Page-turning 'Macallan' UI will hit a Windows 7 tablet this year (video)

There's not much to your average prototype Windows 7 tablet -- just a netbook running the vanilla OS with a touchscreen instead of keyboard -- but if you've been wondering why you might care to buy one, just get a load of this Macallan UI. Developed by a third-party firm named UI Centric specifically for Windows tablet devices, it features a clean, finger-friendly interface capable of Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight, and uses the crowd-pleasing page flip gesture for multitasking functionality. Perhaps most importantly, however, UI Centric claims it will actually appear on a real slate -- come Q3 2010, a "major manufacturer" will debut the first Macallan-topped device. We're curious to see how it (and a bottle of fine scotch) will stack up against September's ExoPC. Video after the break.

[delicatessen lama Posted Aug 1st 2010 6:14PM]

Reminds me of my copy of XBMC, except it integrates email and other productivity stuff.

[darthgault Posted Aug 1st 2010 7:22PM]

their test hardware is crap ... just give me Windows 7 Home Premium with a tablet theme ... bigger icons and larger _OX that i can touch easy. All i need ... and a flush mounted screen so i'm not digging for the X in the corner to close the window.

[MrLinux Posted Aug 1st 2010 7:42PM]

only s skin with maybe 5 apps, you will still have the problem of most apps not being tablet centric to deal with. It wont make even a small dent in the iPAD market share because "all iPAD apps are touch screen centric", same goes for Android.

[RollingRock Posted Aug 1st 2010 9:05PM]

My kindda device.. Work and home.. All in one:)

[cool8man Posted Aug 1st 2010 9:20PM]

That UI looks awful. If people think this looks or works better than Windows 7 then I'm at a complete loss. If I got a tablet that had that interface the first thing I would do is figure out how to remove it and run standard Windows 7.

[Bervick Posted Aug 1st 2010 10:22PM]

I did not find it sluggish. Perhaps the swipe speed is configurable. Plus, if it swiped real fast, it would not be showcasing the effect well.

Running Flash too. LOL. Take that Apple.

Is this (going to be) some incarnation of Courier.

[Mr Batman Posted Aug 1st 2010 10:32PM]

Ehhh, gimmicky and not intuitive enough. The Windows Phone 7 UI is MUCH better than this. I like the Flash and Silverlight support though.

[Johnny Tremaine Posted Aug 1st 2010 11:16PM]

The UI looks decent enough, though a bit annoying. The biggest question though is what the user experience is like once you're past the shell software, not unlike SPB Mobile Shell over Windows Mobile.
After Mcallen, once you need to open an application, you're smack dab back into a Windows desktop environment, and you have to pull out a stylus. Yuck.

[Amusednow Posted Aug 2nd 2010 1:55AM]

Just change the dam screen don't waste resources with page turn effects. touch-drag-swap thats' all the UI should handle for screen transitions. Honestly after maybe 10 minutes it'll get old as you just want to get to your content. Tablets would be a nice way to get back to efficient coding but I guess that won't be the case as even they'll be bogged down by bloated programs.

[mrqs Posted Aug 2nd 2010 3:02AM]

"come Q3 2010, a "major manufacturer" will debut the first Macallan-topped device"

we've been living q3 2010 for a month already

[Sicarius123 Posted Aug 2nd 2010 3:21AM]

I like this. I hope the UI layer is easy to exit back to Win7 though or the functionality will be severely decreased.

Harp on about the iPad all you want, but personally I will be buying a Windows 7 slate as a computer replacement, something the iPad will never be able to do. Really I have no need for a powerful machine at home anymore, I'm currently using an old P4 1.4 laptop and todays top spec netbooks wipe the floor with my old vaio.

I'm quite happy to leave sitting at a desk in a corner to work, and recently bought a windows home server to replace the remaining functions my old desktop had.

This is the household of the future, not a household where you have a portable half computer device that requires a computer also to function.

Hopefully the first round of slates running this are top spec 1080p capable windows 7 machines, and not wec7 machines.

[LSE Posted Aug 2nd 2010 6:37AM]

hard to say from a prototype but MS taking the same approach as google did with android (let the OEM design the UI) could be both a problem (like with the splintering of android UIs like sense etc) or an asset by letting the OEMs compete among themselves to come up with the best (or least worse) experience.

I'm not sure how I feel yet given I think one of the iphone's strenghts (and that of WP7) is the unified look and feel across all devices. But it seems the choice may have been made for them giving that windows 7 really doesn't have any restrictions on what you can do with it.

[cpd5c45 Posted Aug 2nd 2010 8:01AM]

Blah, Blah, Blah....VAPOR

[Inchigh Posted Aug 2nd 2010 8:48AM]

News just in Apple storms down Microsoft's doors!!! That's out patent bleh bleh blahh...

[Volkodlak Posted Aug 2nd 2010 12:41PM]

Sure it looks great, but for it to be usable at all the really need to work on reducing that lag; it was painful to watch in parts.

[darkkevind Posted Aug 4th 2010 8:08AM]

A UI like that is nice, but don't go for an inferior slate/tablet, buy an ExoPC in September with a much superior GPU, and if you don't like their custom UI, install one that you do like, that's the beauty of a Win 7 OS over Android.

Launch date is close! http://kevinDark.co.uk/ExoPC.aspx

[Sicarius123 Posted Aug 4th 2010 8:17AM]

@darkkevind
Isn't that just some guy guessing when it might be released while ExoPC haven't given a date?