This blog often focuses on the bits and features and less on the “philosophy” or “context” of the product. Given the level of brand new innovations in Windows 8, however, we think it is worth putting Windows 8 in the context in which we approached the design. As with any significant change to a broadly used product, Windows 8 has generated quite a bit of discussion. With millions of people using the Consumer Preview for their daily work, we’ve seen just as many points of view expressed. Many people—from David Pogue of the New York Times to Mat Honan from Gizmodo and many more—have been quite positive, and others less so, most notably in the comments on this blog, where we’ve seen the rich dialog we’d hoped for. Some have asked about design choices we’ve made in the product and the evolution of Windows or suitability of the design to different people. Some bloggers believe it is critical to further separate the traditional desktop from Metro style elements. Other people believe passionately that it is important to make the desktop more like the Metro style interface. There are as many opinions as there are folks who have tried out the Consumer Preview. Designing a new release of a product already used by a billion people in a billion different ways is, as we say, like ordering pizza for a billion people. Doing so out in the open encourages this dialog, and we embrace and value it. Jensen Harris, Director of Program Management for our User Experience team, authored this post.
--Steven

I like the fact they acknowledge the fact they have a history of Windows in these posts. Something neat to look back to compare the old with the new and see what changed and more importantly, why.

Edit: Oh cool. It does seem to be confirmed that there were earlier builds of Chicago than 56:

Look close: The three pre-Start Buttons are different and the File Cabinet icon is different. The File Cabinet window even says "CHICAGO" in the titlebar...

Also, although we're already going off topic here, where did you find this? Was it some sort of video?

...even viewed the video itself using Windows 8's "Videos" app (it was automatically selected)...

This might be a bit off-topic but... How on earth is it relevant in any way to the current discussion what you used to view the video in? That's about like saying that I watched the video using Media Player Classic Homecinema on Windows 7 SP1 on an Acer Aspire 7540 with an AMD Athlon II X2 (even though I would prefer the Phenom series because they are superior to the Athlon, which it has now) and four GB (gigabytes) of RAM (random access memory), though I would like to have eight.

You get the point. Details are nice, but there is really a time when you can easily go overboard, which you do with regularity.

Just some advice from your friendly neighborhood Tandyman

If I could agree any more with that post I'd probably be Tandyman himself.

maybe this is an fbl_uex build ?

imagine a black and white Explorer...