14 DAY TRIAL // Windows 9 is expected to be Microsoft’s next big update for the Windows product family and people close to the matter explained that the BUILD 2014 developer conference in San Francisco was the moment when the company was supposed to share some details on this new project.
That didn’t happen, however, even though the software giant had quite a lot of new information to unveil at the show, so Windows 9 still remains an enigma for every one of us.
If there’s something that could be considered Windows 9-related news, it is the return of the Start menu, which Microsoft said is expected to be back in “the next iteration of Windows.” This means that the Start menu could be part for Windows 9 when it hits the market sometime in the next 12 months or so.
Previous speculation said that Microsoft was expected to share Windows 9 details at the BUILD show, while work on the project was scheduled to begin later this month. The public launch of Windows 9 is said to be announced for early 2015, most likely in April, which means that Microsoft should complete work on this operating system in approximately 12 months.
Of course, Microsoft hasn’t provided any other information regarding the features of changes that it could make to Windows 9, but the same photo showing the upcoming Start menu also reveals something that’s at least as exciting as the return of this traditional feature in Windows.
The next iteration of Windows, as Microsoft referred to it at BUILD in San Francisco, is expected to introduce options that would allow users to run Metro apps on the desktop and thus skip the Start screen. This means that the Modern UI and the desktop could be more or less mixed for enhanced usability on the traditional PC, so Windows 9 is expected to be a major step towards reconciliation with desktop users.
As far as the Start menu is concerned, sources close to the development process previously said that Microsoft was actually planning to bring back a much simpler design, currently referred to as “mini-Start,” so the mockup that we saw at BUILD could receive quite a lot of changes in the coming months.
At this point, it’s not yet clear whether Microsoft is willing to keep everything on Windows 9 completely secret or share details at some point, so it’s really interesting to see how this one goes for the company.