Windows 8 Annoyance (part 4)

I am not the only one not liking the Metro interface. There are plenty of negative reviews to Windows 8. And to anyone who thinks Metro is stupid, Microsoft would respond by saying, well, at first people thought the mouse was stupid.

See this fairly-long-but-interesting Microsoft article on Windows 8 user experience.

I do not agree that the Aero style is "dated and cheesy" and should be taken away. The now flat layout of windows takes you back to Windows 3.1 (where the window title is centered, not left-aligned like in Windows 95). The merit of removing Aero is for battery-life saving. Ok. But what about those desktops and laptops that are plugged in all day? There should be an option to bring back Aero. I have never seen anyone object to Aero and turned their Windows 7 theme to some flat ones.

So the merit of the Metro tiles ("Live tiles make it personal") is to tell you everything perhaps you want to see in one screen: email notifications, IM notifications, news, sports, stocks, etc. To achieve this, all we need are widgets on your screens that you can place on your desktop to give you frequent updates and not needed to rob the entire screen of flat tiles. I was playing with Windows 8 one day, a friend IM me. I had to go to forget everything I am doing on the desktop, go to Metro, to the full screen Messaging app to write back. This feels like DOS when one app occupies your own screen.

Oh, in the Metro, where the heck is the clock? There isn't one! You have to bring out the charm bar to find out what time is it.

Horizontal scroll is really stupid... why must people scroll? Many people have big screens.

The Mac used to be a hobbyist thing, though flashier than beige boxes, it was incompatible with mainstream, and I dare say WACKY interface. However, modern Macs are now powerful, more robust (not as virus prone), with Unix as its backbone, with a lot of good apps out of the box now it is a very attractive choice. I predict it will eat the marketshare of home computers soon. Sure, most people's Windows 7 machines are still working so this isn't happening yet. But if nothing done to make Windows 8 better, doomsday will come to Microsoft.

Ok, how do you write an Metro app? Go ahead, search for it. I found a PDF file by searching for "how to write metro app pdf". Though it is HTML5 + javascript, OMG, proprietary wacky things:
<!-- WinJS references --> <link href="//Microsoft.WinJS.0.6/css/ui-dark.css" rel="stylesheet">
<script src="//Microsoft.WinJS.0.6/js/base.js"></script>
<script src="//Microsoft.WinJS.0.6/js/ui.js"></script>


Some advices for Microsoft.

1. Bring back the Start button. People wanted it. See you HAVE it, Windows-X. It needs to be more visible.
2. Bring back Aero as alternative, keep the battery saving flat theme as default.
3. Bring back search within desktop, don't make me jump out of it

For the record, I LIKE the following aspects of Windows 8:

1. Painless install. (But it attempts to pull contacts from facebook, twitter etc. To me, an Operating System shouldn't be tied to these)
2. Faster boot up.
   
3. Better Files Explorer. (though this is not must-have)
   
4. Defender. (Goodbye McAfee, Norton. I hope this is sufficient to keep virus away)