[Ars] - Windows, reimagined: A review of Windows 8 - Page 3

Originally Posted by Tsumi 

It's also the first time something like this was attempted. I'm fairly sure they'll improve and find the right balance as they get more feedback. A group of people working on the OS isn't as likely to find as many flaws as several million people using it for normal work.
Not to mention making changes takes time and lots of testing to make sure there aren't any bugs.

Originally Posted by ketxxx 

This just reinforces what I already said.. include during setup the option to use the "classic" UI. Would it of been that difficult? No, absolutely not. Preview builds of W8 let you switch between the Metro UI and "classic" UI. Were MS lazy not to give users the option to use the "classic" UI in the final build? Absolutely.

For business and enterprise installations, where the upgrade cost — both in terms of time and money — is higher, I am more ambivalent. That the Metro interface cannot be disabled by system administrators is troubling. By installing Windows 8, companies will implicitly force its employees to use a new interface that could severely dent productivity. This issue is compounded by the fact that almost all of Windows 8 Desktop’s new features are oriented towards at-home consumers, rather than office workers. I think Windows 8 will be a very tough sell in the enterprise.

1: Market reboot

If you want your applications to be fully compatible with Windows 8 (including running on ARM CPUs), you’ll need to do a full rewrite in Windows 8/WinRT. This may be great for developers looking to break into markets with established players. But if you are the established player, you are suddenly back at square one.
2: The asynchronous model

Windows 8 development is highly dependent upon asynchronous operations for anything that is long running. While that may be a cute trick in some scenarios, it is downright frustrating in others (like trying to download a file). It isn’t just the work needed to handle the async call; it’s things like error handling and reporting problems back to the user. It requires a whole new approach to the UI from what developers (especially WinForms developers) are used to.
3: Lack of direct disk access

Windows 8 cuts off direct access to the system in quite a few ways, but the one that will hurt typical developers the most is the lack of disk access. Windows 8 follows an extreme isolation model for applications, and if your application requires access to data outside its own confined little world (including networked services you can access), you can forget about porting it to Windows 8.
4: Touch UI paradigm

Unless you have been writing a lot of mobile apps, shifting to the new UI style, which is designed for touch interaction, is going to pretty tough. It took me a long time to get a feel for what works well and what doesn’t. To make things more difficult, what looks and works well on a screen using a mouse and keyboard can be a poor experience with touch, and things that work well with touch often are a struggle to use on the screen. It’s a tricky balancing act, and as the uproar over the new UI in Windows 8 shows, even Microsoft is struggling to get it right despite having had a few years of experience with it.
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10: The trail of dead tech
This is the one that really breaks my heart. Microsoft has a history of pushing a technology as “the next big thing” and then leaving it dying on the vine a few years later. We don’t know if Microsoft will back off its Windows 8 strategy before launch, right after launch (Kin), or a few years down the road (Zune, Silverlight). If the new Windows 8 paradigm is not a success, Microsoft may very well change course in a way that renders all your hard work on Windows 8 native applications a waste of time.

Originally Posted by AlphaC 

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/138177-under-the-hood-of-windows-8-or-why-desktop-users-should-upgrade-from-windows-7/3
It's not so much the start screen, it's the way Metro Apps also maximize and all.

Originally Posted by tpi2007 

1. You must have missed the memo:
The problem with making it a single platform is that you have to get it right. In my opinion Windows 8 doesn't get it right and Bill Gates implicitly admits it by saying this is just the start.

2. I gave two concrete examples and I honestly can't think of one single added feature the Start screen has.