Bill Gates, the chairman of Microsoft Corp. says that the idea behind Windows 8 operating system in general and the Surface media tablet in particular is to bridge the PC and the tablet experiences. While in the future natural user interfaces are going to prevail, today we still need physical keyboards, mice, etc., which is why Microsoft is bridging the past and the future.

“This is an absolutely critical product. It takes Windows into the world of touch, low-power devices, really giving people the best of what you think of as a tablet type experience and the PC experience. It is a great upgrade for normal Windows usage, but that idea of a store, rich user interface, it is a big step, it is a key to where the personal computing is going,” said Bill Gates, in a brief interview with Microsoft’s TechNet.

Since the concept of Windows 8 is rather broad, Bill Gates like the idea of own-brand devices that provide the full Windows 8 experience and set the quality and feature-set bar for the rest of the market. Therefore, the co-founder of the world’s largest software developer not only endorses Microsoft’s new software, hardware and services concept, but also praises the first fruit of this new strategy, the Microsoft new Surface media tablet based on Windows RT operating system.

“Surface is an unbelievably great product. It is amazing. It embodies this idea of can you get an even better tablet, but it also has what you expect it a PC. Tablet that’s got a stand, tablet you can attach a keyboard to. But it also gives you access to some of the classic software, like Office, if you want,” said the chairman of Microsoft.

Since Windows RT can already work on ARM-based system-on-chips, throwing in some additional communicational capabilities along with some other features will allow it to operate on a smartphone, provided that the latter has a lot of NAND flash memory installed. Bill Gates just reaffirmed the plan to make Windows and Windows Phone a single platform.

“[Windows and Windows Phone are] evolving literally to be a single platform,” said Mr. Gates.

Tags: Microsoft, Windows RT, Surface, Windows 8