Disclaimer: Emphasis on SUBJECTIVE before you indicate my opinion is wrong because you have a different opinion. That's pretty-much what subjective means. I thought HN was smarter than this.
Agreed, it's subjective. This is change aversion, not loss aversion. Humans don't like change, even if it is good for them.
People don't like Windows 8 UI because it was a change, and they don't like that they are changing it back. The Windows 8 interface was scientifically superior[1] to the old one: people just didn't like the change. The Windows 10 one is closer to the older interface, people just don't like it because it's change.
The big interaction areas (including the infinite one at the bottom left for the start menu) provided good mouse control. People would have found the keyboard control far superior if they had taken the 10 minutes to learn it, instead of complaining.
Something is not "objectively terrible" if at least one person like it and, including myself, I know people who like the Win8 interface. I haven't tried Win10 yet but I'll probably like the interface because Microsoft are terrific at interface design.
The only thing that Microsoft get wrong is that people don't like their cheese being moved. The Windows 7 interface was good, the Windows 8 interface was good and so will be the Windows 10.
The very reason that people praise Apple interface design is because they keep feeding you the same junk over and over again and you all love it, the innovation there is that innovation is avoided in order to not rile up change aversion.
> People don't like Windows 8 UI because it was a change, and they don't like that they are changing it back.
No, people don't like the Windows 8 UI because it's terrible on the desktop. Comparatively, the classic Windows UI is terrible on touch-screen devices. Even combining both interfaces on one OS isn't terrible. But in Windows 8 they both bleed into each other in a way that is not good. Windows 10 combines them even more but I'll reserve judgement until I've tried it.
The charms bar, hot corners, the Wifi setup panel, the login screen, the start screen, the associated app selector, the metro apps with associations to common file types, etc. I've personally turned off most of it and replaced the start menu with ClassicShell but it took a while. It's a pretty nice OS if you can completely hide metro.
I hate that too. Disabled it. That's my opinion of the feature. However, that in addition to:
> charms bar
(Which I never use) is technically good UX design. Corners are super easy to position your mouse in. 100 out of 100 times you try and put your mouse cursor into the corner you will achieve that without fail. Both corner gestures (really hate them) and charms bar use that extensively.
> Wifi setup panel, login screen
Never had a problem with these, they do the job just fine. Just different. The Wifi panel is actually great UX because the process of setting up Wifi does not bounce all over the screen (as it did previously).
> start screen
Fitt's Law, look it up. If you don't like using the mouse you don't even have click anyway. WINKEY -> N -> O -> T, oh, notepad is up, ENTER. Done. Windows 8 taught me to let go of my mouse.
> (Which I never use) is technically good UX design. Corners are super easy to position your mouse in.
I have 2 24" monitors, 3840x1080 pixels. The corners are actually pretty far from where ever my mouse is right now, and not all that easy to hit on purpose. Accidentally, all the time. With a touchpad it's even worse -- they were always being activated when I didn't want them to be. And there is literally nothing in that bar I need to use.
> The Wifi panel is actually great UX because the process of setting up Wifi does not bounce all over the screen (as it did previously).
It's an overlay which means it floats over your work while you're waiting for the Wifi connection to fail. It's just entirely unnecessary UI which doesn't fit in with anything else on the desktop.
> Fitt's Law, look it up.
Fitt's law is frankly bullshit these days. I have way too many pixels for it to make sense and I've had 20+ years of using a mouse.
I use Windows 8 and it is not objectively terrible, it is actually quite OK and doesn't result in any loss of productivity for myself.
There is the whole whole screen start menu thing, but I wasn't a big start menu user in Windows 7, and I barely notice. I don't find Metro to be very useful for me, and I don't go there often, but it doesn't really bleed into the desktop so whatever.
Your opinion is not the only correct one, although it is the more typical reaction to change. Any alternative change would have likely caused this exact same fallout.
> No, people don't like the Windows 8 UI because it's terrible on the desktop.
I use Windows 8.1 on the desktop every day - since Windows 8 was released - and I honestly can't understand why people have such huge problems with it unless it is just about change.
I had my first impressions of it in a VM when it was RTM. At that time I did think it was pretty ugly and I got really frustrated (i.e., I was cussing up a storm) trying to figure out how to shut it down properly via the UI - in the RTM release I believe the only way to do that was to use the Charms bar, and I had to Google to figure that out. I also did not have any particular fondness for the Metro apps.
Sometime later I made it the primary OS on my laptop - which, as I purchased it in 2006, is non-touch. I use an external mouse instead of a touchpad because I hate touchpads, full-stop. And I'd say that in my opinion, Windows 8 is definitely the best Windows for desktop. The one major complaint I had, about shutdowns, was resolved by having a power button on the Start Screen, and additionally adding a context menu to the Start button on the taskbar that gives you quick access to shutdown options.
Almost everything in Windows 8 works the same. For example, I see frequent complaints about how terrible the Start Screen is for desktop users. I don't think it's very pretty, but it works almost exactly the same as the old start menu. The primary difference is that it takes up the full screen, which I don't think is too terribly a big deal since the Start Menu goes away if you take away focus anyway. Opening applications works the same way as it has since Vista: hit winkey, type the first few letters of the application, hit enter. Alternatively, click on the start button, click on the application (if pinned) or click on All Programs to scroll through all your applications. This is moderately improved in Win 8 since you can change what your programs are sorted by, unlike Win 7 (for example: Most Used, Most Recently installed, etc.)
I am not a big fan of the Metro apps, but they do now show up on the taskbar, they do have a titlebar with a close and minimize button, and you can sort-of resize them. The only one I use is Weather. By default (and maybe this has changed since I installed it), Windows does have Metro apps set to open your pictures, etc. The default app setting is easy to change, though I can't imagine many new users expecting or wanting the new Metro apps. The only one I had to change was changing images to open in Windows Photo Viewer; the rest was "fixed" by installing my usual apps (VLC, Firefox, etc.)
Other than that, there are plenty of desktop-centric improvements. Multi-monitor support is much better. There is a fantastic context menu on the Start button with quick access to various administrative functions. Various things throughout the desktop OS get slight improvements; the file copy dialog is better, task manager is better, Windows Explorer is better. For the most part, the average desktop user is almost never even going to see the Metro interface. And I have never, ever touched the Charms bar, ever since that virtual machine. It's totally unnecessary for a desktop workflow. Which I suppose could be a complaint in itself.
The only real regression I see is that the Windows 8 file search kind of blows. It works as well as Windows 7 if you know what you're looking for - hit Windows key, type part of the file name, hit enter - but for any kind of advanced search you have to open up Windows Explorer and do it from there. The Start Screen is also missing the recently-opened files list on the Windows 7 start menu - you have to pin to the taskbar to get the same effect.
Can you go into more exactly why it's terrible on desktop? Is it just you think tiles waste space, the clash between Metro/desktop is kind of jarring, that kind of thing?
I also use Windows 8.1 everyday, I'm typing this message on it.
> Almost everything in Windows 8 works the same. For example, I see frequent complaints about how terrible the Start Screen is for desktop users. I don't think it's very pretty, but it works almost exactly the same as the old start menu.
My father-in-law somehow figured out he could launch applications by going into Program Files folder in explorer and running programs from there. He did that because he could not figure out how to find stuff on the start screen. I was impressed with his ingenuity; I just replaced the start screen with ClassicShell. I don't have any metro apps, I have 2 24" monitors, so the start screen is ridiculous.
> Other than that, there are plenty of desktop-centric improvements.
I agree. Those could have all been in Windows 7.1 though.
> For the most part, the average desktop user is almost never even going to see the Metro interface.
Except for the charms bar, hot corners, the Wifi setup panel, the login screen, the start screen, the associated app selector, the metro apps with associations to common file types, etc.
Emphasis on SUBJECTIVE before you indicate my opinion is wrong because you have a different opinion. That's pretty-much what subjective means. I thought HN was smarter than this.
Yet you spent your entire post claiming that the interface is objectively better. But people don't like it because it was change, it is "scientifically superior" (as if an interface is quantified only by the size of click targets), people just needed to learn it, people don't like their cheese being moved.
Coach your post in the disclaimer, but every other word you wrote was absolutely in conflict with that.
> every other word you wrote was absolutely in conflict with that.
1. People don't like it likely due to change aversion.
2. In theory it's superior.
3. It can't be "objectively terrible" if some people like it.
4. All UIs from all version of Windows are great (opinion).
How did I contradict myself? Either way this is turning into an argument which I'm not interesting in doing. If I contradicted myself, so be it.
Disclaimer: Emphasis on SUBJECTIVE before you indicate my opinion is wrong because you have a different opinion. That's pretty-much what subjective means. I thought HN was smarter than this.
Agreed, it's subjective. This is change aversion, not loss aversion. Humans don't like change, even if it is good for them.
People don't like Windows 8 UI because it was a change, and they don't like that they are changing it back. The Windows 8 interface was scientifically superior[1] to the old one: people just didn't like the change. The Windows 10 one is closer to the older interface, people just don't like it because it's change.
The big interaction areas (including the infinite one at the bottom left for the start menu) provided good mouse control. People would have found the keyboard control far superior if they had taken the 10 minutes to learn it, instead of complaining.
Something is not "objectively terrible" if at least one person like it and, including myself, I know people who like the Win8 interface. I haven't tried Win10 yet but I'll probably like the interface because Microsoft are terrific at interface design.
The only thing that Microsoft get wrong is that people don't like their cheese being moved. The Windows 7 interface was good, the Windows 8 interface was good and so will be the Windows 10.
The very reason that people praise Apple interface design is because they keep feeding you the same junk over and over again and you all love it, the innovation there is that innovation is avoided in order to not rile up change aversion.
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts%27s_law