Why Windows 10?
The natural name would have been Windows 9, but Microsoft is eager to suggest a break with the past. “We’re not building an incremental product,” said Terry Myerson, head of Microsoft’s Operating Systems Group. Microsoft wants us to think of the latest version as a fundamental change to how Windows works, and the company is skipping a version number to show it. Perhaps Microsoft didn’t like the idea of being numerically one step behind Apple’s OS X. (A reporter asked jokingly if subsequent versions will be named after big cats.)
So how does it look now?
If you launched one of the new-style apps in Windows 8, it filled the whole screen and there weren’t many options to resize it. With Windows 10, the familiar “windows” metaphor is back; you’ll be able to resize the new-style apps and drag them around the screen like an old Win32 app. Conversely, if you’re using an older Win32-style app, it will be able to “snap into place” and fill all the available screen space just like the modern apps.
Will it still be touch-enabled?
Yes. “We’re not giving up on touch,” Belfiore said. That means you’ll still be able to use touch to do things like scroll and pinch-to-zoom on laptops and desktops.
There’s also a new feature, tentatively called “continuum,” for people using two-in-one PCs. When you detach the keyboard from a Windows 10 hybrid, it will ask if you want to go into tablet mode. If you say yes, the UI changes to better match a tablet. The app expands to full screen, for instance, and the start menu switches into a larger-icon mode.
Is there a start menu?
There is, and it tries to combine the familiarity of Windows 7 with the modern interface of Windows 8. That means the menu is split: On the left, apps are displayed in the familiar Windows 7 style, while on the right are more colorful “live tiles” that open the modern, Windows 8-style apps. The start menu is customizable, so you can resize the tiles and move them around, and make the start menu tall and thin or long and flat.
The OS will launch around the middle of next year, after Microsoft’s Build conference. Before that, a select group of “Windows insiders” will receive a “technical preview build” for laptops and desktops on Wednesday this week, followed “soon after” by a preview for servers. Previews of other device categories will follow later. Microsoft isn’t saying anything about prices yet, or any incentive programs to get people to upgrade from older OSes.
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