The Windows 7 UI is not 15 years old. Similar != Same. It doesn't suprise me that someone who would say that is fine with a Metro desktop, though
Actually, the majority of the Windows 7 UI *IS* 15 years old. In fact, the majority of all UI's--PC and Mac--is over 30 years old, based on Xerox Parc. The Metro UI design is, truly, the first dramatic jump in UI design in the last 3 decades.
---------- Post added at 08:20 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:09 PM ----------
The answer to why their aiming at convergence is so obvious, I honestly don't know how anyone can miss it: ease of use. If UI's across various devices are functionally similar or the same, those devices become far easier to use, learn, and adapt to. If you can go from your desktop to your laptop to your tablet to your games console to your phone, and the user experience is fundamentally the same, that's comfortable and familiar--and let's face it, comfortable and familiar SELL.
We could argue that because we're using 30 year old UI design paradigms on Windows 7 and below, Mac OSX, iOS and Android, those are already comfortable and familiar, and that's true--they are. But they're also limited to user experiences that are based on the maximum capabilities of systems from 30 years ago. Metro is an attempt to make UI's simpler and more accessible, first and foremost (and it succeeds brilliantly at doing so). As a secondary matter its purpose is to create a "futuristic," highly optimized and highly familiar ecosystem that not only will people buy into for the long term, but they'll enjoy using.
Whatever Microsoft can be accused of doing here, "charging blindly down the path" is absolutely NOT something they're doing. Every stroke of the new paradigm is purposeful so far, and bring new capabilities that existing UI's lack. They're also following countless studies about usability and productivity, which are and ought to be core focus elements of any UI designer in 2012.
Windows 8 will be a hard sell, not because there's anything wrong about it, but because it's DIFFERENT. It changes the paradigm of how we interact with computers, and that's going to scare a fair number of people. But at the end of the day, Microsoft has the expertise and the marketing muscle to push this into the enterprise and to the consumer space, and they're not stupid--they know what a risk it is. But ALL innovation entails risk, and comes with the possibility of great reward. That's what MS is looking toward, and they're right to do so.
Windows 8 will do fine, just you watch. In less than a year it will sell more copies than every version of OSX combined for the last 28 years, and in 5 years the Metro UI will be the dominant, de-facto user interface on most consumer PC's, while the enterprise will be performing major rollouts of Windows 9.
I'm not at all worried about Microsoft's future success with this UI.
I dont know precisely why all the operating systems are trying for convergence so hard. The current state of play is that Windows is defacto for computers, IOS is defacto for tablets and Android is becoming the largest player in the smartphone world, slowly but surely. Three differing systems. It's even affecting Linux, Unity and Gnome3 being obviously designed with tablet considerations... and being visually bloated. The former being the reason I'm transitioning to Debian. There seems to be a lot of redesign for designs sake.
MS have pinned much on Metro... trying to unify WinPhone7, XBox, Tablets and PC... and really are charging blindly down that path. I see a shipping drop for MS if Windows ships with forced Metro... and massive user backlash, of unseen proportions. Having tried to program on the thing... im quite certain its hateful. It might be a content consumption OS but its useless for real work. It could not only be a diaster on the PC but have a knock on effect to products with similar interfaces, putting people off those products.
People expect Windows to just be similar, and I dread to think what support will be like, and the massive amounts of user training that will be required on corporate levels. Getting users to follow any instructions at all is like herding cats. A long and torrid time for IT support awaits, that much is certain. MS don't have the luxury of being on the forefront of design, they need to be simple to transition between.
This has the feeling of Vista, but worse. The technology enthiusiasts aren't overly fussed from what I read, and plenty of them run IT departments. I can't see corporates being on side, and they are losing enthiusiasts... so really they have those poor people who buy a new PC like a few years ago, getting lumped with Vista... they couldn't even force gamers with the delights of DX10. IT budgets are tight, and training isn't cheap. Really poor timing.
All I want is a choice to disable Metro, because Windows 8 would be seriously great otherwise. Unless something drastic is done, its going to fail, and fail hard.
---------- Post added at 08:38 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:20 PM ----------
I think I agree with you here man. I more or less had similar thoughts.
Desktop will be a big problem. MS is pushing hard so that devs come and design apps. I am using a Hackintosh, OS X Lion and believe me, its a great experience. For Apple, it's the other way round. Devs knock on their door.
Anyways, this is what I have to say. I may be wrong.
I'm a Mac owner, using OSX Lion with Windows 7 and 8 in triple boot on my Macbook Pro, and I completely disagree. Apple is a TERRIBLE experience because OSX lacks too many very basic features, lacks enterprise management features and has a much, MUCH narrower selection of apps than does Windows. To say that MS is pushing developers to design apps is true; they're offering free tools, free support, and in some cases even free hardware, but they don't have any ability to force developers to do anything, nor do they need to do so. Further, if it were true that the Windows developer situation was the opposite of OSX, then Mac OSX would have far more apps than Windows--and it doesn't, not even close. After almost a year of having an OSX app store, they've just recently cracked 10,000 apps. In roughly 18 months of having the Windows phone marketplace, MS has 85,000 apps, and you can expect that the same thing will happen with Windows 8. There will be thousands of Metro style apps available at launch, and inside of one year, Windows 8's marketplace will have more apps than Apple's for OSX. Windows itself, excluding the marketplace, already has orders of magnitude more apps than OSX, and that won't change any time soon.
Why? Simple: Windows is more than 90% of the worldwide OS market, and developers are like anyone else: they're selfish and want to turn a profit, put money in their pockets so they can take care of themselves and their loved ones. Anyone with an iota of business sense will tell you: only a fool would ignore 90% of the world's market to focus on the 4% Apple holds worldwide and 10% in the US.
Windows 8 will do just fine. It'll be a rough transition, BECAUSE it's a transition. This new UI represents the first major UI design paradigm shift in 30 YEARS. It won't be easy, but it will be successful.
You can take the following prediction to the bank:
In one year, Microsoft will sell more copies of Windows 8 than Apple has sold of Mac computers in its entire history.
