Acer president Jim Wong has been highly critical of Microsoft and the Windows 8 operating system over the past year. The executive previously bashed the company for its Surface tablet and failed marketing of Windows 8 devices. Microsoft recently confirmed that it is working on Windows 8.1, codenamed Windows Blue, which will be an update that includes various software changes, such as the return of the Start button. Wong believes these changes are a step in the right direction, noting that Microsoft is being more “considerate” to its hardware partners and adopting their input “at a high percentage.”
“When we were talking to Microsoft, our input to them is balance,” the executive said to The Wall Street Journal. “The world in the next five years is not going 100 percent to touch. Although touch makes a lot of possibilities for PCs, you need to take care of the rest of the world that doesn’t need touch.”
Acer chairman and CEO J.T. Wang is also optimistic about the future of Windows and his company’s continued work with Microsoft.
“In the past we consider they (Microsoft) live in heaven,” he said. “But now they go down to earth and they start to learn how people living on earth think.”
Microsoft plans to release a public preview of Windows 8.1 at the end of June with devices set to arrive by this year’s holiday season.
