I was asked at work today if I knew anything about “Jupiter”. The code name didn’t ring a bell but after a few seconds I knew what we were discussing. I didn’t have a lot of details so I went to Bing and searched for Jupiter and XAML. One of the top search results was a press pass article. I clicked on the link. Imagine my surprise when I saw that the article was from October 8, 2002. My first thought was “have they really been working on this for 9 years?” but I realized that the real issue is that Microsoft recycled the code name.

So the “Jupiter” that I really wanted to learn about is a feature of Windows 8. There isn’t a lot of information out there other than hints and innuendo that “Jupiter” is going to be a XAML layer on top of the native APIs in Windows 8. Mary-Jo Foley wrote an article in January that had some details but also has a later follow up saying that some of the details are in error. I guess we will have to wait until the Build conference to really learn what is going on with Windows 8.