In his keynote speech, he touched on evolutions in computer UI, user interface technology- the way that people interface with computers, stressing that Windows 8 OS will stand out from others in terms of UI, featuring finger-touch and pen-based inputs.
“We want computers to know more about the world, applications, data, contents, and your interests,” said he. According to him, Microsoft has spearheaded a series of evolutions in the machine user interface from PC graphical user interface to mouse to mobile touches. What he expects the next 5 years to newly bring about in the UI is the debut of voice, speech and vision recognition as well as motion sensor and new video display technology.
“We will see evolutions on PCs, TVs and phones in the basic way that we control and edit these system,” added he.
"Digital technology stil has a way to go"
He was confident that Microsoft’s Windows OS will continue to stay at the heart of those systems. “There will be more than 350 million Windows 7 OS devices to be shipped this year around the world. With Windows 8, an operating system after Windows 7, we will have to support touch and pen in addition to mouse and keyboard. And we will support tablets and notebooks. We will have to support very small devices and small screen to very large device and very large screens. I have a new 81-inch windows 8 slate,” said he.
To carve out niches in smartphone space, which is the stronghold of Apple iOS and Google Android, he also reiterated that Microsoft would not only support Intel’s X86 processor architecture, but also ARM processor cores.
Following Steve Ballmer’s opening keynote speech, Warren East, CEO with ARM Holdings stepped on the stage to give his keynote speech on processor architecture eco-system, echoing what Steve Ballmer talked about the UI technology.
“In the mobile world, it was transformed for the last 20 years. Today, we have so many different types of phones and screens. Evolutions of products has changed the way people interact (with machines),” said he. Yet, he was not as confident about the adoption scenario of Windows phone 8 on ARM processor platform into the smartphone market as into notebook and tablet PC market.
Looking forward, he predicts that the size of microprocessor will become as thin small as a hair, but will be able to deliver more computing power than the guidance system deployed on Apollo 11 spacecraft with a tiny single cell battery in 15 years.