Re: Lies, damned lies...
>>"It was a 3.6GB download on top of Windows 8. That's a lot of GUI..."
That update pack incorporates the majority of the patches and updates that were issued to Windows 8 in between 8 and the release of 8.1. What you downloaded isn't just updates to the UI, it bundles together all of the intervening changes that Windows 8 receives as well.