14 DAY TRIAL // The Start button is back in Windows, the Start menu will return very soon as well, so Microsoft now has a little bit more time to discuss about the reasons behind its surprising decision to remove these two traditional elements from Windows 8.
Chaitanya Sareen, Microsoft's Principal Program Manager Lead on Windows, provided more details about this in an interview with CNET, pointing out that removing the Start button from Windows 8 was just like taking away the warm blanket from someone, so it’s no surprise that so many people seemed confused.
Microsoft’s executive explained that the decision to remove the Start button and the Start menu didn’t come overnight and the company actually thought this out carefully.
“There is awesome debate within the company. It's not like someone sits there and says ‘There will be no start button.’ It's a long discussion. A very, very long discussion,” Sareen explained.
And still, Microsoft knew that removing the Start button from Windows 8 was a risky decision, but in the end, someone needed to take this risk and try to teach people some new things.
“This was an opportunity where you have to teach people things. There's nothing innate about going to the top-right corner and closing something. There's nothing innate about using Ctrl-Alt-Delete. There's nothing innate about resizing a window. You have to learn them over time.”
Still, Microsoft has decided to revert some of the changes it made in Windows 8, so the Start button was reintroduced in Windows 8.1 as a way to make the desktop look more familiar. The new Start button doesn’t launch a Start menu, but instead only gets users to the new Start screen, some many users who have already updated to Windows 8.1 aren’t really pleased with it.
At the same time, Microsoft is also working to bring back the Start menu in a future Windows update, as the company showcased at the BUILD developer conference this week a mockup of what could be the next Start menu offered to users still running desktop computers.
Word is that the Start menu would only be available on PCs where such a feature actually makes sense, while tablet buyers and those with a touch-capable device will have to stick to the existing Start screen. Microsoft is yet to confirm this, but more details are expected to be released later this year as we move closer to the public launch of the Start menu.