It's hard for me to say much about how the UX feels without having used it. However, one thing sticks out to me as a concrete example of Microsoft's failings.
"Another annoyance with the Metro Start Screen is that all roads lead to it. Almost everything you do ends up throwing you into the Start Screen. I find it utterly crazy that I can go from clicking on a tile on the Start Screen and then be unceremoniously dumped into things like a Classic Control Panel applet or Windows Explorer. Then, to do the next thing, you’re back to the Start Screen again."
Microsoft effectively has unlimited resources (cash and people). There is no excuse for not updating all of the applications to match the new UI toolkit.
This sounds exactly like happened with Vista. They updated the OS, but not the 1st party applications. Windows 7 updated many of them (Paint, Movie Maker, etc), but even then not 100%. I guess the issue was that the 'Ribbon UI' was an Office team invention, not a Windows team invention, but as a user I don't really care about the office politics behind it.
Now they're adding a Metro layer and they made the same mistake? It makes the OS so inconsistent. They can't do much about it for 3rd party apps, but the 1st party apps should be consistent. The cost of rewriting the presentation layer across all of those utilities has to be a small amount compared to the overall budget.
"Another annoyance with the Metro Start Screen is that all roads lead to it. Almost everything you do ends up throwing you into the Start Screen. I find it utterly crazy that I can go from clicking on a tile on the Start Screen and then be unceremoniously dumped into things like a Classic Control Panel applet or Windows Explorer. Then, to do the next thing, you’re back to the Start Screen again."
Microsoft effectively has unlimited resources (cash and people). There is no excuse for not updating all of the applications to match the new UI toolkit.
This sounds exactly like happened with Vista. They updated the OS, but not the 1st party applications. Windows 7 updated many of them (Paint, Movie Maker, etc), but even then not 100%. I guess the issue was that the 'Ribbon UI' was an Office team invention, not a Windows team invention, but as a user I don't really care about the office politics behind it.
Now they're adding a Metro layer and they made the same mistake? It makes the OS so inconsistent. They can't do much about it for 3rd party apps, but the 1st party apps should be consistent. The cost of rewriting the presentation layer across all of those utilities has to be a small amount compared to the overall budget.