Classic Shell for Windows 8

Simon Garrett wrote:

I think there's another point here.

It's quite true that in future many people will have more familiarity with tablets/smartphones than laptops/desktops. But that doesn't mean the UI should necessarily be the same, or that either UI is "better" overall. Horses for courses.

For the last few years, many millions of people have been using both Windows or Mac OS on laptop/desktop and the Apple ios or Android UI on hand-helds. We happily use many, many UIs on different computer-embedded systems.

I've not used Windows 8 on a smart phone or tablet, so I can't say if it's better or worse than Android or Apple ios on a smart phone or tablet. But (IMHO) it's much worse than the Windows desktop on a laptop or desktop.

The mistake, if I may say so, is to assume there's much of a benefit in trying to harmonise the UI across quite different contexts and UI hardware. There's much less benefit than MS claim to either users or developers in a common UI, and considerable disadvantage in using a non-intuitive and non-optimal UI.

--
Simon