Raymond Chen shares some history regarding Windows 8’s development:
During the development of Windows 8, we needed a name for “that thing we’re creating.” Not being a particularly clever bunch when it comes to code names, we just called it “the modern experience,” to distinguish it from what we had in Windows 7, which was called “the classic experience.”
And then, as Microspeak demands, we started abbreviating like mad.
↫ Raymond Chen
Basically, they added “mo” for “modern” in front of everything, so the Metro shell became “MoSh”, the Settings application “MoSet”, and so on. And yes, the code name for the Photos application was exactly what it sounds like.
And that was the reason, why the new created GUI was called “modern UI” / “Metro” ?
Pretty sure everyone knows the reason was to make all apps “store” apps and take the same 30% cut as Steam/App Store/Google Play. Luckily Windows 8 was a huge failure.
dark2,
Absolutely. This was microsoft’s plan. Had they succeeded, windows would be a walled garden today. Unrestricted “legacy” apps would become an enterprise feature and regular plebes would only be able to install apps through microsoft. Windows 8 was a failure, however microsoft also know how to play the long game. Forced accounts became a real thing. Consumers need to watch out for microsoft traps. Alas, it’s not just microsoft, this is true of google and apple as well. Big tech love going all in on vendor locking and owner control. This is also spreading to home appliances, cars, IOT, TVs….It’s depressing to see tech going this way, but this is what we get after so many rounds of worldwide consolidation leaving consumers with wholly inadequate competition.
I am surprised they didn’t rename Skype to Modern Talking.
Ha ha, you win the Internet today 😀
well, i guess it’s a good thing there was no app called Lester