Yes, There are Three New Apps in the Windows 8 Release Preview

Today, the existence of three new Metro-style apps in the Windows 8 Release Preview was leaked by the usual web sources. This report is correct. (As a reminder, I had previously mentioned the existence of these apps in the final line of my article, Windows 8 Release Preview: Bundled Apps Update.)

The three new Metro-style apps that Microsoft is providing in this release include News, Sports, and Travel. I’ll provide the usual full rundown of these and other Release Preview goodness when the time is right, but for now, suffice to say that these new apps are nothing special. They look and work exactly like the Finance app, providing what are essentially beautiful frontends to RSS feeds from trusted sources.

Here’s a clean, non-watermarked look at the new app tiles.

And contrary to reports (and expectations), the “App Preview” branding is very much in existence in the Release Preview: