I've been trying to put my finger on why, exactly, I am not enjoying Windows 8. (To be fair, I did go into it with the expectation that I would hate it, though even then I didn't know why I thought I would hate it.) But I think I've pinned it down. It's because of this:

He complains that apps are full screen in metro. Metro is designed for the average user who generally only cares about doing one thing. Had they not also included desktop this would be a totally valid complaint, but as most power users can and should just avoid metro in most cases, I don't think it holds water. Also they aren't always full screen.

This, right here, is why I hate Windows 8. It violates the guideline of modelessness. I actually hate modes when dealing with my UI. I hate that my computer might behave radically differently when it is in one mode as opposed to another. This means that when, for example, I have to help my technologically handicapped family sort out their problems, I have one more point of data to consider (are you in Metro mode?) that can significantly alter the nature of the solution I provide.

I hate this. I don't think I can properly express how much I hate the idea of Metro on my PC, or on any PC I might have to work with. Sure, I can always just switch to desktop mode and forget about Metro... at least until my idiot sister calls me up at 3AM because her computer isn't working the way she expects and she can't get on facebook so she can read about her stupid friends' little rat dogs or find out all about how her ex-boyfriend passed out puking drunk at a frat party. Then I have to think about Metro, because she's exactly the sort of developmentally arrested customer Microsoft had in mind when they created Metro in the first place.

Call me a backwards Luddite, mock me for detesting change, whatever. I don't give a shit. I think there is a reason the Windows 8 launch went so poorly, and I don't think it was fully because MS confused their message.

I've been trying to put my finger on why, exactly, I am not enjoying Windows 8. (To be fair, I did go into it with the expectation that I would hate it, though even then I didn't know why I thought I would hate it.) But I think I've pinned it down. It's because of this:

He complains that apps are full screen in metro. Metro is designed for the average user who generally only cares about doing one thing. Had they not also included desktop this would be a totally valid complaint, but as most power users can and should just avoid metro in most cases, I don't think it holds water. Also they aren't always full screen.

This, right here, is why I hate Windows 8. It violates the guideline of modelessness. I actually hate modes when dealing with my UI. I hate that my computer might behave radically differently when it is in one mode as opposed to another. This means that when, for example, I have to help my technologically handicapped family sort out their problems, I have one more point of data to consider (are you in Metro mode?) that can significantly alter the nature of the solution I provide.

I hate this. I don't think I can properly express how much I hate the idea of Metro on my PC, or on any PC I might have to work with. Sure, I can always just switch to desktop mode and forget about Metro... at least until my idiot sister calls me up at 3AM because her computer isn't working the way she expects and she can't get on facebook so she can read about her stupid friends' little rat dogs or find out all about how her ex-boyfriend passed out puking drunk at a frat party. Then I have to think about Metro, because she's exactly the sort of developmentally arrested customer Microsoft had in mind when they created Metro in the first place.

Call me a backwards Luddite, mock me for detesting change, whatever. I don't give a shit. I think there is a reason the Windows 8 launch went so poorly, and I don't think it was fully because MS confused their message.

I don't understand your problem. Metro applications behave MUCH more consistently than before Windows 8. You search, access settings, manage permissions and share data the same way across all metro applications. You don't have to hunt through various toolbars and hope the developers stuck to convention. This is a huge step forward for providing tech support for your families. That being said, I don't use metro apps on my laptop at all. I am in the desktop the entire time. In normal usage, most people wouldn't even notice I was using Windows 8.

So I finally installed Windows 8 on my Macbook. Installation didn't go perfectly smoothly (although I think this is almost entirely the fault of the Mac hardware/boot camp not officially supporting Windows 8) but everything seems to be working now. I haven't had enough time to really get familiar with it, but so far I've found some good things and some bad things.

It seems like the Windows Classic interface is no longer supported in desktop mode, which is notable only because until now I've had my UI elements styled exactly as in Windows 95. The good news is that the Windows 8 desktop interface is also the only one that I actually like as much as the Windows 95 one. I am a huge fan of the solid-color title bars and buttons and minimal borders. It reminds me a lot of the interface in Microsoft Encarta 95 which, at least from my perspective is a good thing. It's pretty much the polar opposite of Windows XP's cartoony, unnecessarily "shaded" UI chrome, which, in my opinion, was outdated as soon as it was released.

I've had a couple of weird issues so far, though. The first is that some difficult-to-disable "adaptive brightness" was capping my screen brightness for seemingly no reason until I looked up how to disable it. I'm not sure what it's supposed to do or if it works for anyone, but it definitely didn't work for me.

The second problem I've noticed is that if I sort my desktop icons (though to be honest I normally have them disabled altogether) by, for instance, file type, it seems to order them vertically before horizontally. This is fine, but if I try to select a run of them with the "shift" key, it seems to think they should be sorted horizontally before vertically, and selects them in a completely unhelpful way. This is hard to explain, so let me try an example: I sort them by type, and I get three vertical columns of .pdf files. I click on the first .pdf, hold shift, then click on the last one. Instead of selecting all three columns of .pdf files, it selects several rows of irrelevant files, as if it's expecting the icons to be sorted into rows instead of columns. It's not a huge issue, but it's annoying and stupid.

So I finally installed Windows 8 on my Macbook. Installation didn't go perfectly smoothly (although I think this is almost entirely the fault of the Mac hardware/boot camp not officially supporting Windows 8) but everything seems to be working now. I haven't had enough time to really get familiar with it, but so far I've found some good things and some bad things.

It seems like the Windows Classic interface is no longer supported in desktop mode, which is notable only because until now I've had my UI elements styled exactly as in Windows 95. The good news is that the Windows 8 desktop interface is also the only one that I actually like as much as the Windows 95 one. I am a huge fan of the solid-color title bars and buttons and minimal borders. It reminds me a lot of the interface in Microsoft Encarta 95 which, at least from my perspective is a good thing. It's pretty much the polar opposite of Windows XP's cartoony, unnecessarily "shaded" UI chrome, which, in my opinion, was outdated as soon as it was released.

I've had a couple of weird issues so far, though. The first is that some difficult-to-disable "adaptive brightness" was capping my screen brightness for seemingly no reason until I looked up how to disable it. I'm not sure what it's supposed to do or if it works for anyone, but it definitely didn't work for me.

The second problem I've noticed is that if I sort my desktop icons (though to be honest I normally have them disabled altogether) by, for instance, file type, it seems to order them vertically before horizontally. This is fine, but if I try to select a run of them with the "shift" key, it seems to think they should be sorted horizontally before vertically, and selects them in a completely unhelpful way. This is hard to explain, so let me try an example: I sort them by type, and I get three vertical columns of .pdf files. I click on the first .pdf, hold shift, then click on the last one. Instead of selecting all three columns of .pdf files, it selects several rows of irrelevant files, as if it's expecting the icons to be sorted into rows instead of columns. It's not a huge issue, but it's annoying and stupid.

Agreed on all points. The adaptive brightness was annoying and I'm chalking it up to a bootcamp / Windows 8 quirk as I've not seen anything similar on "made for windows" devices. Also, I just noticed the problem you're having on the desktop icons, and it's definitely weird. Another reason to not use the desktop to store files!

there are some new standard Win+key shortcuts for use inside apps (Win+Z brings up the toolbar that appears when you swipe the top/bottom edge and Win+I brings up the settings bar that appears if when you swipe the right edge, though these can also be invoked by hovering the mouse to the right edge of the screen or right clicking).

After 2 decades, Microsoft finally realises that combining the CTRL and META keys was a horrible idea? Now if only Linux distros would realise this too...

I've been trying to put my finger on why, exactly, I am not enjoying Windows 8. (To be fair, I did go into it with the expectation that I would hate it, though even then I didn't know why I thought I would hate it.) But I think I've pinned it down. It's because of this:

He complains that apps are full screen in metro. Metro is designed for the average user who generally only cares about doing one thing. Had they not also included desktop this would be a totally valid complaint, but as most power users can and should just avoid metro in most cases, I don't think it holds water. Also they aren't always full screen.

This, right here, is why I hate Windows 8. It violates the guideline of modelessness. I actually hate modes when dealing with my UI. I hate that my computer might behave radically differently when it is in one mode as opposed to another. This means that when, for example, I have to help my technologically handicapped family sort out their problems, I have one more point of data to consider (are you in Metro mode?) that can significantly alter the nature of the solution I provide.

I hate this. I don't think I can properly express how much I hate the idea of Metro on my PC, or on any PC I might have to work with. Sure, I can always just switch to desktop mode and forget about Metro... at least until my idiot sister calls me up at 3AM because her computer isn't working the way she expects and she can't get on facebook so she can read about her stupid friends' little rat dogs or find out all about how her ex-boyfriend passed out puking drunk at a frat party. Then I have to think about Metro, because she's exactly the sort of developmentally arrested customer Microsoft had in mind when they created Metro in the first place.

Call me a backwards Luddite, mock me for detesting change, whatever. I don't give a shit. I think there is a reason the Windows 8 launch went so poorly, and I don't think it was fully because MS confused their message.

I don't understand your problem. Metro applications behave MUCH more consistently than before Windows 8. You search, access settings, manage permissions and share data the same way across all metro applications. You don't have to hunt through various toolbars and hope the developers stuck to convention. This is a huge step forward for providing tech support for your families. That being said, I don't use metro apps on my laptop at all. I am in the desktop the entire time. In normal usage, most people wouldn't even notice I was using Windows 8.

It doesn't matter if it shits golden rainbows and hands out brownies sprinkled with fairy farts. It is still 2 distinct modes of operation that I have to remember when dealing with a support issue.

I find it hilarious how many people say what amounts to "I don't use Metro at all." And they don't see anything wrong with Metro being shipped with their system. If it's just useless bloody cruft, why is it there? Whatever happened to people being discerning and conscientious about what gets installed on their systems, instead of swallowing whatever useless tripe Microsoft wants to pump into them? When did useless bloat suddenly become okay?

Another reason to not use the desktop to store files!

...as if you didn't just get done saying how you never use Metro and always use desktop. Now you say, don't use desktop for this one thing. Which is it?

I find it hilarious how many people say what amounts to "I don't use Metro at all." And they don't see anything wrong with Metro being shipped with their system. If it's just useless bloody cruft, why is it there?

Why is multiple modes a bad thing? Microsoft essentially gave users the same old mode and a mode that lets them not totally destroy their computer by accident. I don't get the tech support cynicism of it. It's a huge step forward from a tech support perspective.

Whatever happened to people being discerning and conscientious about what gets installed on their systems, instead of swallowing whatever useless tripe Microsoft wants to pump into them? When did useless bloat suddenly become okay?

When were people ever discerning and concientious about what got installed on their systems? That's part of the problem that Metro solves. It's less useful for power users, but it's tremendously useful for the average user, which is nowhere near to anyone on this forum. The average user doesn't care about the control panel; the average user cares about a secure browser, a secure email client, and being able to install programs without fear of the computer becoming disfunctional. Metro delivers that experience without sacrificing the desktop. By most metrics, desktop is the useless bloat and metro is the useful mode. For power users it's the opposite, but don't mistake them(yourself) for the majority of users.

When were people ever discerning and concientious about what got installed on their systems? ... for power users it's the opposite, but don't mistake them(yourself) for the majority of users.

That's exactly the problem, isn't it? I don't recall "normal users" complaining about Vista or Windows ME, either...

But leaving that aside, why on earth did Microsoft not ship a Metro version of Office? This leads to exactly the situation FLeBlanc is bemoaning - even casual users will be forced into desktop mode by Office.

But leaving that aside, why on earth did Microsoft not ship a Metro version of Office? This leads to exactly the situation FLeBlanc is bemoaning - even casual users will be forced into desktop mode by Office.

And I'd agree that Office doesn't make much sense in that regard (I feel like it was Sinofsky related corporate politics more than anything). I just don't get the hate for it being multi-modal. If either of the modes made the other one worse I might understand, but in my experience neither suffers by nature of the other existing. It's like saying you wouldn't buy a TV because it can also stream netflix or do any number of things tvs can do these days; it still functions great as a tv, I am not going to be pissed because I can also use twitter on it if I wanted to even if I never would.

I just don't get the hate for it being multi-modal. If either of the modes made the other one worse I might understand, but in my experience neither suffers by nature of the other existing. It's like saying you wouldn't buy a TV because it can also stream netflix or do any number of things tvs can do these days; it still functions great as a tv, I am not going to be pissed because I can also use twitter on it if I wanted to even if I never would.

I'll admit that I'm from the school of thought where "every option that a application has is a failure, because the developer was unable to make up their mind", but even ignoring that, having modal software with a different interaction paradigm in each mode is surely not a good thing.

It's hard enough to explain to a customer over the phone how to operate the save dialogue, without having to worry that their might be multiple modes of save dialogue that look and operate differently...