Microsoft President Steven Sinofsky drops news of Windows 8 Preview at Japan’s Windows 8 Dev Days along with new SkyDrive apps

Microsoft President Steven Sinofsky announces June Windows 8 Preview

The Windows 8 Operating System just got another page written when Microsoft President Steven Sinofsky dropped the shoe in Japan at Windows 8 Dev Days.

The new and hotly anticipated operating system will get another preview in the first week of June 2012.

There was not press release, no blog entry – just this photo posted on Twitter and the usual short Twitter message “Announce…Windows 8 Release Preview first week of June. Here’s the announce from Japan’s Windows 8 Dev Days.”  

The Windows 8 Consumer Preview is already twice as popular as the beta of Windows 7. People, like myself, are using Windows 8 everyday and finding it an exciting improvement over previous versions.

That’s not to say Windows 8 is perfect. After all it is a beta.

The first week of June release of another preview shows how strong Microsoft is in meeting their unannounced shipping date of August for the final build and October for commercial release.

Windows 8 is going to integrate the desktop, laptop, tablet and smart phone devices with one consistent touch interface. Windows 8 will be the most revolutionary release since The Rolling Stones sang “Start Me Up” for Windows 95. Ironically, the Start Button will disappear in Windows 8.

Windows 95 commercial featuring The Rolling Stones singing “Start Me Up”

SkyDrive update

Over on the Building Windows 8 blog, Microsoft President Steven Sinofsky posted news of an upgrade the Cloud services for Windows 8 SkyDrive.

In February, we told you about our goals for connecting your apps, files, PCs, and devices to the cloud with SkyDrive and Windows 8. Since then, we have provided the App Preview of a Windows 8 app to access SkyDrive, and we’ve updated the SkyDrive web experience. Today, we are delivering new capabilities for SkyDrive across the Windows platform.

The new apps are Windows 7 and Windows 8 compatible, along with Mac, iPhone, iPad and Windows Phone.

I’ve just downloaded them for Windows 7 and everything looks great on a first look basis. SkyDrive now shows up in Windows Explorer, where it should if The Cloud is going to be transparent.

This is a strong pre-emptive strike against iCloud and Google Cloud.

The current version of SkyDrive, before this new app, left a few things to be desired such as it couldn’t open files with MS Office apps if they were 64-bit encoded and protected. The new apps which are available for download, include a whole suite of integration features including,

• “SkyDrive for the Windows desktop (preview available now). View and manage your personal SkyDrive directly from Windows Explorer on Windows 8, Windows 7, and Windows Vista with this new preview app available in 106 languages worldwide.
• Fetching files through SkyDrive.com. Easily access, browse, and stream files from a remote PC running the preview app to just about anywhere by simply fetching them via SkyDrive.com.
• SkyDrive storage updates. A new, more flexible approach to personal cloud storage that allows power users to get additional paid storage as their needs grow.
• SkyDrive for other devices. We’ve updated the SkyDrive apps on Windows Phone and iOS devices, bringing better management features and sharing options to those devices. We’re also releasing a new preview client for Mac OS X Lion, letting you manage your SkyDrive right from the Finder.”

Check out the video.