On May 28, Nick Parker, Corporate Vice President, Consumer and Device Sales at Microsoft, published a post entitled “Enabling innovation and opportunity on the Intelligent Edge” on the company’s official blog.

It was really a recap of Microsoft’s keynote at the recent Computex conference in Taipei. One thing that caught the attention of tech observers was the mention of a “modern OS” (implying it could be an upcoming Microsoft operating system).

These new modern PCs and innovative devices the ecosystem will continue to build and bring to market in the future require a modern operating system. An OS that provides a set of enablers that deliver the foundational experiences customers expect from their devices, and includes a set of delighters that deliver innovative human centric experiences. Enablers include seamless updates — with a modern OS updates are invisibly done in the background; the update experience is deterministic, reliable, and instant with no interruptions! A modern OS, is also secure by default, the state is separated from the operating system; compute is separated from applications; this protects the user from malicious attacks throughout the device lifecycle. Always connected -with a modern OS Wifi, LTE 5G will just work — and users never have to worry about a deadspot. All of a users devices are aware and connected to each other. A modern OS provides sustained performance, from the moment a user picks up their device — everything is ready to go — without having to worry about the next time the PC needs to be charged. These enablers will satisfy customer’s basic needs, but to truly differentiate we must also delight them. A modern OS does this by enabling cloud-connected experiences that use the compute power of the cloud to enhance users experiences on their devices.

That sure sounds a lot like the Chrome OS which primarily supports web applications.

Zac Bowden, Senior Editor at Windows Central, believes such is “essentially the next generation of Windows, being built for new device types such as HoloLens 2, Surface Hub 2X, the next-generation Xbox, and other new and unique device types such as foldable PCs”. Essentially, it would be an OS that can adapt and change to fit many devices, with little effort on the company’s part. It could re-use code, features, and shell experiences or build out entire new features for devices whenever it makes sense.

So is Microsoft really working on a next generation cloud-based OS? It certainly looks like it…