By now you have probably read all the pertinent information from the Windows 10 announcement and if you are daring enough you probably downloaded and installed the Technical Preview on some unsuspecting hardware. I think we can all agree that the star of the show was the reinvented start menu designed to appease corporate desktop users everywhere (you know, the people that actually buy Windows licenses). But what got a few people spun out of shape was that the demo included improvements to the command prompt!
Why improve the command prompt?
If any app on a PC reflects the status of pure geek it has to be the command prompt, if you want a quick scene in a movie that needs a glaring representation of a hacker at work you inevitably see a command prompt floating on at least one of their 3 monitors. So immediately we know that this demo is Microsoft’s attempt to court the most productive PC users of all … the IT/IS/Developer. I see Scott Hanselman was positively swooning.
Windows 8 by contrast is a consumer OS with almost no benefits for a developer like myself over Windows 7. I reckon the message they are sending us is that your tech leaders will want this new OS, they will be more productive, just look at what we are doing with the age old dos prompt (not really a dos prompt). Also noteworthy is that the tech preview schedule calls for any new consumer bits to be previewed last (after enterprise).
If Windows 8 represented death by a thousand cuts to the consumer world, then Microsoft is trying to position Windows 10 as life with a thousand butterfly kisses for the most productive and technical people in your company. We shall see.
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