Just when you thought Microsoft had all but forgotten that PCs were anything more than a tool for designing Xbox games, some design sketches for Windows 8 are leaked and they're full of pictures of the PC with love hearts on. More importantly, a casual gaming store.
The slides , fished from a dumpster by Engadget , depict the futuristic app store as being easy to use and very prominent in the Windows 8 landscape. There isn't the slightest indication that it'll cause you to bleed from your eyes. This shows a marked shift in design strategy for Microsoft's PC games services. The slides are quite developer oriented - boasting that it'll let you have your studio's logo on the store page and that the vetting process for apps is very streamlined - but it's important to attract developers to the PC.
It's clear that Microsoft know that they're neglecting the platform, or they wouldn't have prepared special answer sheets for their spokespersons in anticipation of, for example, Tim's mega-criticism of their gamepad-fancying ways. It's worth stressing that these are very early mockups - stop clicking on them, they don't work.
The latest Windows 11 dev build gives you the ability to snap together commonly paired apps for access in a single click, and I'm already sold
You might mock Microsoft's new emoji button in Windows 11 but as someone that's explained how to quickly access emojis and special characters too many times, I get it
