Microsoft's Windows 8 Blog has officially announced that Windows 8 will include an app store like Apple.  There, users will be able to download Microsoft software and third party software from developers.

Microsoft has today formally launched the official Windows 8 blog and named it Building Windows 8 with
Steven Sinofsky, the President of the Windows Division making the first post.
Sinofsky started the blog post by stating that Windows 8 would be the best
operating system and as mentioned by us earlier would be working on both old and
new PC’s. Here is what he posted-



"Building the next release of Microsoft Windows is an industry-wide effort
that Microsoft approaches with a strong sense of responsibility and humility.
Windows 8 reimagines Windows for a new generation of computing devices,
and will be the very best operating system for hundreds of millions of PCs, new
and old, used by well over a billion people globally."


Sinofsky further stated in the first blog post that pre-release version of
Windows 8 would be released in coming months. The Build conference is being held
next month and according to news, Microsoft would be releasing the beta version
during this period. It would be interesting to see whether this news is
confirmed or not.


Sinofsky said that they would be keeping a close look on the blog and would
be going through all the blog posts and comments. Here is what he wrote-



"Feel free to send us your thoughts via comments or email—we can’t respond to
every question we receive, but your suggestions for blog topics are welcome. The
email contact link in the right pane goes straight to my inbox without any
filter (except spam filtering). Please note that we are also making this blog
available in several other languages (acting on feedback from the Engineering
Windows 7 blog) and you can expect to see those posts within 48 hours of the
English language post."

Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha said his company is open to Windows 8 as a platform 
and expects an aggressive roll out of newAndroidtablets in the second
half.  Motorola is open to Windows 8 as a platform, said CEO 
Sanjay Jha on Tuesday.
"We're completely open to Windows as a platform," he said when speaking at an
Oppenheimer
Annual Technology &  Communications Conference today. The
conference was streamed via Motorola's  Web site. Its stable of devices such as
the Droid 3 and Droid X2 smartphones and  Xoom tablet currently all run Google's
Android operating system.
"We're not leading the charge on Windows 8, but as we become comfortable that
  [Windows 8] is a viable ecosystem [and] that the quality of innovation and 
quality of services and quality of capabilities [are] being delivered there, we 
will certainly be open to that," he said in response to a question.
Jha was careful, however, to intersperse his remarks about Windows by saying 
that "all focus is on Android today."
He was also queried about Nokia and its Windows strategy and its relationship 
with Microsoft. "Nokia seems to be disproportionately well positioned in that 
ecosystem. If our position in that ecosystem could be made to be somewhat 
equivalent, that would be interesting option for us to consider," he said.
And Jha spoke about the Xoom tablet. "Price points move much faster than 
anticipated," he said when asked what he had learned from the being first with 
an Android Honeycomb tablet. "We need to launch globally with Wi-Fi much 
earlier. Wi-Fi turned out to be a big portion of the shipments," Jha added.
As to future tablets, Motorola will come out with "much more aggressive form 
factors" in the second half of the year, he said.
Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-20090423-64/motorola-ceo-completely-open-to-windows-8/#ixzz1UgpZr9se

On its earnings  call last Friday, audio technology company
Dolby announced that the next  version of MicrosoftWindows might not  included its technology.


Its stock dropped about 18% on the news.On its earnings  call last Friday, audio technology company
Dolby announced that the next  version of MicrosoftWindows might not  included its technology.


Its stock dropped about 18% on the news.


Microsoft has shipped Dolby technology for playing surround sound DVDs in 
Windows since 2007. According to Dolby's 2010 financial statements, last year Windows licensing made up 12%
of the company's revenue, up  from 10% in 2008 and 2009.


So why strip Dolby surround sound support out of Windows 8?


Microsoft had no comment, but it's probably because Microsoft has found that 
pushing the PC as a home entertainment device didn't help Windows sales. If PC 
makers want to make high-end computers that connect to surround-sound audio 
systems, that's fine -- let them license Dolby's technology directly.


Instead, the Xbox  360 and Kinect  now form the wedge of Microsoft's living room
strategy, while Windows 8 is  focused on tablet computing -- particularly
keeping the iPad out of big  businesses.


This doesn't look like good news for Windows Media Center, the 
remote-controllable home entertainment system that Microsoft has built into 
Windows since Vista. So far, Microsoft hasn't said anything about Media Center 
in Windows 8.


It's possible that Media Center will be revamped to focus on video over the 
Internet, with less emphasis on playing back DVDs. But it could also be cut from
  Windows 8 entirely. Enthusiasts would be upset, but most Windows users probably
  wouldn't even notice it was gone.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/why-did-microsoft-cut-dolby-out-of-windows-8-2011-8#ixzz1USuJ6F2S


 

  Microsoft will be putting Hyper-V virtulization into Windows 8 server to
improve performance and organization.  That's it -- so far -- but I guess in September we'll hear a lot more on
the Hyper-V
front and its possible integration in Windows 8.     The question at this point is: Will Hyper-V really make it into the client or is
this just some pre-beta experiment? If it's built-in (and I think that's highly
likely), Hyper-V is a big step towards decoupling Windows 8 from its
predecessors. In theory, by running all legacy applications virtualized
you'd get rid of legacy components and security issues that plague Windows OS
today -- as ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley hinted at over a year
ago, referring to a spokesperson of Microsoft France. Virtual
applications could be integrated seamlessly into the host desktop with next to
no performance loss (remember, we're dealing with a Type 1 client hypervisor
running on bare hardware; Virtual PC is a Type 2 with more layers in between and
more performance overhead). Still, there's this issue of VM maintenance,
security and its resource utilization. 

BUILD is Microsoft's conference for developers.  This is where new operating systems will be previewed and much more.  If you were lucky enough to get tickets, then you will get to see windows 8 beta.  Sadly, the tickets just got sold out exactly a month later they were getting sold.