Microsoft: Start Menu Returns, Windows Free For Small Device OEMs, Cortana Beta

At Microsoft's BUILD conference today, the company announced that the Start Menu will officially be returning to Windows 8.1. It will combine the Windows 7 Start Menu with a handful of Metro-style tiles. They're also making it so Windows 8 apps can run in windows using the normal desktop environment. In addition to the desktop announcements, Microsoft also talked about big changes for Windows on mobile devices and Internet-of-Things devices. The company will be giving Windows away for free to OEMs making phones and tablets (9" screens and smaller), and for IoT devices that can run it. Microsoft also finally unveiled Cortana, their digital assistant software that's similar to Siri.

Comments

Re:What about 2012R2???

[Anonymous Coward]

Lol, only Windows Server 2012R2 is superior to Linux in just about every way imaginable.

Re:Gee, so only a year of screaming

[Chas]

"Product X is great, you just have to replace it's main features with additional products Y and Z".

Sound like Apple's MO.

What people who whine about "you should just install Start8 and get over it" miss is this very simple point.

You should not HAVE to. Not for a key piece of UI like the Start menu.

Microsoft's reason for pulling the Start Menu out of Windows amounts to "Because I said so". They can prattle on about how shallow the usage was, the problems it would cause in future adoption, etc, etc. But the main reason is still "We want you to do it THIS WAY now, we don't give a shit that you've been doing it this other way for 20 years."

So people people have been screaming about this now for approximately 2 years (since they removed it from the preview versions).

So business snubbed Windows 8.
Their sales are, comparatively, in the toilet when held up against previous releases.

It's the lightest, nimblest, most stable version yet. It's actually a decent setup for a tablet. And yet users are staying away from it in droves (save for the luddites who just take whatever they get when they buy a months-old, crappy PC off a shelf in a Best Buy). Because they arbitrarily crippled functionality, expecting users to just lap it up and their larger clients to simply absorb the costs of retraining.

Pfft.