News - Windows 9 to offer no middle ground: Desktop or Start Screen

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And the desktop environment choice will not be available on ARM devices.

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This is something they should have done with Windows 8.

So Microsoft still hasn't learnt from past mistakes of forcing things on their customers.
Is giving users a choice in how they use their devices such a difficult thing ?

I'm sure it's just a setting so you can flip between MUI and solid desktop. I myself am enjoying the MUI in Win 8 (improved in 8.1 so I may look into flipping it into MUI mode because i've been finding ye olde start menu actually quite inefficient and harder to navigate.

Can't see it being one or the other if I'm honest, options are the most likely. Reasons - touchscreen laptops/x86 slates and the fact that some windows 8 users actually like metro interface.

As to arm being metro only... should have been this way from the start.

Admittedly I'm no admin for a large corp network or anything but I don't see any real issues with win 8 interface, I'd even go as far as to say windows 7 seems slower to work with whenever I have to use it.

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So, depending upon your hardware config, Windows 9 will boot up and present its Start Screen or desktop and that is where all your OS-based jiggery pokery will need to be done. No flipping, no switching. For tablets that means the Start Screen will be your Windows interface and PC users will be desktop bound. Looking at hybrid devices like the Surface Pro 3, WinBeta says that the new Start Menu will be able to be maximised so you can have easy touch access to apps and you therefore shouldn't miss the Start Screen.

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This is a better approach, but still not ideal since I know some with "conventional" systems who prefer MUI to "Classic". And there's the small matter that for some of those people MUI is easier to use because they (those people) have physical impairments, such as the lack of fine motor control that comes with Parkinsons, or vision issues that make MUI's large icons/buttons/tiles more natural.

Hopefully the either/or is a rumour and Microsoft do the sensible thing and allow the user to choose. That said, from my point of view losing the context switch between MUI and Classic makes me a LOT more pro-Windows9. I've said it before, I'm not anti-MUI, but the switching between MUI/Classic I find VERY off-putting and annoying.

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Windows RT users will face the complete removal of the desktop interface currently available on their devices. However the update to Windows RT – Windows Threshold for ARM – won't be available as a developer preview until the start of 2015, according to ZDNet. This version of Windows is expected to unify the Windows Phone and Windows RT OSes. Hopefully the ARM device plans will be fleshed out when Microsoft officially releases the x86 based OS preview at the end of September.

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Dear Microsoft, if there's a Threshold for ARM please, please, please make sure that this update is made available to alll RT devices if their hardware spec supports it. So that means all gen's of Surface plus whatever third party tablets are out there (in my case Nokia).

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Originally Posted by LSG501

Can't see it being one or the other if I'm honest, options are the most likely. Reasons - touchscreen laptops/x86 slates and the fact that some windows 8 users actually like metro interface.

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Have to agree that a forced paradigm seems highly unlikely - why would Microsoft make what is essentially a convertible device (Surface) then not give the option to use either the desktop or MUI interface depending on what mode you wanted to use at a given moment? It'd make no sense to be able to maximize the start menu but still have to use MUI apps in desktop windows, after all....

Is it just me that's wondering why they didn't turn the Windows desktop into the MUI panels?

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Originally Posted by jim

Is it just me that's wondering why they didn't turn the Windows desktop into the MUI panels?

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How do you mean? Have lots of shortcut icons all over your MUI apps? Not convinced that would work very well....

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Originally Posted by jim

Is it just me that's wondering why they didn't turn the Windows desktop into the MUI panels?

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If you mean swapping the popup thumbnails in the taskbar on Windows7 for a MUI tile equivalent in Win8, then no, you're definitely not the only one wondering that. And you could perhaps replaced ye olde desktop shortcut with some kind of pinned MUI tile - pinned to the left side.

Window8's UI is a mule (or the other word if you prefer - but I don't want banned) imho, and I'm sure that there were ways to go "cold turkey" and drop that Classic desktop in favour of MUI. Someone once suggested that Windows8 was forced out of the door prematurely (by the marketing department?) and there's maybe some small truth to that criticism.

I am very surprised by this......both the whole "surface being both tablet and laptop" and why having a desktop should preclude you from live tiles.....

Seems like another over-steer due to backlash :(

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Originally Posted by crossy

And there's the small matter that for some of those people MUI is easier to use because they (those people) have physical impairments, such as the lack of fine motor control that comes with Parkinsons, or vision issues that make MUI's large icons/buttons/tiles more natural.

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This is a really retrograde step from an accessibility point of view. I have had problems with the start menu for nearly 20 years, and all the way to Windows 7 I was forced to put icons on the desktop for all the applications I used. The start screen lets me put my most used applications in user-defined groups (and unlike desktop icons they stay put).

I guess I will have to try booting W9 with my Wacom plugged in and my keyboard unplugged?

Hello Windows...welcome back old friend, I missed you.

1 step forward 9 steps back, nothing new.

Roll on Steam OS as that's all I use my computer for nowadays

The MUI works well in certain situations - ideal for my HTPC and a tablet. So makes sense to keep it.

On my desktop I only use the MUI to switch users or because I am too lazy to put appropriate short cuts on the desktop screen. w9 is being to look like w7 updated (good!)

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Originally Posted by scaryjim

How do you mean? Have lots of shortcut icons all over your MUI apps? Not convinced that would work very well....

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I was envisioning something similar to Android, whereby widgets and shortcuts sit side by side, with each having fixed dimensions (i.e. 3x2, 4x4).

The Start Menu and application windows would be the only overlays, and would be opaque.

To my mind, if you took the Windows 8 Start Screen, and shifted the search button and charms etc to a taskbar and start menu, it would work fine.

If you're on a touch enabled device, disable the taskbar, use the standard W8 Start Screen that has been sitting behind it all along anyway.