Joe Belfiore and the 'house renovation project' that is Windows 10

Computing sits down with the Microsoft vice president of PC, tablet and phone to go in-depth about Windows 10's promise for the enterprise

"I worry that people out there in the world are going to assume we're more ‘done' than we are," says Joe Belfiore, corporate vice president of PC, tablet and phone for Microsoft.

Speaking to Computing at Microsoft's TechEd conference in Barcelona, Belfiore is commenting on the ongoing public reaction to the Windows 10 Preview, which hit the streets a few weeks ago, and is already drawing fairly comprehensive write-ups in the press.

"But it's like a house renovation project," he says. "If you put this on your PC, at some point there might be sawdust in the air as we're cutting walls down and moving things around."

Windows 10 seems to be another stab at what Windows 8 attempted to achieve with its dualistic structure of legacy Win32-flavoured, mouse and keyboard-operated desktop UI coupled with the oft-derided mobile-friendly "Modern" tile interface.

But as the man leading the new Windows project - Windows 10 is pencilled in for a 2015 release - Belfiore is only too aware of what worked and what didn't, as Windows 8 met concerted resistance among enterprise IT leaders.

"I think there are a number of things that happened together in Windows 8, and we learned a bunch about how they landed with end-users and developers," reflects Belfiore. But he's still sure there's room for both the Win32 and Modern interfaces in Windows 10.

"In Windows 8, the Modern platform had a wide range of problems it was trying to solve. There's the problem that when you run Win32 apps today, they have wide-ranging capabilities on a system.

"They can write things into the registry, they can put stuff in the startup group - if you install a Win32 app it can install some other apps alongside of it that can be doing things you don't know about, so it's a lot harder for users in the wilds of the internet to be able to predict what they're getting from Win32 apps. Sometimes they get a great experience, and sometimes they don't."

The Modern interface, Belfiore reasons, was "an effort to try to address a bunch of those problems, like you see on mobile devices - an app can only write to its own storage, it has to get authorisation to do things like use GPS or your location, it has an updating mechanism that's built-in".

Belfiore describes the app format as "a whole bunch of architectural benefits" for Windows 8, combined with a "theory" that consumer familiarity with phones and tablets would help them easily acclimatise to Modern, even when using it next to the standard desktop UI.

Windows 10 - as we all know by now - is seeking to combine those two UI styles by integrating the Modern interface into the Start menu, and running Modern apps within the desktop environment. Beyond the visuals, Belfiore is also enthusiastic about what this means for developers.

"A developer can choose an implementation method for its benefits and drawbacks, separate from the UI," he explains.

"So if I'm a developer who has a big Win32 codebase that I like and know very well and don't want to mess with, that's fine - [the app] can run in a window and in Windows 10 it can have a Live tile, which wasn't possible in Windows 8. The benefits of the platform are distinct from requiring a particular UI approach. And we think that's just going to work better for everyone in general. So Win32 apps can still be run in tablet mode, and vice versa with a mouse and keyboard."

So sure is Belfiore that Modern has the chops this time, that he reminds Computing that the next version of Microsoft Office is slated for development on Modern, rather than falling back on Win32.

But a question remains about the Windows 10 plan. UIs aside, another major feature Microsoft is trumpeting is Windows 10's "shared core" build - the ability to run a set of almost completely shared APIs among the desktop, mobile, Internet of Things (IoT) and even Xbox One versions of the OS.

This feature was announced as "Universal Apps" on Windows 8.1 back in March at Microsoft's Build conference (at which CEO Satya Nadella stated around 91 per cent of APIs are already shared among the different versions of Windows). So why, Computing asks Belfiore, did Microsoft feel the need to start all over with a new OS? Why not keep building Windows 8.1?

"If you look only at the PC and phone [in Windows 10], it's not that different than Windows 8 and 8.1 from a shared core perspective," admits Belfiore.

"We started the shared-core work pre-Windows Phone 8. So Windows Phone 8 was built on a derivative of the Windows 8 core, whereas with Windows 8.1 and Phone 8.1, both teams collaborated and defined a common core, which both shipped. And that common core we still have, adding more capabilities into it to make up the gap, and then bringing it to IoT and Xbox One. So in terms of the degree of change on phone and PC, between 8.1 and 10, the core codebase is a clear forward evolution of what we already have, but has a lot more in it."

Belfiore acknowledges he isn't "super expert" enough to describe "the precise difference" beyond an advance in the Bluetooth stack, but acknowledges the codebases are definitely "pretty close". If it ain't broke, perhaps...

One other interesting factor about Windows 10 is that the preview release occurred far in advance of the official release, and that Microsoft seems unusually keen to collect feedback from the public. Computing asks Belfiore if Microsoft is acting on all this advice from users?

"That depends on what the feedback is!" laughs Belfiore.

"[But] it's hard to know, because we're not done yet, so it's hard to predict the outcome. I think we have a psychology about it - we just want to know where we're at, and not be surprised. So if we find out early what people don't like, say, the UI, we have better information to act on it.

"But my take so far is generally pretty positive."