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Windows 8 could be like this, a video shows Microsoft’s first ideas

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Ten years have passed since the (troubled) launch of Windows 8 , an operating system revolutionary in its own way, even if not all the innovations introduced by Microsoft had been positively received by users.

A new video shows some of the early Windows 8 concepts. It was shared by Steven Sinofsky , who had been the president of the Windows division between 2009 and 2012. The video offers an insider’s look at the creative process that led to the first – criticized – version of the operating system, with particular regard to Microsoft’s first ideas on what to do (or not) with the Start button .

“This video was shown at the end of a meeting with over 5,000 Microsoft employees held during the spring of 2010,” Sinosfky explained. “It is a  highlight of the result of many months of work spent planning the launch and all the functions of the Windows 8 project”.

The curious thing is that, at least at the beginning, Microsoft did not seem interested in retiring the Start button. In an attempt to design a ‘touch friendly’ operating system, riding the wave of enormous success that tablets had at the time, Microsoft had decided to overturn the user experience of its operating system, with the paradoxical result of making life is complicated for its main users, that is, those who use Windows from a PC.

In one of the shared concept images, we find the Start button in its traditional place at the bottom left. In the final version of Windows the key was removed. It was then reintroduced with Windows 8.1, after strong criticism from users.

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Another image shows an interesting concept of the taskbar , which, in Microsoft’s intentions, could have been extended to multiple screens if necessary. In another image we see an unprecedented Task Manager extremely modernized and very different from the one that actually made its debut on Windows 8. With Windows 11, Microsoft has finally redesigned the task manager, but introducing very different changes from those shown in this video.

As The Verge writes , Microsoft will be remembered as Microsoft’s clumsy attempt to redesign Windows for tablets, completely forgetting that users mostly use the operating system in another way: with a mouse and keyboard.

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