Microsoft Finally Adds Shutdown Button on the Start Screen in Windows 8.1 Update 1

The Windows 8.1 Update 1 news keeps coming, and things seem to definitely be improving in the Windows department now that Steven Sinofsky is out. According to Microsoft scene group Wzor, who also leaked news that Windows 8.1 Update 1 would give users the ability to pin Windows Store applications to the desktop taskbar, Microsoft is finally adding one of the most basic – yet most sought after – features to the Start Screen: a shutdown button.

Seen in the leaked screenshot above, Windows 8.1 Update 1 will add a good old fashioned shutdown button right next to your user account button on the Start Screen, right above your pinned tiles. While this may seem like a piece of non-news, this is actually a big deal – prior to this release, the Windows team under Sinofsky insisted that shutting down in Windows 8 was just as simple as shutting down in previous release of Windows (an obvious stretch of the imagination) and a simple shutdown would not be added. For those who aren’t aware, in the current rendition of Windows 8.1 a user needs to head to the Start Screen, reveal the hidden Charms Bar by hovering their mouse cursor to the right hand of the screen and hit the Settings button before a shutdown button is revealed. Hardly user friendly, if you ask me.

So far, everything we’ve seen of Windows 8.1 Update 1 seems to be small, but significant in one very important sense – Microsoft seems to be ready to admit to both itself and to its customers that Windows 8 was a misstep, and the company is now willing to do everything in their power to change their stance on previously held convictions regarding their new user interface. According to Microsoft enthusiast Paul Thurrott, Microsoft has internally taken to jokingly calling Windows 8 as “the next Windows Vista.” Windows Vista was, of course, Microsoft’s disastrous attempt to bring Windows to the modern PC in 2006 – a release that bombed so hard that the company parted ways with many higher ups in the Windows Vista development team and created Windows 7 to specifically be the “anti” Windows Vista.

According to the latest rumors, Microsoft working towards a March 11 release for Windows 8.1 Update 1 and will be the first of numerous smaller updates to bring many oft-requested features and tweaks to Windows 8. Microsoft has also begun work on Windows 9, codenamed “Threshold”, which is said to be a significant departure from Windows 8’s user interface. Microsoft is said to be currently gunning for an April 2015 release date for Windows 8.