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Comment by Seanambers | Hacker News Reader

Deep questions like why didn't anyone like Metro UI on Windows 8? :) Even on touch devices it sucked.

I would say that was an obvious sign of a a sick organization when it effects that kind of carnage on its users. Only reason they got away with it, was that there were no real alternatives to Windows. Windows 11 is something in the same league, but i would say there are more alternatives now than ever before, so Microsoft better watch out.

Got my first Macbook this year after 25+ years on windows/linux. The more I use it the more I like it much in the same way as when i started using iPhones 8 years ago.

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Cause everyone already had learned how to "touch"-gui, but microsoft in typical arrogance, redesigned it from the bottom up, throwing all the learnings away, you either had from android or macos. And like introducing a third language, to do the same tasks you already can perform fluent in two other languages, it was just this constant stepping into the void of expectations. It came out 2012 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_(design_language) and was thus 9 years to late (1 iphone) and 5 years to late (1 android). It was moment were microsoft dediced to go uphill, that journey developers usually have to face, when dragging users away from windows (aka the universal gui). I mean, the normal user learns windows in school.

You only make that sort of learning effort on rare ocassions. And you dont make it just because your vendor locks you out of a previoulsy perfectly working for you ("You learned to know it blind") device.

The Metro touch UI first shipped on the Zune HD in 2009. The iPhone launched at the beginning of 2007, and the iPod touch later in the year. I don't think it's fair to say Apple had a 9 year head start.

Zune's were very basic music and video players(I used to own one.) You can't say with a straight face that the user interface of the Zune had any great similarities to the User interface of a desktop OS.

OP was comparing touch interfaces, and used iPhone and Android as examples that were well ahead of MS and by how many years. I mentioned the Zune because it's a counterexample for the specific claim made by OP about the timing of Metro, specifically with respect to touch interfaces.

> Cause everyone already had learned how to "touch"-gui, but microsoft in typical arrogance, redesigned it from the bottom up

Microsoft had a fantastic touch UI in Windows Phone 8 imho, but on desktop Windows they managed to botch it hard enough that everyone became allergic to tiles. They simply slapped a random UI with absolutely no thought put into it over the desktop, making it a constant obstacle for users to reach the UI they were used to. The old part of the UI was near unusable on touchscreens, the new one was unintuitive and not self-explanatory at all.

It felt like Microsoft wasn't sure what they actually wanted and couldn't commit to a choice until launch. I can't otherwise explain how they released a UI where the average Windows user needed minutes to find the shutdown button.

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