Microsoft Heads Toward a New Start at Build 2014

At its Build developers conference in San Francisco yesterday, Microsoft announced that Windows 8.1 Update would be shipping next week, showed off Windows Phone 8.1, which will be widely available this summer, and talked about a new way of letting developers write apps that work across phones, tablets, and desktops.

All of this shows a company that is moving faster than it used to – after all, we didn't used to get new versions of Windows every year. On the other hand, it seems that the version of Windows and Office that I (and I suspect, most users) really want are coming, but aren't ready yet.

Most of what is in Windows 8.1 Update was shown at Mobile World Congress a few weeks ago, and I do think it will help desktop and laptop users out. Corporate VP Joe Belfiore announced yesterday that Windows 8.1 Update will be available by Windows Update on April 8, so we don't have long to wait.

This update lets you set it so you automatically start and resume to the desktop rather than the Start menu. It also adds icons for turning off the computer and for search to the upper right of the screen. Having a traditional title bar with a close box appear when you hover your mouse near the top of the screen, and having the task bar appear when you hover your mouse near the bottom makes running 'Modern' Windows 8 apps more palatable for the vast majority of people who are used to Windows XP and Windows 7. And companies that standardize on a browser will like the existence of a new 'enterprise mode' in IE11 that brings back compatibility with IE8, designed for internal corporate websites. (Although I still don't understand why Microsoft has made compatibility so hard with IE; I find I need to run Chrome or Firefox instead if I want to use all the sites, but of course, that isn't hard.)

All these things will help sell Windows 8 to the enterprise, but I don't think it goes far enough. The No. 1 complaint I hear from users is that they just don't know where to find things, and they don't like the new Start menu. Terry Myerson, EVP of the Operating Systems Group, said he was 'not here to announce the next version of Windows,' but he did give a preview of a new version that showed a much more traditional-looking Start menu, one that pulls up a list of desktop apps like previous versions, plus a smaller selection of important tiles for the new apps.

These apps – which Microsoft is now calling 'Universal' apps, because of new tools that will let developers create versions that run properly on phones, tablets, and desktops – can now run within windows next to desktop apps. That's key if desktop users are ever going to adopt the new apps; because they want the flexibility to run them side by side. In some respects, it reminds me of the changes moving from Windows 1, which had a tiled interface, to Windows 2, which introduced most of the window conventions we now take for granted. Myerson did say that this would be a free update to all Windows 8.1 users.

Just as importantly, Kirk Koenigsbauer, corporate VP for Microsoft Office, gave a preview of the next version of Office, which he said was touch-optimized, but still looks like Office. The demo was of a future version of PowerPoint, which sported a ribbon interface with larger touch points and touch-centric features, such as pinch and zoom and the ability to use touch to move to any slide in the presentation. He promised full fidelity with previous versions, and a number of new features including better performance (saying the graphics engine was built from the ground up using the new Direct X APIs), unlimited undo/redo and version history, and inking within the application. It looked, at first glance, like something that might indeed make enterprise users consider the modern or Universal apps.

By the way, the ability for developers to write one application that will now work on both Windows Phone and Windows – and eventually Xbox – may be the most important change Microsoft announced at the show in the long run. Even as it trumpets the number of applications that exist for Windows Phone, everyone at Microsoft has tacitly admitted that getting applications for Windows Phone and for the Modern UI of Windows remains a real issue. Corporate VP David Treadwell showed off the new tools that let developers use the same code to run on phones, tablets, and desktops – with the option to have the user interface scale according to the different screen sizes, or to be tailored for each of the experiences, while still sharing the same underlying code. This also will allow developers to set their applications in the Windows Store so that if you buy an application for Windows Phone, you can also get the version for desktops and laptops (or vice versa) as part of the purchase. This is a big step forward. Microsoft pointed out that it is now unique in offering developers the ability to target all these devices in one version (although you could argue that pure Web development does similar things).

Still, these seem like good directions for the company, especially if it hopes to get enterprises to buy into the Windows 8 vision. Microsoft's new CEO, Satya Nadella, talked about the company's need to 'innovate with a challenger mindset,' indicating Microsoft now understands it needs to move faster in a world where Android and iOS are now getting much more attention from developers. He said 'you will see us make progress at a rapid pace.'

Of course, there wasn't a timeline given for the next version of Windows or even a name (will it be Windows 8.1 Update 2, Windows 8.2, or Windows 9?), or the next version of Office. But these are the kind of things that I can imagine being much more attractive to more business users than Windows 8.1 Update. Of course, business users tend to wait to upgrade anyway, but it could mean that we'll start to see migration away from Windows 7 in 2016. I'm sure Microsoft wishes that would happen faster, but it seems unlikely.