Microsoft shows off the cool Windows Start concepts we never got

The Windows 11 Start menu is a functional menu, but not much more. Does that mean that Microsoft never had any better ideas? Of course not! In fact, they recently shared the Start menus that could have been.

Four years ago, in 2021, my review of Windows 11 called it “unnecessary,” in part because of the unappealing Start menu that carried over from Windows 10X. Microsoft has since tweaked the Start menu, testing a “categories” view of Start and then bringing it to Windows alongside a new “phone companion” dashboard.