And Ars Technica chimes in with their review of Windows 8, expressing some of the exact same concerns as me in regards to learning a new interface and the tiles/desktop ordeal.
http://arstechnica.com/information-tech ... windows-8/
Learning a new interface takes time, and it requires guidance, particularly when you have 17 years of preconceived notions of how you expect a computer to work. Windows 8 doesn't provide that guidance; it throws you in at the deep end and expects you to figure out some fairly subtle things all by yourself.
There are now countless YouTube videos of people of various ages and experience levels trying to use Windows 8 for the first time. Some people succeed quickly and easily. Others don't. To me, that suggests there's a real problem. While some will flourish, I think others will feel lost, overwhelmed, and, yes, angry.
Microsoft has done precious little to bring the Metro environment and the desktop environment together. They're two separate worlds. The charms, in particular, are off-limits to desktop apps. The search charm won't search the foreground desktop app. Desktop apps can't share or be share targets. Desktop apps don't know about devices, and don't store their settings behind the settings charm.
There is a hard and dividing line between the two worlds. Far from allowing seamless switching between the two environments, they barely even acknowledge the other's existence. It's extremely limited, and it means that as a person who has to use the desktop for some things, I find myself avoiding Metro apps for all things. Bridging the gap is just too painful and annoying.
Until this gap is closed, it leaves Windows 8 feeling like two separate operating systems poorly grafted together. You can never avoid the join entirely, but your happiness with Windows 8 will depend heavily on just how often you have to cross over. The more you try to treat the two worlds as equal, integrated peers, the worse Windows 8 gets. The more you stick to one paradigm or the other, the better it is.
But this I did not know and it really pisses me off...
App stores have become expected, mandated parts of smartphone and tablet platforms. The Windows Store is in the familiar Apple mold. Microsoft exercises strict editorial and technical control over apps listed in the store, restricting both their content and access to the operating system.
While enterprise customers will be able to bypass the store and privately distribute custom applications, there won't be any general-purpose way for normal users to side-load applications that haven't gone through—or couldn't go through—Microsoft's validation processes.
But the overall experience isn't very good. Installing and updating apps is a core experience: it shouldn't be unreliable, and it shouldn't be unpredictable. Yet the Store app is both.
In fact, I would even go so far as to say that the Store app is the worst of the built-in apps. Some of the other apps frustrate me due to their simplicity, but none of the others are as janky as the Store app.
I can't install apps from outside Microsoft's app store? I don't want to have to jailbreak/hack my daggone computer just to install an app that the Windows Store gods determined wasn't acceptable. I should be able to install what I want, not want Microsoft deems I want. Who the heck do they think they are, Apple?
If you're a desktop user, then yes: the new interface is not perfect. Despite what Microsoft says, the new interface is a compromise. The new interface makes some things worse. It also makes some things better. If you're a multimonitor user, I would think long and hard before upgrading; as welcome as the new taskbar is, the ease of use of the new interface is a severe problem with multiple monitors.
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