Microsoft teases Windows 9 with awful logo mockup, confirms it’s ‘coming soon’

In a rather odd turn of events, Microsoft China has posted a Windows 9 teaser on Sina Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter. The teaser, which featured a rather awful fan-made Windows 9 wallpaper, was quickly removed — but not before plenty of screenshots were taken. In addition to the questionable artwork, the post by Microsoft China clearly stated that Windows 9 is “coming soon,” all but confirming that we’ll get our first look at Windows 9 at a special event later this month (probably September 30).

Microsoft China’s posting on Sina Weibo was spotted by Cnbeta earlier today (afternoon in China), just moments before someone at Microsoft realized that a mistake had been made and promptly pulled the post. My Chinese isn’t very good, but the Weibo post was essentially your standard bit of marketing to drum up interest for Windows 9. The text reads something along the lines of: “Microsoft’s latest operating system Windows 9 is coming soon. Will the Start menu appear in the lower left corner?”



There was also an image attached to the post; an awful Windows 9 logo/wallpaper mockup that has been doing the rounds for the last few months. Unless Microsoft has decided to change its corporate font yet again, I’m about 99.9% sure that the Windows 9 logo/wallpaper was fan-made. With Microsoft’s new “minimalist” thing going on, though, I’m curious about what form the official Windows 9 logo will take. I will laugh long and hard if Microsoft uses the same flat Windows 8 logo, but with each of the quadrants colored in, like the Windows flag of yore.

Read our featured story: Microsoft will unify Windows, Windows Phone, and Xbox into ‘one converged operating system’



If all goes to plan, Windows 9 should be unveiled at a press event on September 30. A technology/developer preview of Windows 9 (codename Threshold) will be released around the same time – late September, early October. The technology preview build will probably look a lot like Windows 8, but with some important changes, such as the return of the Start menu and the ability to run Metro apps in a window. We may have to wait another few months — for the consumer preview — before we get to see Cortana integration, and the ability to completely remove the Metro interface from the mouse-and-keyboard Windows 9 experience.

With Windows 9, iPhone 6/iOS 8, and Android L, it’s going to be a very exciting winter indeed.

Source fromhttp://www.extremetech.com