Microsoft's Metro gets a new, confusing name

One of the more confusing bits of news coming out of Microsoft recently was that it has abandoned the Metro name for its tile based UI. The official line was that Metro was only ever a codename, but others suspect that it was changed due to trademark issues with German company Metro AG.

Whatever the reason, Metro is dead as an official term. The new wording, according to Mary Jo Foley at ZDNet, is Windows 8. That’s right, the user interface that debuted on Windows Phone 7 is now called Windows 8. It is designed to be used as a drop in replacement for the term, Metro UI becomes Windows 8 UI, Metro Apps become Windows 8 Apps etc.

While the renaming makes a degree of sense, it gets confusing when one realises that it means we now have Windows Phone 7 devices with the Windows 8 UI. This is despite the fact that the jump from Phone 7 to Phone 8 is a massive change in underlying architecture, with little or no cross compatibility with things like Apps.

Our inkling is that like all great codenames, Metro may be out of the Microsoft vocabulary but will live on in public, as an easy shorthand for the look and feel of the new home screen in Windows 8.