Mary-Jo Foley at ZDNet argues that the Windows 8 interface will be consistent across all devices, partly contradicting what I wrote yesterday about the system (in that on a tablet Windows 8 would be closer to iOS in concept than Windows).

Given that we’re a year away from Windows 8’s release and Microsoft’s being quite contradictory about it, I’d say there’s a lot of time for things to be nailed down. I suspect there is also an internal struggle at Microsoft. I’ll bet there are certain people within Microsoft arguing hard for retaining ‘proper’ Windows on tablets, because “that’s what people want”, and others arguing to ditch it, because “that’s what people need”. Alternatively, perhaps we’ll end up in a situation where the Desktop ‘app’ that boots the ‘classic’ Windows experience exists on tablets, but is all but irrelevant, due a lack of app support and the interface not being suitable for touch. That wouldn’t be great, but assuming there are plenty of Metro-style apps, that wouldn’t hugely affect performance nor the experience of using a Windows 8 tablet.