Final thoughts on Windows 8 - A Design Disaster

After spending a few weeks using the Windows 8 Release Preview (on a mouse and keyboard PC), I came to the same conclusions as this article. Metro is fine for touch devices, and Windows 7 is fine, if not great for desktop PCs, but the combination of the two simply doesn't work for me. I would be much more excited about Windows 8 if I had the option to turn Metro off completely and just go back to the Windows 7 UX when I'm running on a desktop or laptop. I'm also not a fan of the "ribbonizing" of applications that, in my opinion, never needed it, and don't benefit from the change (e.g. Windows Explorer). Microsoft can point out all the research and design goodness they want about the ribbon and Metro, but ultimately, the Windows 8 experience feels very clumsy and disjointed to me, almost bad enough for me to want to skip this version.

The final straw was the "Metro overhaul" that they did for Visual Studio 2012. I'm baffled by the decisions to remove all color from the application and turn it into a big, gray, amorphous blob.

And as well as 'hunt the app' you can also play 'hunt the content' on ZDNet's Web site where the body copy starts a whole 960 pixels down the page below a 980x420 Flash ad! :-)

"Microsoft has offered users an escape chute, given that you’re not going to be able to find anything, and added a search feature that allows you to filter the apps by typing the name of what you’re looking for. "

Ubuntu also suffers from this dumb idea. Hide everything and force the user to type the name. What if it's a little utility you rarely use and you can't remember the name? Oh well, too bad for you.

The takeaway ...

"I’m now ready to sum up my Windows 8 experience with a single word: awful."