I think you are onto something here. I think the tiled interface will be very similar to the Windows Media Center shell. It's a specialized interface for touch, just like WMC is a specialized interface for couch surfing.
In the end it's not going to be very useful for end users unless Microsoft really bites the bullet and forces developers to migrate to the tiled interface, en mass. Apple did that with iOS, basically forcing developers to create entirely new apps, because the input method of touch was so drastically different that apps requiring mouse-level precision would never work. Microsoft will never do that, so instead they need to fragment their OS into two interfaces, touch and classic.
I fear a Windows 8 tablet will be the worst of both worlds. It will need enough horsepower to run "classic mode" with all of the baggage that brings, yet most tablet users are just doing simple media consumption so they can stay in tiled mode most of the time. In the end you bring a product to market that costs $1500, has a quad core CPU and 4GB of RAM, and gets 4 hours of battery life - not to mention it weighs 3 pounds. Basically you end up with the current crop of Windows tablets. A stylus will probably be included just to make classic mode usable.
I'm not saying there isn't a market for a powerful tablet that can run Windows 8 in classic mode, but those tablets have been around for years and they haven't gotten mass market traction for a reason.
Actually MS directly addressed the horsepower aspect. Remember they're going to have this running on ARM. I've used Win7 for consumption scenarios on a $250 netbook - worked like a champ.
> It will need enough horsepower to run "classic mode" with all of the baggage that brings.
Microsoft managed to squeeze Windows 7 (albeit crippled) onto netbooks; I'm hoping they'd see the use case you're describing and make Windows 8 tablet-friendly (which at least now looks touch-friendly).
(Microsoft demoed Windows 7 on ARM, and AFAIK ARM chips aren't that powerful―there's hope yet.)
At least in Windows-land, I really don't see the point in a touch OS. I've played with Lenovo X-series tablets, and I love the older ones (Wacom-based) and can't stand the touch ones.
But I love being able to run Photoshop and draw in my lap, so I'm kinda biased.
In the end it's not going to be very useful for end users unless Microsoft really bites the bullet and forces developers to migrate to the tiled interface, en mass. Apple did that with iOS, basically forcing developers to create entirely new apps, because the input method of touch was so drastically different that apps requiring mouse-level precision would never work. Microsoft will never do that, so instead they need to fragment their OS into two interfaces, touch and classic.
I fear a Windows 8 tablet will be the worst of both worlds. It will need enough horsepower to run "classic mode" with all of the baggage that brings, yet most tablet users are just doing simple media consumption so they can stay in tiled mode most of the time. In the end you bring a product to market that costs $1500, has a quad core CPU and 4GB of RAM, and gets 4 hours of battery life - not to mention it weighs 3 pounds. Basically you end up with the current crop of Windows tablets. A stylus will probably be included just to make classic mode usable.
I'm not saying there isn't a market for a powerful tablet that can run Windows 8 in classic mode, but those tablets have been around for years and they haven't gotten mass market traction for a reason.