At an event in San Francisco on Tuesday, Microsoft played a joke a on waiting world. Fully expecting Windows 9 to be announced, onlookers were left slightly confused when Microsoft announced their next big Windows project was going to be Windows 10.
The reveal itself was not so much of a surprise with leaks of ‘Windows 9’ showing up online almost two weeks ago along with the information that PC users will be able to go straight into the desktop and bypassing the default tile UI altogether.
Windows 10, the successor to Windows 8, shifts its focus back to PC usability, whose users felt left out in the cold by Windows 8’s once named Metro user interface, which a lot of non touch screen user derided as being fiddly and almost unusable.
Windows 10 however goes back to it’s Windows 7 roots, in fact it’s almost like 7 got a makeover and a few new toys. New features will include the ability add customisable live tiles in the start menu, which returns from the start with Windows 10. Other features will include taskview which lets the user set up multiple ‘Virtual Desktops’ perfect for people who need to separate their work desktop to their home desktop. There is still so much that we don’t know about Windows 10, but this seems like a fresh start for Microsoft, with them distancing themselves from Windows 8 as much as possible and focusing on 10 as being ‘the best one yet’.
Microsoft have also announced a Windows Insider program, a developers program that will let developers get their hands on 10, so as to evaluate and provide feedback from Microsoft. We are told that this will starting from Thursday 2nd October.
Microsoft have also announced that Windows 10 will be the name of their next Mobile OS, so it looks like a fresh start across the board. It’s a lot to live up to but if Microsoft get it right then they will be giving themselves a solid foundation for the future of Windows.