During the company’s quite long keynote, Microsoft Executive
Vice President of Operating Systems Group Terry Myerson showed a short video
showcasing the return of the familiar start menu in the upcoming update to
Windows 8.1 called Update 1.
With the new start menu, universal windows application
should be able to run in windowed mode and appear in the start menu as live
tiles. Moreover, Myerson also said that Windows will be free to hardware makers
in order to encourage building devices that run on Windows OS.
Also part of the keynote regarding Windows OS is the touch-optimized
version of Office. The previewed version shares similar elements to the
recently released Office for iPad but sports more features with plenty of
gesture support. However, Microsoft didn’t specify any dates on when it plans
to roll out the software.
Other than what was mentioned above, Microsoft is keeping everything about future version of Windows 8.1 under wraps. Nevertheless, it looks like a promising future especially for those who were missing the Windows start menu.
