Don't obsess over the Start button. In a world where desktop PCs are becoming dinosaurs, the real goal of Windows 8.1 is to get Microsoft's operating system onto mobile devices.
If you want a graphic explanation of why Microsoft has focused on mobile devices with Windows 8.1, just study this chart for a while.
The underlying data, gathered by the Pew Internet and American Life Project in a series of studies, shows the percentage of U.S. adults (18 years and older) who own one of five different device types.
Four of those five lines are trending up. It's no accident that those four lines represent mobile devices, while the one line trending sharply down represents the decidedly non-mobile desktop PC. That's the world that Windows 8.1 is going to encounter when it's released later this year (a preview version is due in two weeks).
We are at the very beginning of a revolution in computing. That revolution involves a profound transformation of what we think of as a PC. It's already odd to think you would use just one device in one location to create content, communicate and share with other people, and entertain yourself with music and movies. In a few years that notion will feel as old-fashioned as rotary phones and square TVs, and you’ll judge devices by how well they work together.
So how did we get here?
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