A bit off-topic but I super enjoyed the UI on the Windows Phones at the time. Only topped by the WebOS from Palm even before it I recall.

> The ListView control? It started out with the more tedious name “modern collection control”, which got shortened to “MoCo.”

A missed opportunity to call it "MoCoCo" which, if you ask me, has more flare and personality to it. What a waste :/

My name for the Windows 11 experience is "Linux Mint"... ;-)

I read somewhere that the visual design of Windows 8 was based on the works of Mondrian, because they wanted a design that didn’t just look like the Swiss School that Apple had adopted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Stijl

I don’t know if the idea of calling Windows 8 modern stemmed from that, or if they decided to pick Mondrian having already decided to go with modern.

They were so busy trying to create modern that they forgot what made things classic.

Can confirm, I worked on MoPho. It was a weird time.

Hot take: I liked Windows 8. It used less memory than Windows 7, increased battery life, the file manager and task manager were much improved, I could mount ISOs without third party software, among other things. In truth, I didn't even mind the start screen. And I certainly liked Metro as a UI paradigm much more than Aero.

Of course it was still Windows at the end of the day, but 8.1 was my last Windows. The laptop I ran it on is slowly bitrotting in a storage locker somewhere on the other end of the country. I didn't like the look of Windows 10, several aspects of it were hard dealbreakers, so I never swapped to it. Eventually I just changed over to using Linux as my primary OS and haven't really looked back.

I wonder if they also made a modern system to handle 'hosts'.

I thought Metro was appropriate. As in, the name fit the design style.

The final name was also called Modern. I know this person worked on Windows 8, but as a member of the public we definitely knew the Windows 8 UI was called 'Modern'.

When you put "modern" or "new" into the name of a thing, you're basically announcing to the world that it was designed for the short term, and when it is no longer new it will no longer be relevant.

Honestly, the "modern" UI (Live tiles) was unironically the best part of Windows 8.

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"Modern" = something that ruins perfectly good stuff in the never ending pursuit of "progress". UI doesn't need to change every few years. It should have stopped changing almost 30 years ago.