so it’s compatible with 420 million some-odd printers, cameras, storage devices. It’s got really long battery life. You mentioned Office built in. If I go to the desktop, you see the same version of Office 2013 that I was showing on my other notebook. Amazing battery life, and you can use it as a tablet or with a keyboard.

JULIE LARSON-GREEN: And this is the Samsung Ativ. It’s really beautiful, thin, light, 12 hours of battery life, and it has these really great front-facing speakers. So it makes it really good for watching videos or doing Skype.

MIKE ANGIULO: Let’s do another couple. Show them the Asus.

JULIE LARSON-GREEN: Oh, this one is about the lightest, 8.3-millimeters thin. It’s getting a lot of really great reviews. It’s available from AT&T with 4G, and it has a nine-hour battery life and a keyboard that’s also a battery that doubles the battery life to 18 hours. It’s a great device.

MIKE ANGIULO: I think it’s cool, you plug in the keyboard, the keyboard actually charges the tablet.

JULIE LARSON-GREEN: It’s super bright, beautiful.

MIKE ANGIULO: And of course we’ve got Microsoft Surface. (Applause, cheers.) With its stunning screen, with its instant on and off battery life, with its innovative three-millimeter thin cover that also doubles as a keyboard — do you hear that click? That’s all part of the beautiful and elegant design.

It’s got the integrated kickstand. Panos is going to be showing a lot more about this PC later today. I think it makes a great addition to the rest of the PCs that our partners have built. And it runs all of the apps that you saw here today. In fact, everything that we were running runs on all these Windows PCs — RT, Windows 8, from the smallest tablet up to the biggest all-in-one.

JULIE LARSON-GREEN: I hope you enjoyed seeing the new era of innovation from Microsoft and our partners, and thank you very much.

MIKE ANGIULO: Thank you. (Applause, cheers.)

STEVE BALLMER: It really is an exciting, exciting day. Windows 8  yes, I’m excited. Windows 8, Windows RT with Office 2013, and Microsoft Surface are here. Starting tonight at 12:01 a.m., you can buy a spectacular new Windows device built by one of our partners or from Microsoft. What you have seen and heard should leave no doubt that Windows 8 shatters perceptions of what a PC now really is. We truly re-imagined Windows, and kicked off a new era for Microsoft, and a new era for our customers.

Just look, seriously, just stop and look at all of these gorgeous, gorgeous machines, and how alive they all are with activity. You can imagine, in fact pretty soon you can actually go buy, but you can imagine what your own Windows 8 device will look like, and how incredibly personal it will be. Picture your Start screen filled with everything and everybody who is most important to you, the apps that you use most frequently, the websites that you love, and the people you connect with will fill your view.

Live Tiles will effortlessly update your Start screen as things change in your world. With a glance, you’ll always know what’s going on in the world, and with the people who count in your life. Windows 8 keeps you connected to all of your, so to speak, stuff in the cloud with almost no work on your part. Your Microsoft account is the key to that. The experience is really magical. You login just once, and you see your device light up with your life.

Buy a new computer, it lights up with your life. You’ll immediately see all of your friends from Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, LinkedIn, Outlook.com, co-workers who are on Outlook with you at work, all of your photos form Flickr, SkyDrive, Facebook will just appear. All of your documents will be available to you from SkyDrive, and all of your Xbox music, video, and games will be there. It will all be there, everything and everybody that you really care about.

Windows 8 PCs, as Steven said, Windows 8 PCs are the best PCs ever. The lineup is both diverse and stunning, and this is just a very small sample of what will be available. For the first time, though, Windows also has first-rate tablets in addition to desktops and notebooks; and for the first time some of those form factors are powered by ARM chips from Qualcomm and NVIDIA, as well as X86 chips from Intel and AMD, as well as Intel’s very new and power-efficient Atom processor. All of these form factors will transform what you know and experience today into something quite new and quite wonderful. These are the thinnest, the lightest, and the fastest PCs ever created. All of the improvements that we’re showing today will certainly benefit the desktop and the laptop form factors. However, there’s an advancement that really pushes the boundaries on what a PC is, and that of course is touch. Many new Windows devices are touch-enabled. Some work with a stylus, and of course they all work great with a keyboard and a mouse. As you can see, there’s a huge variety up here for you to choose from. Everybody should be able to find their perfect PC. There are going to be very great, affordable devices as well as spectacular high-end devices, and people will pick and choose what’s important to them.

With Windows 8 we brought together the best of worlds, the PC and the tablet, your work life and play. Windows 8 will help you do everything and will make it a lot of fun, frankly, to do nothing. One device now pairs the greatest qualities of the PC with the greatest qualities of the tablet experience. To do this, our partners have come up with incredible new designs. Are these new designs PCs? Yes. Are these new designs tablets also? Yes. Some of them flip, some of them dock, some of the convert, some of them attach, the best of the PC and tablet in one form factor.

So, what do you do with your gorgeous new Windows 8 device? Anything. It’s perfect for all aspects of your life, both work and play. To really make the Windows vision, the Windows 8 vision a reality, we knew we needed to lead the way, and bring the best of Microsoft to Windows 8. And we worked hard on that, and think we really did. We created Office 2013 with Windows 8 in mind. It’s beautiful. It shares a similar style and clean look with the new Windows. It’s designed for Windows touch laptops and tablets. And it works great with a stylus.

Individually, the new Office and Windows 8 I think are remarkable, and together they’re really, truly magical. You’re not going to find that phenomenal productivity experience on any other tablet. Windows 8 also needed a first-class search experience. So, we built in Bing search, and we designed a beautiful Bing search application. And for people who just kind of want to browse and get a quick view of the world, we’ve included applications that keep you up to date on everything that’s happening on the Web. Right out of the box, you’ll find gorgeous applications built on Bing. We call them the Bing Apps, Bing News, Bing Finance, Bing Travel, Bing Maps, Bing Weather, Bing Sports. These apps combine great articles, photography, data, and short-form video from the top media brands, for example, here in the U.S., The Wall Street Journal, Fox Sports, The New York Times, CNBC, and many, many others, along with everything that Bing knows about the World Wide Web.

Internet Explorer 10 is here, fast, fluid, and as Steven and Julie and Mike all had a chance to say, it is perfect for touch. And just as you can pin applications to your Start screen, you can also put your favorite applications with your favorite websites on the Start screen and just a touch away. I’ll call one thing to your attention today particularly, because I think it’s very interesting, which is the redesign that we did in MSN, all for Windows 8 and IE 10. We redesigned it so it shares the same gorgeous look of Windows 8, and it is the first website I would say that’s been fully designed to take advantage of the touch capabilities in IE10 and will lead the way. I think it’s a great example of how a website can look and feel in the Windows 8 world.

We also launched Outlook.com, it’s a new modern email service designed to work seamlessly on the Web and in Windows 8. SkyDrive will keep your photos and other documents in sync. And Windows 8 has an incredible real-time communications experience with our new Skype application. Skype on Windows 8, it’s fast, it’s easy, it’s beautiful. It’s designed to be always on, to be immersive, effortless, and easy to use. It’s fun. It truly is the best Skype experience on any device.

No device is complete without an entertainment experience. So, we’re launching the Xbox Music service, Xbox video, and Xbox games with Windows 8. With Xbox Music you create your own playlist, and you stream from this global catalog of 30 million songs for free.

And if you actually own an Xbox, with Xbox smart glass you can pair your Windows 8 device with your Xbox console to control your living room environment. Simply select a movie from your tablet, Windows 8 tablet, and queue it to play to your television set. It gets even cooler. When you watch a movie, your Windows tablet converts into the ultimate second screen experience. It magically serves up relevant information on what you’re watching, who are the actors and actresses, what other movie has he or she been in before. You don’t have to do anything at all but enjoy.

People are going to love the new Windows devices and all that they can do. One thing I’ll underscore, though, is that our enterprise customers will also love the new Windows 8 devices. Windows uniquely gives them the tools they need to protect their corporate data, something that they rely on from Microsoft. Business IT departments tell us that Windows 8 will give them what they need, while at the same time giving them the ability to let their employees select the Windows devices that they really want. And we’re going to continue to add to Windows 8 experience for business. Expect much more to come from Microsoft Dynamics, from Yammer, from Visual Studio, from Windows Server, and from Azure.

When people choose Windows 8, they can also do so knowing one other important thing; that is that there is a phone, a great phone, designed to work in a similar way as Windows, access the same services, share the same information, and that phone is Windows Phone 8. It uses Live Tiles to keep you connected to your world. It uses the same Microsoft account. It accesses the same content that you’ve stored in SkyDrive, and the playlists that you’ve created in Xbox Music. You’ll get to know more about the new Windows Phone 8 on Monday. We can’t wait to show how we have really re-invented the smartphone around you.

Developers around the world are facing a time of unprecedented opportunity with the grand opening today of the Windows Store. As Steven said, there are 670 million Windows PCs just waiting to be upgraded to Windows 8. That is a very large number even in the world of large numbers in this industry. Additionally, in the next year, analysts have forecast sales of another 400 million new PCs, most of which will run Windows 8.

As I travel the world, I see developers who are very enthused about this opportunity. For the first time, all of our Windows 8 users will be able to directly access new applications like the ones that we talked about from Urbanspoon, and Hulu and others. Developers are working fast and furiously to stock the shelves of our new store with great apps for the hundreds and millions of people who will get new Windows devices just in the next year.

Developers love how the same apps will run on chip sets that power all of these form factors, including tablets, desktops, and laptops. And they love the developer-friendly terms of the Windows Store. All of this points to a growing number of great new experiences and applications on these new wonderful Windows devices.

We’ve grown very fond of this term “Windows re-imagined.” You’ve heard it today, and you’re certainly going to hear it in our ads. It’s a bold and innovative set of work that we’ve done in Windows 8, and I think that phrase “Windows re-imagined” really captures what our team set out to do with Windows 8. Windows 8 PCs really are the best PCs ever. Just look at the stunning lineup available today, they’re all personal. They’re all alive with activity.

Most importantly for today, Windows 8 does bring together the best of the world, PC, tablet, work and play. You will absolutely love the new Windows, but you’re not going to take my word for it, and I encourage you, head out to a retail store, check them out online. In the case of Windows 8, seeing, touching, clicking, and swiping is really believing.

Thank you for your time today. Welcome to the world of Windows 8.

(Cheers and applause.)

END

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