You can also choose between Mac OS X and Windows 8 when the Mac boots up. To do so, wait for the Mac’s bong sound at restart and then hold down the Alt/Option key. You’ll see a graphical boot menu appear with choices for Mac OS X, Windows, Recovery HD, and, if available, a bootable optical disc. Select the partition you want and enjoy.
Virtual Machine Installs
Like previous versions of Windows, it’s possible to install Windows 8 in virtual machine environments such as Microsoft Hyper-V, Oracle VirtualBox, VMware Workstation, and so on. Generally speaking, there’s no real magic to making Windows 8 work with such products, though you lose out on some graphical niceties and, usually, the touch-based goodness that makes Windows 8 special.
Windows 8 is the first client version of Windows to include its own hypervisor-based virtualization solution. This is called Hyper-V, and because this solution is generally aimed at businesses, we discuss it in Chapter 14.
From an installation perspective, you will want to download a Windows 8 disc image in ISO format and use that to install Windows 8. You cannot use the web-based installer. Since these environments are well understood and utilize generic virtualized hardware components, you will usually not need to hunt around for drivers after Setup concludes.
Windows to Go: Windows 8 on a USB Flash Drive
With Windows 8, Microsoft has finally answered a long-time request from power users, businesses, and educational institutions and has provided a unique new way to install the OS to a USB flash drive, providing users with a complete operating environment they can carry in their pocket. To use this special version of Windows 8, called Windows to Go, all you need to do is insert it in any PC, reboot, and boot from the USB drive. After about 20 seconds, you’ll be presented with your familiar, customized Windows 8 environment, complete with all your apps and data. And if you lose the USB flash drive, no problem: The entire disk can be encrypted with BitLocker and protected against data theft.
Summary
With its latest operating system, Microsoft has significantly improved the process by which you take a new or used PC and install, upgrade, or migrate to Windows 8. This procedure, called Windows Setup, now comes in a streamlined new web-based installer that bundles useful but previously separate tools for a more complete and error-free experience. But you can still install Windows 8 using the old-fashioned, media-based installer from a bootable DVD disc or USB flash drive.
Windows 8 can also be installed in various advanced configurations, including dual- and multi-boot, where multiple versions of Windows sit side by side on a single PC. It can be installed on a Mac in a variety of ways. It can be installed in virtual machines, and it can be installed to a bootable, self-contained USB flash drive in a new configuration called Windows to Go.
However you choose to install Windows 8, you can be sure that at the end of this process, you’ll have a fully functioning install, complete with all of the drivers you need to power your PC. And this chapter showed you how to make that happen.
Chapter 3
Metro: The New User Experience
• Understanding the new Windows shell and runtime
• Examining the Start screen
• Working with tiles
• Customizing the Start screen
• Working with Metro-style apps
• Accessing charms and the edge UI
• Finding more apps in the Windows Store
• Understanding contracts
• Working with hardware devices and peripherals
You don’t have to spend too much time with Windows 8 before it hits you: This Windows version is like nothing that’s come before. The biggest and most visual change, of course, is the new Metro environment, which includes the Start screen, various full-screen Metro-style apps, and several Metro user experiences that all sit on a brand-new runtime engine called WinRT. Not only does Windows 8 look different from its predecessors, it really is a brand-new operating system, built from scratch to meet the needs of today’s quickly evolving technology landscape. Yes, all your old desktop applications and hardware devices still work. But the underpinnings of Windows—its soul, really—has completely changed.
This chapter dives deep into the new Metro environment and explains how it works and why it works the way it does. You’ll look at how to use this new UI on PCs of all kinds—including desktop, laptop, tablet, and hybrid devices—and how you can get the most out of it regardless of the hardware you’re using. You’ll also look at the hidden new features available to the Start screen and the new Metro-style apps that run on top of this environment. In Windows 8, it may seem like everything has changed, and in many ways it has. There are only two ways to face change as dramatic as this: fear or excitement. We choose the latter. And if you get through this chapter with us, you will, too.
One of the tough decisions we had with this book concerned naming conventions. See, we think names are important. They provide a simple and obvious way to refer to the things we’re describing throughout the book. It’s nice to be able to point out a new on-screen gadget and tell you, hey, look, that’s the new thingamawhatsis or whatever.
Unfortunately, there’s a new trend at Microsoft where the (we assume) well-intentioned designers behind all the fun new interfaces in Windows 8 not only don’t want to name things, but seem actively engaged in rewriting history by retroactively simplifying the names of objects that appeared in previous Windows versions. So the Start Menu is now simply called Start. That way, when we move forward to Windows 8, Microsoft can claim that Start—or, more pretentiously, the Start experience—works like before but is now a full-screen experience and not a menu. Even though in reality, they’re completely different.
So it is with the Metro environment. Microsoft does not refer to the Metro environment as anything in particular; they just claim that it’s Windows, generically, as if wanting or needing to call out these completely new and different user experiences was a ludicrous notion. Indeed, right after it completed Windows 8, Microsoft decreed that it would not use the term Metro to describe these new experiences, ostensibly for legal reasons.
We’re not buying into this. In the interests of clarity, we’re naming things. And in those places where Microsoft refuses to name names, we’re giving them names. And sometimes we’re deviating from the way Microsoft does things. But to be clear, we’re doing this for you, to make things obvious and simpler, and to prevent clever or lengthy turns of word that would annoy all of us.
For example, Microsoft has gotten the app bug. Everything to them is an app these days. And that includes new Metro-style apps—those apps that run in the new environment described in this chapter—as well as old-school, Windows desktop-based applications. Folks, desktop applications are not apps. They’re applications. And we differentiate them from Metro-style apps—because they are very different—by giving them a different name. So when we use the term app, we’re referring only to Metro-style apps. When we use the term application, we’re referring only to desktop-based applications.