Even though I recently purchased a MacBook Pro, I still use a Windows PC at home running Windows 8.1. There are so many quirks and issues in Windows 8 I would love to see version 9 fix and a few new features to make things better.
Start Menu
Supposedly already featured thanks to leaks from Microsoft themselves, Windows 9 will see a return of the classic start menu. The jokes about Windows 9 being Windows 7 with a different skin aren’t actually that far from the truth.
The original idea of removing the start menu in the first place wasn’t a very good one.
Give me the option to choose Metro or Desktop
I don’t get why this wasn’t ever an option in the first place. Instead of forcing users to use a new interface quite clearly meant for touch devices, if Microsoft wants to keep the Metro tile interface, they need to give us mouse and keyboard users the option of a plane desktop.
I don’t own a touch screen, I use a mouse and keyboard, so a normal Windows 7-esque desktop makes logical sense. Better yet, why not have two versions of Windows 9? One for desktops and one for touch devices. You could call them, wait for it: Windows 9 (Metro) and Windows 9 (Desktop), genius!
Path size limitations
In Windows there is a character size limitation for paths of 260 characters. This archaic limitation stems from the days of DOS and needs to be removed. See this article for more information.
In Windows 9 I hope the limitation is removed entirely, because it makes it impossible to work with deep nested Node.js package dependencies which I’ve encountered quite regularly exceeding 260 characters and being impossible to delete from within Windows.
Bring back Aero Glass
Some Googling seems to indicate I am not alone. When Microsoft removed Aero Glass from Windows 8, I was pretty disappointed. I think it looked really great, I loved the effect it added to my windows. In Windows 8, the interface took a step back in many regards, removing Aero Glass was one of those step backs. It is rumoured to be added back in Windows 9, but don’t hold your breath.
A virtualised command line terminal
We have the command prompt, but lets be honest, it sucks. For command line options we have Git Bash or CYGWIN and both are not exactly ideal. A virtualised unix like command prompt terminal with the power of Unix would be a boon for developers who rely on the command line and various tools/commands.
