Microsoft should stick to its guns and keep the Start button gone

Op-ed: If Redmond wants Metro apps to succeed, it needs education, not capitulation.

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Metro is the worst desktop interface I've ever been subjected to. Microsoft has thrown away all visual cues and flattened the interface for purely stylistic reasons. They've tried to shoehorn two completely different usage paradigms into a single OS. Both touch and keyboard/mouse users are suffering as a result. In my opinion, Windows 8 will be seen as the worst blunder in Microsoft's history.

As an IT manager, it is amusing to hear everyone's opinion on windows 8 at our corporation's global meetings and when attending trade shows. The best it has ever been described as is "neat". The nearly unanimous opinion is that businesses will stick to windows 7 and cross their fingers that windows 9 is returned to a usable and optimal form for desktop use.

 

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JGoat[/url]":30ayf4ps]
You misrepresent fact. There are millions of people using Win 8 on laptops/desktops who don't reject it. I'm continually amazed at the negative response to Win8 on Ars, it stands in stark contrast to what I see out in the wild. Ignoring the existence of happy Win 8 users is naive. I'm mostly intrigued by what has caused this intransigence, Win 8 is not radically different from Win 7. Your notion of a 'traditional GUI' for the last 20 years is comical, Windows has changed greatly over the past 2 decades.

And if you aren't familiar with Mac OS, there's a learning curve there too, much steeper than from Win7 to Win8. Point your friend to one of the dozen articles that highlight helpful Win-8 shortcuts and they'll be fine.

As with anything used by millions of people, there will always be both positive and negative opinions. Stating the existence of either is pointless.

What you should focusing on are the merits of arguments made on either side. It has been my observation that the well reasoned critiques are the negative ones. That criticism is typically not focused on the hurdle of learning something new, but rather the problems introduced by the poorly designed interaction most easily referred to as "metro".

My pet peeve is that the GUI no longer indicates functionality via the physical appearance of interface elements. There is absolutely no distinction between clickable or draggable regions and non-interactive regions. And that's just one of a hundred different concrete examples of exactly why I consider windows 8 to be the biggest blunder in microsoft history. Yes, even worse than vista.