You thought Windows 8.1 arrived quickly? A second update, adding still more features aimed at mollifying unhappy desktop users, was released roughly six months after Windows 8.1.
And at the Build 2014 developers conference, Microsoft promised that it would be restoring the Start menu and allowing "modern" (the new name for Metro) apps to run in a window. It's not exactly a retreat, because the touch-first interface is still at the core of the latest Windows. But it's a quick admission that the problems with Windows 8 will take some time to resolve completely.
And as the occasionally hostile reactions to Windows 8 make clear, the Windows monopoly on personal computing, which was powerful enough at the turn of the century to bring the full weight of the United States Government down on Microsoft, has ended.
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