Windows 8 (2012)
Development
Windows 8 is the successor of the Windows 7 Operating System. Windows 8 was developed by Microsoft and is part of the NT tree of the Windows franchise. It was announced at the CES event of 2011 and the first pre-release build was released in September 2011. In October 26th 2012, the first build of Windows 8 was released to the public.
Reception
When Windows 8 was released, users notably disliked the new Metro interface. The Metro interface is a full screen start menu comprised of coloured tiles linked to an application. Although there was still a Desktop application, many users can edit the registry to allow the computer to boot straight into the Desktop environment. It was criticized for being designed for tablets rather than computers.
App Store
A new feature introduced in Windows 8 is an App Store, similar to Linux environments such as Ubuntu. The store is linked to the user's Microsoft account, and there is a variety of paid and free applications and games available. Again, this seems to be designed for tablets rather than PCs.
Windows 8.1
An update to Windows 8 was released on 17th October 2013, it addresses some of the issues that critics had with the Operating System. However, the main issue, the lack of a Start Button was never addressed. The most notable feature is a start button on the desktop and the main menu.