Touch to become dominant computing interface, Microsoft says

Just a week after unveiling its own tablet computer, and months before the expected release of its touch-friendly Windows® 8 operating system, Microsoft® now says touch is the way of the future in the computer industry.

Speaking at TechEd Europe in Amsterdam, Antoine Leblond, Microsoft vice president for Windows Web Services, notes that "touch is coming to PCs and that's going to change the way [user interfaces] are designed very dramatically, just like the mouse did," according to news provider PC Pro.

Leblond asserts that his company's own Windows 8 represents a generational change. Unlike Windows 7, which Leblond says was "rooted in the last generational change of Windows," Windows 8 embraces the direction in which the computing industry seems to be traveling amid an influx of touch-enabled mobile devices.

"We've reimagined Windows from the OS to the chipset. We've designed Windows 8 for the billion people who use PCs today and the next billion. It works on the broadest range of devices from the biggest desktop PCs to the portable tablets powered by ARM and Intel®," Leblond says, according to TechRadar.

Windows 8 is expected to hit shelves in the fall of 2012.