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“They have to keep taking the exaggerations up a notch. Becoming more shrill and loony until you have people say goofy stuff like Windows 2000 should be good enough for everyone or that MS is “over”.

They start to sound like cartoons.”

Hmmm. I believe that is exactly what you’re doing in your argument. You start off with the huge exaggeration that it’s all about cascading menus verses tiles. And then you go on a shrill ad-hominem attack about how everyone that disagrees with your position is “goofy” and ‘loony”.

When it’s really about the lack of need for a new desktop paradigm and all the undiscoverable gestures needed to work their new paradigm and all the completely unnecessary retraining to perform tasks that people already know how to do that that entails. And about MS’s desire to lock everyone into a walled garden model. But since they know everyone would rebel if they transitioned directly to a walled garden, they’ve decided to do it in stages. First they just introduce an app store, but they don’t close all the sidechannels. Another release or two down the line when they have enough customers locked in then they’ll close off all the sidechannels and be a true walled garden.

We all know it’s not really about cascading drop down menus verses tiles, because anyone that hated cascading drop down menus and prefers having buttons all over their home screen could achieve the same effect by dropping application icons all over their desktop in the old paradigm. So there was no need for a paradigm shift to achieve that.

And frankly, I doubt that very many experienced users use the menus to launch apps very often anyways. I think most people don’t launch apps directly, they “launch” documents. Because navigating to a document in the file dialog of an app is generally a pain in the ass., especially when it’s buried out on a server, most people tend to navigate to the file outside of the app by various means, either via the “recently used” menu or by dropping a link on their desktop. And for those apps that aren’t about manipulating documents, they either drop an icon on their desktop or use the recently used apps menu or install a dock app to contain their “favorite” apps.

The menu isn’t really there for experienced users that have already customized their machines. It’s for discover-ability. So that when I jump on j6p’s machine that I’ve never used before, I can easily discover everything he has installed on his machine.

And MS easily could have made application icons on the desktop have dynamic data displayed in them just like tiles, if they really wanted to. They didn’t have to completely redesign the desktop to achieve that. So it’s obviously not about that either.

And we know it’s certainly not about productivity because nothing in the new paradigm makes workers any more productive than they were under the old paradigm.

So stop with shrill and loony BS that this about menus vs tiles.

"Hmmm. I believe that is exactly what you’re doing in your argument. You start off with the huge exaggeration that it’s all about cascading menus verses tiles. And then you go on a shrill ad-hominem attack about how everyone that disagrees with your position is “goofy” and ‘loony”."

This is what it is about. The people making the most noise spout off constantly about their Start Menu. Each time they get more over-the-top, more overly-dramatic, and more emotional about how they are utterly unable to even use a computer because they took away that thing.

"When it’s really about the lack of need for a new desktop paradigm and all the unrecoverable gestures needed to work their new paradigm and all the completely unnecessary retraining to perform tasks that people already know how to do that that entails."

Lack of need is your opinion. You don't want it so everyone else doesn't want it? It's all unnecessary? Based on whom? That whole paragraph is what I'm talking about. hand-waving conclusions based on nothing but your opinion that is somehow to be taken as settled fact.

"I cant use Windows 8, so it's bad"

I had no trouble using it. What I didnt know, I learned. What's their excuse?

"And about MS’s desire to lock everyone into a walled garden model. But since they know everyone would rebel if they transitioned directly to a walled garden, they’ve decided to do it in stages."

You still have the desktop and the ability to run whatever you want. MS has made no statements otherwise. Did they introduce a model so that the vast majority of people can have useful apps available for their machines without having to dig through crap shareware sites? Yes! As a person that has cleared off lots of stupid programs from PCs, I'm glad they are doing this as most PC users have next to nothing useful to them to run on the desktop outside of a handful of programs.

" First they just introduce an app store, but they don’t close all the sidechannels. Another release or two down the line when they have enough customers locked in then they’ll close off all the sidechannels and be a true walled garden."

No. Those people will likely go for a Windows RT device. Again, GOOD! Those people are the ones responsible for all of the botnets and Malware being spread. MS, and Apple are doing the world a service by getting those people away from Win32 software.

"We all know it’s not really about cascading drop down menus verses tiles, because anyone that hated cascading drop down menus and prefers having buttons all over their home screen could achieve the same effect by dropping application icons all over their desktop in the old paradigm."

Do those buttons vanish from my desktop? Nope. If I wanted a cluttered desktop I could just stay with the old versions of Windows.

The menu isn’t really there for experienced users that have already customized their machines. It’s for discover-ability. So that when I jump on j6p’s machine that I’ve never used before, I can easily discover everything he has installed on his machine.

Like all of the cool .ini files or .html shortcuts? That's really reaching to find some magic in the old start menu. You can easily say that typing dir in a DOS prompt led to discovery too.

"And MS easily could have made application icons on the desktop have dynamic data displayed in them just like tiles, if they really wanted to. They didn’t have to completely redesign the desktop to achieve that. So it’s obviously not about that either."

They did that in the 90s and with XP, and the same people complained like clockwork. I hope that MS stops catering to people that bitch for the sake of it. They are the biggest boat anchor on technology. If they cant rub two cells together to learn something, they expect everyone else to slow down and wait for them.

"And we know it’s certainly not about productivity because nothing in the new paradigm makes workers any more productive than they were under the old paradigm."

And you surveyed us all about this when?

So stop with shrill and loony BS that this about menus vs tiles.

When I hear something other than "where is my start menu???" then I'll buy that it's about something more.

MS’s desire to lock everyone into a walled garden model.

You need to start looking around a bit more, because, when it comes to "walled gardens", there is no more closed environment than you will find with Apple and with the Android system, which are all about locking people in with the unending number of apps in the apps stores. That argument is no more valid for Microsoft than it is for Apple or for Google. With Apple, they control their whole ecosystem, including the hardware and software and services. With Microsoft, they still don't have control of the hardware side, although they are now making Surface tablets. Microsoft also doesn't control the applications side of things, where just about anybody can still code for the traditional desktop mode, with no loyalties or fees needed to be paid to MS. In fact, even with Windows 8, it's still the most open ecosystem around (and no, no need to bring up Linux, since it's not even in the same ballpark when it comes to usage).

Regarding the menu driven mechanism to launch an application of open a file, it's still a lot easier to do with Windows 8, since you can pin any application or file to the Start screen, and launch with a single click from there. And, it's actually easier to organize and customize than the old desktop environment.

To me, it sounds like you actually haven't spent any time using Windows 8, or you come with the negative bias that Windows haters or Microsoft haters bring to the discussion.