“Join us to hear about the next chapter of Windows 10” – this is the title of the invitation sent out by Microsoft to representatives of the press on the 11th of December, suggesting that the Redmond giant is ready to confirm (or deny) some rumors, and reveal more details about the next generation of its Windows operating system. The event will take place at the company’s Redmond headquarters on January 21st. After the event the company will release a downloadable preview of the operating system.
Microsoft seemingly has a habit of alternatively releasing good and bad operating systems. Just take a look at the recent evolution of Windows: 98 was considered a great OS, followed by Millenium that was a total failure. XP was bad at the beginning, but SP1 made it much better, but the next one – Vista – was again a bust. Windows 7 was great (some say this was due to the beta release of the OS which helped the company fix lots of issues before the final version), while Windows 8 was the subject of many critics, especially because of its live tiles that work great on a smartphone or a tablet, but fail miserably on desktop computers. Now it’s time for the next generation to come, skipping one version number (hopefully not a good one).
The new generation of Windows will see the Start Menu finally return, and integrate the live tiles. There are many more new features in the new OS – although the technical preview available for developers is an early build of the operating system, it already tells a lot about what’s to come. For example, Microsoft has dropped the flippy task view used in Windows 8. The new one allows users to switch between apps and desktops using Alt+Tab. Snap Assist is a feature not seen since the Windows 3.x era, which allows users to tile their windows on the desktop. The command prompt (most of you hardly ever uses that, but some of us still do) will get a new feature: it will use keyboard shortcuts. Users will be able to paste a command in the command prompt by using the Ctrl-V combination – until now this was only possibly by a right-click followed by the Paste command in the context menu. Users like myself, who rely on keyboard shortcuts a lot, will find this very useful.
Maybe the most exciting feature about Microsoft’s new operating system is its new app environment. According to Microsoft, Windows 10 will use “Universal Windows” apps. Although this was not yet officially confirmed, rumors say that the new breed of Windows apps will work on any device running Windows 10, including PCs, tablets and smartphones. Consider this: at the CES 2010 Steve Ballmer said that there were over 4 million applications available on the Windows platform. One of the biggest problems with the Windows Phone was its reduced app availability (iOS and Android have over 1 million apps in their app markets each). Cross-platform apps that run on any device would make Windows the platform with the most apps available, which is a huge advantage. Of course, this is not official yet, so let’s just wait until the 21st and see. But still…