According to a source at Microsoft, the company hopes to show off its new Windows 8 design for tablets by the end of its fiscal year in June, reports Business Insider.
The source claims that Microsoft is going to be taking a more Apple-like approach to the interface design for the tablet, and will also be using concepts from the "Metro" interface developed for Windows Phone 7. Ironically, that interface grew out of the Media Center UI that shipped with Windows XP back in 2004, but the Media Center interface was meant to be viewed from up to 10 feet away and controlled with a remote control, whereas Metro is meant to be used with touch screens, writes Matt Rusoff.
Last week we posted here at Neowin, that it was speculated that the Windows 8 tablets may feature a "live tiles like interface", similar to that of WP7. Phonearena claimed to have the knowledge of what the tablet OS will entail. According to Phoneareana, they state that "there is to be dual-interface overlay, depending on what is Win 8 running on, and the tablet UI, codenamed Mosh, is speculated to feature big live tiles, similar to what Windows Phone 7 offers."
According a timetable posted by Mary Jo Foley, Windows 8 Milestone 2 coding began back on September 27, 2010 and it took slightly over a month to complete. On November 5, M2 was integrated where it began its bug fixing on December 6. The weeks to follow focused on more bug fixes and "locking down" the code.
Windows 8 Milestone 3 was scheduled to begin coding yesterday, on February 28, 2011. If the development for M3 is anywhere near the length of time as M2, The full desktop version of Windows 8 RTM would be right on schedule for a mid-2012 release.