Prepare to say farewell to Metro UI
Microsoft has decided to leave the 'Metro' branding for its new user interface on the battlefield with Metro AG and work on a fitting replacement. The European retailer has reportedly claimed the term "Metro" as trademark, which has led to the software giant looking at alternatives. According to ZDNet sources, Microsoft will be using 'Windows 8' instead. Metro is dead. Long live Windows 8, or so it seems.
We had a number of interesting suggestions from our readers (almost 500 comments on a previous article) who took a 15 minutes time-out to think up effective and ingenious replacements. There were some humorous ideas as well as plain awesome, but Windows 8 certainly wasn't at the top of the list by any means. We checked through all comments and even started up a poll for readers to vote for their favourite Metro replacement.
According to their sources, ZDNet relays guidance that anything currently known as a "Metro-Style application" will now be officially known as a "Windows 8 application," likewise with "Metro user interface" which will be replaced by "Windows 8 user interface." So how do you like using the Windows 8 interface on your Windows Phone?
As well as the rebranding, a promotion page for Lenovo's unveiled ThinkPad Tablet 2 shows an interesting entry. This leads us to believe either this is Lenovo using Windows 8 because the OS on the tablet is Windows 8, which keeps everything under the Windows umbrella, or Microsoft has began contacting OEMs with the news.
Desktop and Windows 8 apps would imply that Microsoft (or Lenovo in this case) is referring to Metro apps as Windows 8 apps themselves.
As is the case with Microsoft with further integration between platforms, consistency needs to be present, which is what we could see with Windows 8 being used for the new UI Microsoft has developed. The company has yet to release an official statement, as is the case with the Metro AG situation. We can expect to see a post on the Windows blog (at the very least) should all this be carried out.
What about Windows Phone? After all it was the mobile platform Microsoft used for its Metro / Windows 8 UI, which was a massive success should we take into account customer feedback and satisfaction levels. Well, it will now be the Windows 8 UI, but we'd of course keep our beloved "Windows Phone apps and games".
Taking a long, hard think about Microsoft renaming Metro to Windows 8 leads us to the end of the path where we believe it makes sense. Windows 8 apps on the PC and tablet, Windows Phone apps on the smartphones, but all are running the Windows 8 UI. Pretty neat to leave the retro Windows UI behind in favour of Live Tiles, and this will be the way forward it seems.
What do you think about the possibility of Windows 8 UI replacing Metro? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
Source: ZDNet
