I have had a preview of Windows 8 on my laptop for about half a week, and this is a significant change for the desktop OS. Not only due to Windows 8 playing nice with touchscreen, but the importance that apps will have on the platform.

First a story about Twitter. I have been an active user on Twitter for about a year and a half. On my BlackBerry I use the default Twitter client. On my PlayBook, I use Blaq. On my Windows 7 desktop I just use the Twitter website. However, just a few hours after installing Windows 8 on my laptop, I felt the need to go out and download a third party app for Twitter.

There is something about the design of the metro interface that demands an app centric approach to the platform more similar to how we currently view phones and tablets, rather than today’s desktop PCs. In fact whenever you are using the traditional desktop (or any desktop apps) it feels as if you are in a virtual machine.

As a result the non-Metro apps no longer feel like native apps on the platform. This combined with the inclusion of the Windows Marketplace as the default way to download apps is going to lead to a sea of change on the app side of the platform.

Exciting times.