These 2 "speculations(or whatever people calls it)" came from MJF and Thurrott, said to be from their "trusted and reliable sources"; but they didn't have the faintest idea or tip-off about those new things actually shown in the leaked win8.1 2014 update, like store and modern apps on taskbar, power buttons on start screen, etc........so think about it, how "trusted and reliable" is it?
Booting straight to dekstop by default may matter for most who use windows as is and do not know much about tweaking. For almost all of MDL members, it does not matter as win 8.1 allows both options. In win 8.1, I do not boot straight to desktop since it does not save me any milliseconds.
Yes. I use the modern gui (customised) as my start menu, as I find it quite convenient. So it is faster if I boot into the Modern. As you say, that is no great leap forward, as it is already available in the 8.1 release. But, for newbies, IF it is in the update, it will be more helpful for them if it does boot straight to the legacy desktop by default.
I would be happy with an option during install or first run to be given an option to use touch features or not, metro or not etc. Instead all we get is whether we want to send information to MS knowingly or let them continue to take it even if we say no heh.
So clearly 14-1-2014 has been succeeded by 26-1-2014 and could be followed by more. Personally see no point in downloading any of these.
Update 1 is out on torrents today.. I saw it just now. WINDOWS 8 1 2014 UPDATE X64 ONLY MSU 9600 16610 140201-1007-WZT 572 Mb.
These two correspondents are oft quoted as "gurus" in all things MS. In fact, if you look through the archives (if available) , the majority of there speculations, in the past, have on many occasions, turned out to be off target. I have long since regarded their "trusted sources" as being spin offs from Wzor or Winbeta - lol.
I feel there is too much speculation on this. I don't like Windows 8.1 but I simply put up with it tbh. They need to fix a bunch of things in Windows 8 however performance improvements and bug fixing would be nice.