Rumor: New Start Menu won’t be coming to Windows 8 until 2015

Microsoft will not bring the ‘classic’ start menu shown at the beginning of April with the Update 2 for Windows 8.1 to its operating system. That won’t happen until sometime in 2015, with a major update to Windows, ZDNet sources say.

In early April, at the Build event, Microsoft showed a new Start menu for Windows 8, which combines the classic menu with a list of applications, and the Live Tiles of the Modern UI environment introduced with Windows 8. That menu would roll out in a future update, but ZDNet sources say it won’t happen with Windows 8.1 Update 2, which is expected to be released in August. ZDNet’s Microsoft watcher, Mary Jo Foley, has frequently shown that she has good contacts within Microsoft.

The developers would like to wait with the release of the new start menu until the introduction of a larger update, known internally as “Threshold” and scheduled for April 2015. Threshold may be available as Windows 9. Also being able to run modern Windows apps within a window while the traditional desktop is visible, would only become possible with Windows Threshold. It is not yet clear which innovations Windows 8.1 Update 2 will bring to the OS.