Newsletter Issue #791: Microsoft Has Not Given Up on Vaporware
January 26th, 2015Slightly ahead of schedule, Microsoft this week released a new public or technical preview of Windows 10. This is supposedly a better, more reliable version of the OS beta that has already been available, so I jumped at the chance to see what Microsoft hopes will push the bad memories of Windows 8 to the distant past.
Except that Microsoft still won’t give up on the user interface formerly known as Metro. Once something gets under their skin at Microsoft, it’s really hard to let it go. Quite often, they just change the name, which is how MSN became Live Search which became Bing. I won’t get into the various names for Windows Phone, but it almost seems that changing identities, with a few feature refinements, is sometimes their only solution for failed products.
These days, what used to be called Windows Phone is now just Windows, same as the desktop operating system. Indeed, the code base is shared too, which creates the curious situation of a desktop app possibly working on a mobile phone or a tablet. But if the app is universal, a term being bandied about by the media, doesn’t that mean that mobile apps will be clogged with useless code? How does that work on your Lumia smartphone where space is at a premium?
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