14 DAY TRIAL // Not a long time ago, tech giant Microsoft has decided to publicly confirm the Blue “set of plans,” confirming that its next Windows release would be mostly based on customer feedback.
A few weeks after that, the company came back to confirm that the Start button would indeed be brought back in Windows 8.1, pointing to its willingness to listen to its users as the main reason.
This time, Windows boss Tami Reller took the stage at Computex to talk about Windows 8.1 and, just as expected, she used the occasion to reiterate the same idea once again. Windows 8.1 is designed to better fit our users, she said, so most improvements are based on their recommendations.
“Windows 8.1, it is an update, and yet I think you'll see when you see the product that we're covering some important ground with this release. Windows 8 was a big release and there were some areas where we knew we wanted to do even more to really advance that vision of mobility and the next generation of computing. And so that's what Windows 8.1 does, it advances the vision, not only bringing even more to tablets but making all PCs even better,” she said.
“We've listened, we've learned, and we've responded, and you'll see that, I believe, when you see the product. Windows 8.1 is made better, it is better, based on customer feedback,” Reller continued.
Based on the information we have at this point, Microsoft is indeed trying to make Windows 8.1 a bit more user-friendly, so in addition to the Start button, the company is also expected to introduce dedicated options to skip the Start screen and boot directly to desktop.
The updating process will be performed through the integrated Windows Store, so users be required to do anything else than to launch the Store and hit the update button.
The public preview of Windows 8.1 is set to be unveiled on June 26 at the BUILD developer conference, while the stable build will arrive later this year.