BGR’s Zach Epstein has decided that Windows 8 (Microsoft’s unreleased operating system that was recently previewed) is the business, and he happily says so in his article Sorry Apple, Windows 8 ushers in the post-post-PC era. (Grammar pedants will also note the lack of a comma before ‘Apple’, which rather changes the meaning in that sentence, BUT!)

The difference in opinion between Apple and Microsoft is largely down to the line drawn between their operating systems. Apple has iOS for smartphones and tablets and OS X for the desktop. Microsoft instead limits its mobile OS to smartphones and is instead banking on a hybrid of sorts working across tablets, laptops and desktops. It calls this a no-compromise approach, and yet it is a compromise.

With Apple’s iOS kit, developers couldn’t bank on legacy with iOS, so they were forced to adapt applications radically; with Windows 8, ‘standard’ Windows lurks underneath. How many developers will pay scant regard to touch? How many will make the assumption that when you want to do ‘proper’ work, you’ll connect up a mouse and keyboard, and so won’t bother creating anything like iOS apps GarageBand, iA Writer, Brushes, NanoStudio, Numbers, and so on?

Maybe I and like-minded journos are wrong in thinking Microsoft has this arse-about-face and should concentrate on utilising the excellent Metro as a clean-slate for its slates. Epstein certainly seems to think so.

Apple bloggers were apparently so flustered by [Windows 8] that they resorted to bombarding Twitter with jokes about cooling fans and Silverlight instead of stopping for a moment to realize that Microsoft is showing us the future of computing.

The fans thing might have been a jibe, but when you’re banging on about a tablet being able to run Photoshop and Office as-is, you’re not going to be doing that on the kind of hardware that currently exists and is predicted to exist over the next year. One of the true benefits of a tablet is silence—I don’t want a fan inside my tablet. But more to the point, the ‘future of computing’? Really? Even the iPad isn’t the future of computing—it’s the present.

The PC was the future, and it let people perform functions they never thought possible. Then the tablet was the future, and it let people interact with content in ways they never thought possible. Now, the future means all things to all people.

To clarify, then, the future of computing is a mish-mash of the present of computing and the past of computing. OK, got it.

PCs are not going away. They will continue to be the primary means of computing for business and consumers alike. Tablets are not going away, either. They will continue to provide a much more intuitive way to interact with a consumer electronics device. Microsoft’s vision, however, unifies these devices.

And thereby compromises both. Desktop systems won’t work with touch; touch-based interfaces might be OK with a pointer, although they’ll be a bit clunky. Launchpad on OS X Lion is a case in point from the Apple camp.

One platform to rule them all. The technology exists to enable users to carry a single device that is as portable and usable as a tablet, but also as powerful and capable as a PC.

Capable in what sense and to what people? While I still mostly work on my Mac, that’s increasingly out of habit. I can just as easily write on the iPad and I’m more focussed when doing so. Also, most of my recent music ideas have been worked out on the iPad, rather than on the desktop, despite it being more powerful and ‘capable’.

It has a battery that can last all day, but it can also run Photoshop, Excel and Outlook.

This being the mythical ‘weighty tasks do not drain me’ battery, presumably.

It can weigh next to nothing and slip into a slim case, but it can also power two monitors and run proprietary enterprise software.

And it can make toast.

Apple paved the way but Microsoft will get there first with Windows 8. A tablet that can be as fluid and user friendly as the iPad but as capable as a Windows laptop. A tablet that can boot in under 10 seconds and fire up a full-scale version of Adobe Dreamweaver a few moments later. A tablet that can be slipped into a dock to instantly become a fully capable touch-enabled laptop computer. This is Microsoft’s vision with Windows 8, and this is what it will deliver.

Maybe Epstein is right. Perhaps this is what people want. Or maybe it’s what they think they want. But I’d sooner see more companies push boundaries in providing interfaces and systems that help us move on, rather than leaving one foot rooted in interface archetypes that are three decades old and that no longer provide an intuitive means to access and manipulate information. With Windows Phone, I thought I’d seen a new and brave Microsoft, a company willing to try something innovative and exciting. With Windows 8, I see the same company that’s tied to its past, scared to move on, bar adding some gloss to dated conventions.