Microsoft’s mission with Windows 8.2: Appease spurned desktop users

We learned earlier this week that Microsoft will reportedly bring back its dearly departed Start menu to Windows 8.2, a change that will come as welcome news for many desktop users who feel isolated by some of the changes the company has made to its signature operating system. And now Paul Thurrott at Windows IT Pro has written in greater detail about how Microsoft’s vision for Windows 8.2 is all about making desktop fans happy again… and it goes way beyond bringing back the Start menu.

“A new team at Microsoft that’s responsible for overall OS development has clearly spent the past few months evaluating and then dropping most of the ‘my way or the highway’ silliness that doomed the original Windows 8 release,” Thurrott writes. “The ultimate failure of Windows 8 wasn’t that Microsoft embraced mobile technologies, it was that it did so without taking into account how poor this experience would be for the 1.5 billion people who use Windows on traditional PCs.”

As we noted recently, Windows 8 is a hugely polarizing platform that many people love for its speed and stability but that many others hate for the massive UI changes Microsoft made to the traditional Windows model. Microsoft started making changes with Windows 8.1 to bring back more traditional desktop functionality to the platform and it’s apparently working to go a step farther with Windows 8.2. While the changes might not be coming as quickly as some would like — Thurrott thinks we won’t see Windows 8.2 until well into 2014 — Metro haters can take solace that the company is listening to their concerns.

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This article was originally published on BGR.com

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