Windows 8 RTM Apps Revealed in Screenshots

August 4, 2012

With Windows 8 already released to manufacturing, all that we need to do is to sit tight and wait for the Redmond-based software giant and its hardware partners to start pushing new products out on October 26th.

In the meantime, however, we’re somehow left wondering of the latest changes that the platform has suffered since the delivery of the Release Preview.

We already knew that there would be a series of performance improvements included in the final bits, along with various graphical changes, and, of course, updated applications.

These are apps built by Microsoft themselves using the Windows 8 style (apparently, the company is no longer using the Metro-style term when referring to them) and some of them have been included in the platform since Consumer Preview, although they did not actually work.

In Windows 8 Release Preview, we had the chance to have a better look at some of these applications, including Bing, Photos, Videos, Music, or Mail, Calendar, People, and Messaging.

Today, screenshots of the updated flavors of these applications, which have been included in the Windows 8 RTM and which will make it in the final flavor of the OS, have made an appearance online.

Apparently, they come from the official software portal that accompanies the platform, and were found by some members of the Neowin forum.

In the two months that passed between the launch of Windows 8 as a Release Preview and the availability of the RTM flavor, Microsoft appears to have been hard at work polishing these “Windows 8 style” apps.

In the screenshots attached to this post, you’ll be able to have a look at the new face of Microsoft’s Xbox Music, Video, and SmartGlass software, as well as at the new built-in Bing app, and at some of the changes that were brought to the Mail, Calendar, People and Messaging apps.

Although built-in into the final flavor of Windows 8, these will also be present in the Windows Store, which was upgraded to RTM status as well, and which is now accepting both paid apps and software coming from businesses.