Introduction
Microsoft released the first public beta build of Windows 8 at the BUILD conference on September 13, 2011. The new OS tried to address almost every problem that Windows had by introducing features such as responsive UI suitable for tablet devices with touch, lower power consumption, new application model, new asynchronous APIs, and tighter security.
The core of Windows API improvements was a new multiplatform component system, WinRT, which is a logical development of COM. With WinRT, a programmer can use native C++ code, C# and .NET, and even JavaScript and HTML to develop applications. Another change is the introduction of a centralized application store, which did not exist on the Windows platform before.
Being a new application platform, Windows 8 had backward-compatibility and allowed to run the usual Windows applications. This lead to a situation where there are two major classes of applications: the Windows Store applications, where new programs are distributed via the...
