Stop: Windows Won’t Resurrect Start Menu Until 2015
You’d think it would be easy. You’d think that bringing back one of the most loved and lamentedly lost features of Windows would be a cinch, especially for a company with as much tech savvy and know-how as Microsoft. You’d think Microsoft could give us back the Start Menu now, after teasing it at their Build Conference in April. But you’d be wrong.
According to a post on ZDNet from Windows-news maven Mary Jo Foley, Microsoft won’t be bringing the Start Menu back until Threshold – also sometimes known as Windows 9 – is released in early 2015. As to whether or not that Menu will be exclusive to Windows 9, or if the feature will be in both Windows 9 and in updates to Windows 8, remains unclear.
Foley had written about the possible return of the Start Menu shortly after the aforementioned Build conference, talking with Microsoft’s head of the Operating System Group, Terry Myerson. In that interview Myerson offered an explanation as to why the company showed the Start Menu, despite apparently not having any plans to launch it anytime soon:
“The reason we (showed) that work is we thought it was important to share with developers. When do we deliver it? I really don’t have anything to share there. We’re just not ready yet.”
I’m not a software developer, nor am I a multibillion dollar international corporation. I don’t know what it takes to be either one of those, but it strikes me as odd that bringing the Start Menu back to Windows is really that difficult. Microsoft already brought back the Start Button, which is, well, a start. But if third party applications like Start8 can do the job, why can’t Microsoft do it? What is the problem here?
It’s disappointing that Foley’s insiders are saying that the Start Menu won’t be back until 2015. It’ll be nice when it returns, but it’s so frustrating that something as basic as this is not only news, but is delayed for no apparent reason.