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Mary Jo Foley reports at ZDNet that according to sources who've had good track records on Windows information, Microsoft won't be delivering a new Start Menu for Windows 8 with its coming Windows 8.1 Update 2, after all. "Up until recently, Microsoft was hoping to make a new "Mini" Start Menu part of a second update to Windows 8.1," says Foley. "Windows 8.1 Update 2 was and still is, last I heard slated to arrive in August of this year." Microsoft's operating systems group has decided to hold off on delivering a Microsoft-developed Start Menu until Threshold, the next "major" release of Windows. Threshold, which may or may not ultimately be called Windows 9, is expected to be released in April 2015.
The original Windows 8 interface lacked the Start Menu, a familiar component of previous versions of the operating system, replacing it with the live tile-driven Start screen. Many users didn't like the change, and some PC manufacturers and developers offered ways to bring back versions of the old Start Menu. Microsoft appeared to relent at Build when it unveiled the revised Start Menu, enhanced with Windows Modern UI improvements.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 04 2014, @01:24PM
The plan all along seemed to be to split Windows between a Metro-only OEM version for Wal-Mart and Office Depot consumer PCs, and a "Legacy" business version that would run traditional WinAPI apps. The idea was to monetize their captive installed base by providing a bunch of Metro apps that only work with MS back-end web sites. I figured this out when I discovered how hard it was to create a local account on a Win8 install. It's possible, but the idea is to force you to create a Bing online account. There were too many WinAPI packages out there to just force Metro on OEM users from day 1, but the plan behind the split-personality of Win8 was clearly to separate the market.
I don't think MS has given up, either. Recently they announced a Bing-only OEM version of Win8 which is part of the same plan.
Look for Win9 to come in two flavors: A Metro-only consumer edition which forces you to log in to MS's online services and play in their walled garden, and a really expensive business "legacy" edition that will run WinAPI apps (something consumers could never afford, but with deep discounts for corporations). What they want to do is capture the value of data mining for their captive audience of Windows users. They're trying to squeeze profits out of them.
(Score: 2) by emg on Wednesday June 04 2014, @04:10PM
I wouldn't be surprised if that's an Evil Plan hatched somewhere in Redmond, but who's going to buy a Windows PC if it can't run Windows apps? There's no reason for anyone to buy a PC which can only run Metro apps, when they could buy an Android tablet, a Chromebook, an iPad, or a Mac instead.
(Score: 2, Funny) by MajorTom on Wednesday June 04 2014, @08:14PM
He didn't say it was a good plan...
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Wednesday June 04 2014, @04:42PM
This already exists today. See Windows RT which does almost exactly this (Office is a "legacy" app, but its the only thing that uses the Desktop; my mom bought an RT tablet which let me get a good look at the damn thing).
From the jailbreaking threads, people have discovered the same functionality exists with Windows 8 today; you can enable it with a debugger and setting a specific value in kernel memory which enforces signature checking.
Still always moving