I cannot understand how people like the tiny start button and menus and right-clicks and multi-level navigation in the old Windows UI. I used to overcome that by simply having shortcuts to the applications I used most on the desktop. Metro with its large tiles for those same applications was a much better fit for that.
Metro tiles are OK for simple apps, but you are not going to make CAD or NLE with that. For these apps, you need those tiny controls, ability to cram lot of them into small space and ability to adjust the design to the target intent. Metro tiles won't help you with that.
I love Windows 7, but do you honestly think the Windows 7 start menu is not broken? I believe we just got used to it over time.
In Windows 7, I can either have an unstructured list of "pinned" programs, or I can manually categorize the real ("All programs") start menu.
Option 1 doesn't scale beyond ~15 items (I have 22 pinned programs and it's a mess), and option 2 breaks whenever a program updates itself and puts new links into the top level. Also, option 2 is not an option at all for 99,9% of users, so it's quite obvious why MS wouldn't optimize for that use case.
The single thing that I like the most about Windows 8.1 machines is how I can group programs on the start page. Now that it isn't fullscreen any more with Windows 10, I am pretty much looking forward to it.
Settings > Personalization > Start > Use Start full screen
It's old school but I've always find it more efficient than pinned apps or using the start menu.
The thing is, the majority of gamers will update based on the available cash, and so gamedevs will be targeting the expected hw base at the time of release.
So it really depends, whether you except the gamers to go on spending spree (nvidia and intel would certainly love that), or not.
A huge portion of the gaming market (China and large parts of Asia) is still using Windows XP. D3D9 renderers aren't going anywhere.
I've not used Win10 but all I do with Win7 is act as a bootloader for Steam. I don't really anticipate ever doing anything else with it, either. I assume there is something analogous to the old startup folder.
I mostly seem to spend my time running modded minecraft (FTB) on linux anyway.
The only consistency with the other versions of windows is that the hierarchy in the settings is all changed again to make sure it will take everyone time to find its way.
Some issues I noticed in the preview I tried: 1. The underlying system hasn't changed (still life in COM land with the joys/distresses of the registry and cryptic UUID keys where half of the configuration is secretly stored) 2. The icons in MMC don't match anything else on the system (even the icons in Control Panel are not consistent - are they flat or should they have depth? Should they have no perspective or should they be set at a jaunty angle?) 3. Even the icons in Explorer don't match each other (my user directory doesn't match any of the icons beneath it) 4. The new Settings window is not resizable even though it is 50% white space 5. Control Panel is still there despite this new Settings window (duplication!) 6. Explorer permits you to show menus but they're actually just the tabs on a frustrating ribbon bar 7. Notebook theme issues that were introduced in Windows XP still persist (Explorer's Folder Options window has a white tab and border for the General page but the General page itself is grey; when you switch to the View and Search pages in this very same notebook those pages are white without a hint of grey; this General page is written without knowledge of theming..? plus none of the controls line up!) 8. There is still no consistent Open Dialog (Notepad uses a different Open dialog to MMC, for example; the MMC one is from about 1995, I was surprised there wasn't a briefcase on it!) 9. There appears to be no HIG for menu placement in relation to toolbars (is the menu ABOVE the toolbar or below it?; control panel menu is below the toolbar, Explorer is above, Settings app doesn't even have one), should true menubars be allowed (like in Notepad) or should they just be placeholders for ribbons (like in Explorer)?
It's all just a big ball of different GUI styles and fashions from 25+ years of fashions, windowing toolkits (yes, you can find the MFC40 and 42 DLLs in the Windows directories in this, and yes .NET is there too, but the ancient Windows API will still work fine too, plus Win32!), user-interface guidelines from different decades and generally a mess.
I will wait to see how people rate it before installing.
EDIT: I notice downvotes but no responses?? I thought my points were valid - the mishmash of libraries from decades and decades with artwork from those decades makes for a convoluted jumbled experience. You wouldn't feel comfortable in a car that had a klaxon for the horn, a handbrake outside and a gear system with no synchromesh but that sported a brand new LCD illuminated dashboard - it would feel a mishmash and a mess. This is precisely what this feels like, and something I thought they would like to jettison or at least tidy up.
Remember that this is something used by business users. Technologies like COM are without equal in the field (native automation of every major software for example).
The only negative points you mention are icons and the pure existence of things you obviously don't and can't use. It's all in all a very silly paragraph you wrote.
The file picker is one of the worst offenders, as the applications that you use the most have a tendency to use the worst version available, and it's impossible to pass your settings from one version of the dialog to others. There are versions of the folder picker that don't even let you paste a path copied from your current open Explorer window.
(Why is it that, in the 21st century, NONE of the major desktop vendors has thought of putting the list of currently open folders in the Save dialog window? Not the "recent" folders, not the "frequent" folders, but the actual folders I'm working with, RIGHT NOW?)
They've made a clean break with IE, why not do the same with Windows APIs one day? I like being able to run my ancient Win32 app and Windows API app as much as the next guy but there comes a point when they should tidy up, surely? Else why move to the new frameworks and APIs if I can still just write something in the ancient frameworks, replete with security issues?? Why bother moving to .Net?
If you love COM as much as I don't, try writing an MMC plugin in the C++ MMC API 2.0 (not the .net 3.0) one and see how well you get on with the joy of undecipherable COM messages and debugging.
But COM is simple interface dispatching (it is actually much easier to implement COM in C/C++ because you have actual control over the interfaces and marshaling) in the end with syntax that is a bit dated i agree. It is not rocket science by far...
You're right. The syntax is grim and debugging/troubleshooting is not pleasant.