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by Jeff Key.
Original Post: What problem is Metro solving?
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I'd blown off Metro until I saw this in an article:
The format, based on XML, will be licensed royalty-free, and users will be able to open Metro files without a special client. In the demonstration, a Metro file was opened and printed from Internet Explorer, Microsoft's Web browser.
No special client required? Hot damn! Send me a Metro document right now and let's see what I can do with it.
The Metro technology is likely to go head to head with Adobe's PostScript technology. "It is a potential Adobe killer," said Richard Doherty, research director at The Envisioneering Group in Seaford, N.Y. "But this is just the first warning shot. Adobe could put something that is even more compelling [on top of] Longhorn."
Hm, PostScript has been around since the stone tablet and "Adobe Reader" has the world population as its installed base. I'm not losing sleep about this if I'm Adobe.
Again, what problem is this solving? What is going to compel people to install this thing? Including it in the OS is fine, but I doubt Longhorn is going to be flying off the shelves. XP is a great OS and people already have more than enough horsepower. It's also a chicken/egg problem. People aren't going to waste their time/money publishing in this format that only a few people use, or even know exists.
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