14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has recently won another important lawsuit in the United States, which finally puts an end to accusations that the company stole the design of the Windows 8 and Windows Phone live tiles.
Back in 2012, a company called SurfCast filed a complaint in the United States District Court of Maine, allegedly claiming that Microsoft actually violated one of its patents with the live tiles that were implemented in Windows 8 and Windows Phone.
SurfCast claimed that all devices on the market at that time and belonging to Microsoft were violating the patent, asking for undisclosed damages.
What’s more, the company said that it was the legal owner of the patent called “System and Method for Simultaneous Display of Multiple Information Sources” since October 2000, but Microsoft never knew about it, so it released software solutions that were infringing it.
Live tiles are here to stay
There’s no doubt that the new Windows live tiles were among the most controversial features of Microsoft’s modern operating system, and many wanted them to be removed completely from Windows.
Most criticism came due to the changes that Microsoft made in Windows 8 and the introduction of the Start screen, which completely replaced the Start menu at first, so many people actually didn’t like the design of the live tiles and the way they worked.
Redmond, however, tried to improve them a little bit in Windows 8.1 and implemented a series of changes that allowed users to group them into categories and resize them with multiple options.
What’s more, the word is that a new concept called interactive live tiles, which could allow users to perform a number of tasks without actually launching the app, could be released in the coming Windows updates.
The Start menu also gets them
In Windows 10 Preview, the live tiles are playing nicely with the Start menu and are directly integrated into the feature that was initially removed in Windows 8.
Microsoft thus wants to create a mix of the traditional Start menu concept and a modern touch thanks to live tiles, thus allowing users to get information on a number of apps straight in the main screen.
The Start screen, however, remains unchanged in existing builds of Windows 10 Preview, but we’re hearing that some changes are planned for the tablet version of the operating system.
Not much is known at this point, but a tablet build of Windows 10 Preview could be released for testing purposes in early 2015, so there's more to come in a couple of months.