Windows 10 wants to bridge the gap between all of our devices

Windows 10 is an operating system in peril. It’s very name is, in a way, an admission of defeat: Microsoft is at once distancing itself from the beleaguered Windows 8, and taking a fresh stab at the modern OS. Windows will continue to march forward, and the brief glimpse we were given this week suggests that Microsoft hasn’t given up on the lofty, device-unification dream of Windows 8. But it’s going to tread a bit more carefully.

The full-screen Start menu is gone (sort of). The touch-focused interface has given way to that familiar, utilitarian keyboard-and-mouse driven experience we’ve known for time immemorial. Those newfangled “Modern” apps aren’t even full-screen anymore, unless you want them to be. Windows 10 is shaping up to be a retread of all the things we’ve known for years, a mea culpa that aims to welcome those who fled in terror at the sea change that was Windows 8. But it’s also far more than that, and this sneak peek offers us a look at a Microsoft OS that will play well with all of our devices.

Tearing down the walls

The Windows 8 PC ecosystem is a mess. Device manufacturers are scrambling over themselves to make sense of Microsoft’s OS, shipping laptops that bend over backwards or split from keyboards or simply graft touch screens onto familiar designs. They’re all interesting devices in their own right, but Windows 8 remains a two-headed beast at odds with itself, a jarring, generally unsatisfying experience that urges us to dance between the desktop and that weird, full-screen purgatory where Modern apps live.

Windows 10 aims to fix that. First of all, we’re getting our proper Start menu back. It looks a tad slicker, with those admittedly attractive Tiles serving up concise bits of info and quick access to apps, but it takes up far less room and doesn’t require any awkward shifting over to a full-screen mode.

Unless you want it, of course: when you’re using a convertible device, you’ll be able to shift between the desktop and laptop on the fly. Windows apps can make way for full-screen apps, so you can let your fingers do the walking when you choose to. That experience will translate from desktops all the way down to mobile phones: apps will reportedly run everywhere, taking advantage of Windows 10’s mutability to shift into the right form factor at the right time.

In a sense, Windows 10 is what Windows 8 always should have been.