Serious Discussion Early concepts of Windows 8, Appstore, IE9, Widgets and more (circa. 2009)

[Ink]

The meeting marked the beginning of the development of Windows 8 and accordingly the employees were shown the ideas for the new Windows collected in the brainstorming phase in 2009 and early 2010.

I have put together some of the most interesting mockups from the videos below. Things like the start page with the Live - tiles, the file - Explorer with the menu volume and the new interface of Internet Explorer ( tabs next to the address bar ) were later implemented as 1: 1. Other things like the app store and especially the new task manager found their way into the finished Windows 8, but didn't have much in common with the first sketches.

Also interesting: At that time, a start button was planned on the left side of the taskbar. It was later submitted again with Windows 8.1.

The sidebar with the tiles ( penultimate picture ) did not come in shape at the time, but it is quite reminiscent of what we have today with the widgets in Windows 10 or 11.

Source: deskmodder.de

Credit - Former Windows boss; Steven Sinofsky

 

[ifacedown]

Windows 8 - As soon as the RTM version was released, I installed it on my PRIMARY DEVICE - A single core Intel Atom device. It did run, but so buggy. When I installed some softwares, often BSOD would follow that I have to do a fresh install of Windows 8. I never returned to Windows 7, for I was stubborn. Finally, after some updates to Windows 8.1, it became stable enough for everyday use. Windows 8 was the most buggy Windows OS for me. Windows 10 and 11 have much fewer bugs upon release.

 

[show-Zi]

The truth is that I didn't think it was that good when I was using 7. However, looking back on it now, I feel like I can understand the feelings of developers who are trying to evolve a little from the existing flow.