Forget Windows 9. In an unexpected twist, Microsoft will be going straight to double digits from Windows 8 as it faces a challenging future for its operating system.

Windows 10

 

Microsoft officially unveiled windows 10 preview this morning, and the company is planning to distribute a Technical Preview of the new operating system tomorrow. At Microsoft's event today there were a number of machines running the windows 10 preview Technical Preview, and I got an opportunity to briefly explore the new OS. While Microsoft pushed hard with touch on Windows 8, windows 10 preview is the complete opposite. If you mouse into the corners to find the tricky Charms Bar they no longer trigger and frustrate. Instead, you're greeted with the familiar Windows desktop and Start Menu from the moment you use Windows 10. It's Windows 7 right now and very early in its development, but it has some interesting improvements waiting inside.

This morning at an event in San Francisco, Microsoft announced the next version of its Windows operating system: windows 10 preview.

The name is definitely not in line with expectations, but also comes on the heels of rumor talk that it could pick up another title. Happily, the last 943 people to cover the operating system got the name wrong. I am among them.

There was never really any doubt that the next version of Windows was going to look at least a little like Windows 7. Even Windows 8.1 was a step back in that direction for Microsoft, bringing back the Start button that so many millions of customers missed. But for all the time Terry Myerson and Joe Belfiore spent on stage today explaining the enormity of change in Windows 10 .

windows 10 preview

hat is, of course, the whole point. "Familiar" was a favorite word of Myerson's and Belfiore's. They described over and over how simple it is to upgrade, how similar Windows 10 will feel to what you've already been using. "We want all these Windows 7 users to have the sentiment that yesterday they were driving a first-generation Prius," Belfiore said. "And now with Windows 10 it's like a Tesla." It's not supposed to feel different, it's not supposed to be scary.

windows 10 preview

This is a smart, pragmatic, and clearly responsive move from Microsoft. It turned boldly in a new direction with Windows 8, and received massively negative feedback. As Belfiore and Myerson said at today's event, the problem wasn't that the features didn't work or that everything was too damn colorful. It was that there was too much training involved — Windows 8 is just way too hard to learn, and most people just didn't want to go through the trouble. So Microsoft kept as much Windows 8 as it could, while reverting the core pieces of the operating system back to something people know and understand.

windows 10 preview

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