Treshold to usher in next wave of Windows

ZD Net reports Microsoft is preparing something they call "Treshold", the next major wave of Windows scheduled to arrive in Spring 2015. Threshold will reportedly update all three of Microsoft's major OS platforms (Xbox One, Windows and Windows Phone) and will advance them in a way to share even more common elements. One of the things Microsoft is working on is the delivery of a single app store across all these platforms, while also providing th esame core set of "high value activities" across platforms. This includes expression/documents, IT management and "serious fun".

(The codename Threshold, for those wondering, derives from the planet around which the first halo ring orbited in the original Halo game launched back in 2001. Threshold joins "Cortana," Microsoft's answer to Siri, as yet another codename with its origins in the Xbox franchise.)

From what I've heard, Threshold doesn't refer to a single Windows OS -- not even the expected, converged hybrid comprised of the Windows Phone OS and Windows RT. Instead, the codename refers to the wave of operating systems across Windows-based phones, devices and gaming consoles.

The Xbox One OS, Windows 8.x OS and Windows Phone 8 OS already share a common Windows NT core. As we've heard before, Microsoft is working to deliver a single app store across its myriad Windows platforms. Company officials also are laboring to make the developer toolset for all three of these platforms more similar.

Before the arrival of Threshold, Microsoft will deliver Windows 8.1 Update 1 and Windows Phone 8.1, that's supposed to happen in Spring 2014.