Why Windows 8 Has New Start Screen and Metro Apps

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Start screen doesn't even have a Clock. Sure you can swipe from the right to see it, or download a clock tile app, but why the extra steps? It's kind of a bummer.

I jumped to OSX for my work laptop now (from Windows 8). My desktop still uses Windows 7 to play games and casual work stuff.
 
The fix for windows 8? when a mouse is present, boot to desktop and traditional startmenu. modern ui is great from tablets and ridiculous for desktop mode. so just make it switch when a mouse is present, done and done.
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And allow metro apps to run in a windowAnd allow desktop apps in the win8 storeAnd shrink the metro start screen into a metro start menu similar to what is found on WPMetro is great on most devices it is found on. MS simply made the mistake of adapting the desktop to metro rather than adapting metro to the desktop. Hopefully we will see the fix in win9 next year.
 
Concerning the Win 8 start screen, I would like the MS UI design folks to explain to me how throwing up a bunch of tiles aimed at marketing (by default) makes it easier for a non-techie to use their computer? Would the user not have to immediately learn how to re-organize everything? And can the UI team please explain how the start screen makes it easier for a user to find their documents and applications? Does having all your stuff spread out across the screen as tiles make this task easier? Have the folks at MS installed a new application in Windows 8 then tried to find it on the Start screen? If the aim is to make it easier for non-techies to use a computer by improving the GUI, then explain to me why it is more complicated to find anything than compared to previous version of Windows. Concerning the metro interface, the full screen metro apps are unintuitive if you want to show more than one window. Even non-techies need more than one window sometimes. Why is it so hard for the UI folks to believe that many users actually want a personal home computer for more than email, viewing a picture, web browsing, etc? What this person said of the Win 8 UI design decisions, sounds more like they are trying to convince themselves they made the right choices. And that it is about time we users just accepted it. Pffft. Bye bye Microsoft.
 
This guys says Metro isn't going away because it's Microsoft's long term strategy, like the two are related.Windows is going away, and with it, Metro. It's losing market share every month. Those .1 and .2 add up over time, and will only accelerate as Google continues to consume the dying flesh of Microsoft.They didn't know they'd alienate people, because no one would deliberately start the company on a death spiral, which is what they are in now. Their entire business is falling apart. Is it coincidence that Chromebooks and Android desktops took off when Windows 8 came out? Yeah, right. Now that it's out and about, Microsoft can't stop it. It's free, how do you compete with free, when it does what most people need? They did cut prices, drastically, to OEMs. Was that part of the plan? Yeah, probably not. Did it stop the market share losses? Well, no. Was that part of the plan? So, the plan was to lose market share every month, while being forced to lower prices, while irritating the people that were most committed to them, so they now look elsewhere. The casual user is lost to Microsoft. They are using tablets and Chromebooks, and those tablets aren't with Windows on them. Their only hope was to keep power users who were willing to pay the extra money for Windows because they felt it was better. They're losing them too, but didn't have to. I've used a Chromebook, and it's so far ahead of Windows for the casual loser or 'computer illiterate sister' that Microsoft has NO chance of keeping them. It's so much simpler and easier to maintain, as well as being lighter. It's also free. It's over. Microsoft has suffered a KO there.I'd hate to use it though, so that's where Microsoft has to cater to, and keep. But, nope, keep trying to get people to stay which you can not, and lose the people you could keep, and are willing to pay extra for your product. Good thinking. The evil empire is falling. Much of it by their own doing. There's a lot of flesh for the more vital companies to pick from the dying Microsoft, and it will be interesting to see where the market goes as Microsoft disintegrates. But, that's a process that will take several years to play out completely.
 
sooooo why didn't Microsoft provide a boot-to-desktop option in the original Windows 8 release? and why desktop mode doesnt have start menu?they obviously tested this with real windows users. didnt they have power users on their test team? or those power users just didnt scream "wtf is this? wheres is my start menu? devs, you gotta let more power users test this crap if you dont agree.."
 
The few computer illiterate people I Know who bought Windows 8 devices hate Metro and were completely confused by it. And longtime computer users including myself were also confused enough with how terrible and unintuitive Metro was that it took way too long to figure it out to help those computer illiterates, and it quickly became clear how unproductive such an interface was.Metro fails at pleasing both groups. And the fact that they knew it was dumbed down, and they didn't offer options to revert back to a normal desktop UI without having to resort to 3rd-party applications shows that they deserve the customer ire they're getting.
 
I needed to get a laptop for my wife. She needed it right away so I went to best buy and of coarse you didn't have much of a choice but to get it with win 8. I tell you this, it is so frustrating working with this OS. Just doing simple tasks can take you many minutes - when it should of taken seconds. If you know computers, you will not enjoy this operating system. Win 8 is not for professional workers or techs. In fact, it may have been built for teenagers at best. Stick with win 7 and hopefully win 9 will be better. If not, I am already considering moving to Steam OS or something else for my desktop computer.
 
This whole strategy is ridiculous. Instead of trying to make one Operating system to rule them all, that's a jack of all trades, master of none. They should diverge the two OSes into Windows Metro + Windows Pro. Windows Pro would only be installable on desktops and laptops and take care of all power and enterprise user needs. Make Metro for phones, tablets, and even desktops and laptops. But mostly optimized for touch and doing things one at a time. Even the name, Windows used to mean something, something that is only present on the desktop experience. If they had half a brain they would do this. System32 and all that extra crap doesn't belong on a tablet, as Metro doesn't belong on my desktop.
 
This just goes to show how out of touch the MS design team is. The older person demographic is the one the most confused by it and in 99% of the time can't and won't use Windows 8. I sent about an hour playing with Windows 8 and I hated it I'll never use it or install it on one of my desktops or notebooks. If I was trying to design the worst O/S that would drive customers away and would be the least user intuitive and just plain ugly it would be hard to beat Windows 8. Its got to go down as one of the very worst products in the history of computers.
 
"It's designed for your computer illiterate little sister, for grandpas who don't know how to use that computer dofangle thingy, and for mom who just wants to look up apple pie recipes..." Do you know how insulting that statement is? Who's "little sister" is computer illiterate in this day and age? Want to talk about easy to use UI's? There are two-year olds using iPads and Android tablets. Maybe if you guys at Microsoft spent less time insulting your customers you'd find the time to make a real intuitive UI.
 
"We knew full well casual users wouldn't like it initially. Hopefully in 5 years we'll look back and see we made the right decision," he writes.Lets piss off the casual user that is the biggest segment out there. Just continues to show the problem of MS poor planing and bad leadership, and let me add very stupid designers like this guy Jacob he still hasn't got a clue. If he still has his job there at MS in 5 years. It will show MS still hasn't got a clue and will fail badly.
 
"It's designed for your computer illiterate little sister, for grandpas who don't know how to use that computer dofangle thingy, and for mom who just wants to look up apple pie recipes..." Do you know how insulting that statement is? Who's "little sister" is computer illiterate in this day and age? Want to talk about easy to use UI's? There are two-year olds using iPads and Android tablets. Maybe if you guys at Microsoft spent less time insulting your customers you'd find the time to make a real intuitive UI.
 
MS, ever heard, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it?" Us "Power Users" that've actually decided to use Windows 8 have the add-ons to get rid of everything the Windows 8 GUI has to distance itself from Windows 7. Oh, and MS, FYI, TILES ARE UGLY. Everyone likes eye-candy. You can blame your competition, Apple for that. Now, get with the program.BTW, I'm sure Steve Jobs is laughing somewhere in heaven or hell, wherever he is, at the XBOX One right about now. It's lack of SIMPLE features are comical. Lack of SATA III and inferior graphics to the PS4 are quite funny, too...except for those who love XBOX exclusives and bought the XBOX One only for that. D'oh! Yet, Halo won't be out until 2015.
 
The only ones who won't get confused is if they have never used Windows their whole life and the Win8 Start Screen is the very first thing they ever used. If a illiterate person has used Windows at some point, then Windows 8 start screen will be confusing for them too.
 
Windows 8 is an insult of an OS, and if this interview is any insight into how Microsoft is approaching Windows 9, and focusing all their efforts in Metro and none in the desktop, then I'll be very happy to skip Windows 9 too, until something better than Windows 7 comes alone. And by better I mean, of course, better, because even if Windows 9 were to be Windows 7's desktop plus Windows 8's metro, it still wouldn't be better, it'd be the same, and I'm not paying for "the same".
 
Wouldn't know and don't care about 8. My Win 7 PC I built is plenty fast and just works with 2 512gb SSDs 2 GTx 780s a i7 4770k @ 4.8 and 24gb of Ram. No need to ruin all that with a horrid OS like 8.
 
There are a lot of things obvious about what Microsoft did that are not being explained here. Mainly, everything that Microsoft did was done in a way that was irreversible. There were no "off" switches. Microsoft tried to force Metro on everybody and Microsoft did not want us to have the option of not using it whether we were power users or not. So this designer may be telling a partial truth here without exposing Microsoft's real intentions, which are clear from their actions. We also know why Microsoft did it. Now it's become a humiliating situation and they're trying to pretend that there was some logical and honorable reasoning behind it.
 
As someone who works in retail tech, I can easily say that a majority of the non computer savvy people coming into my store do not care for windows 8/8.1. They prefer the UI that they're most accustomed towards (mainly windows xp) and don't like changing from the desktop interface to being forced to use the new metro interface simple because, as he said in the article "casual users don't go exploring".
 
Mistakes happen. Just glad to see them addressing the needs of the customer...although it did take a while
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What did Microsoft fix??? They made an operating system designed for tablets! Most people have no desire to have a tablet interface on their Desktop PC. Microsoft admits they designed Windows 8 for little girls and senior citizens, but little girls and senior citizens are not their target demographic, so what the hell are they doing!!! How can a company aim their product at non-customers? Rather than trying to appeal to people that are not interested in your product, why didn't they focus on making a faster more efficient windows 7?Way to miss the mark Microsoft!!!
 
Absolute BS. Microsoft went Metro solely to drive the Windows Store. After watching Apple and Google make big crinkies of their on-line stores Microsoft realized they wanted a piece of that action. In the process they sacrificed the very thing that differentiated Windows from the other two and were shocked at the reaction.
 
This is what happens when a company has a monopoly. They do whatever they want without any care for the consumer except for raping his wallet. Too bad the antitrust actions didn't force the breakup of Microsoft and spin off of Office after y2k.
 
Most people who use Windows use it either because:- that's what came preloaded on their PC/laptop and they cannot be bothered with installing something else- some of the programs or hardware they use only exists or works with Windows... sometimes only specific versions and service pack levels of itMost people in the first category do not really require a PC to get their everyday computing done and are more likely to buy Android-powered devices than install Linux on an existing PC that already has Windows on it. Most people in the second category are ball-and-chained to Windows.
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The primary ball and chain is Office, followed by high level games. Thankfully I've been able to move my copy of Office 2007 to each new computer build.
 
@roger smith you need to be hired by Microsoft. We all know they need someone who isn't an "illiterate little sister" telling them how to design their UI.
 
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