Many people around the world were hugely disappointed with the yet unreleased Windows 8 OS when they found out Microsoft had dropped the famous Start button. But have you asked yourself why Microsoft did it? Surely, but now you have an official response. Read on!
Apparently the US-based software giant lost the Start button on its way to Windows 8 because people had stopped using it in Windows 7 with studies showing most people preferred to pin icons on the taskbar rather than click on the Start button to access programs.
“We’d seen the trend in Windows 7,” said Chaitanya Sareen, principal program manager at Microsoft, referring to the telemetry gathered by the Microsoft Customer Experience Improvement Program. “When we evolved the taskbar we saw awesome adoption of pinning applications on the taskbar. We are seeing people pin like crazy. And so we saw the Start menu usage dramatically dropping, and that gave us an option. We’re saying, “Look, Start menu usage is dropping, what can we do about it? What can we do with the Start menu to revive it, to give it some new identity, give it some new power?”
“So I’m a desktop user, I pin the browser, Explorer, whatever my apps are. I don’t go the Start menu as often. If you’re going to the Start screen now, we’re going to unlock a whole new set of scenarios, or you can choose not to go there, stay in the desktop, and it’s still fast. You can’t beat the taskbar.”
Like it or not this is the reason you won’t be using the popular Start button in Windows 8.
At the same time Mr. Sareen said the Metro interface is not better suited for portable devices, although there are some problems with it right now due to unpolished drivers. According to him the Metro interface “really works well with the mouse and keyboard”.
Windows 8 is expected to come out in October 2012.
Source: PCPro.co.uk