If not the ipad then what instead?

[rocketpig]

Rainbird said:

dahuman said:

If I have to spend most of my time in desktop mode because of really heavy multitasking then there is no point to the Metro UI Start Menu, it's just ugly blocks blocking my entire screen. Don't even mention snap, it sucks, big time. It's not an OS built for power desktop users(I'd otherwise be using my phone or tablet, I use my computer when I know I'd have a lot of shit going on besides gaming) and I will never have a 40 inch touch screen to have my finger prints smeared all over the place on. They should have built the desktop and tablet versions not so "seemless" because it's just dumb, the idea might have seemed really cool on paper, but it really is built for tablets and touch devices. They literally layered 2 OS styles together because they don't know what else to fucking do.

But if you're going to do heavy multitasking, then the desktop is exactly there to let you do that and the start menu helps you too. Take live tiles for example. You don't need to keep your e-mail client running to check if you have any mail, just push the Windows button. The same goes for IMs, social networks, and a bunch of other stuff. Searching in the new start menu is also much nicer than with the old start menu (which was frankly pretty terrible).

Snap works well at what it's designed to do, namely allow users to easily have more than one thing going on without things getting messy, while making it easy for developers to accomodate this scenario as well. If you're going to do more stuff, than the desktop definitely has the upper hand, but it's pretty easy to change between programs still.

And the start menu actually offers a generally better way to find the programs you wish than the old menu does, seeing as the blocks are much easier to navigate than the old menu. It's not going to fall in everyone's taste of course, but I'm personally loving it and much prefer it over the old menu.

@ rocketpig

How does Metro add an extra step to the equation?

Because you're flipping back to Metro instead of MS moving more toward a Dock system like OS X (which they already have to an extent in the tray or whatever it's call but it's not as good for multitasking, particularly if you have 2-3 windows open in each program). I don't want to have to bounce back to Metro to find the software/whatever I'm looking for. It should be on the desktop.

Really, I just don't see the point. When I'm working, I'm flying back and forth between Photoshop, Illustrator, Chrome, Sparrow (Gmail client), Tweetdeck, and Evernote, with the occasional stop by iTunes to change what's playing. What does Metro do to make my life easier? Nothing, really. It seems superfluous. Why on Earth do I want a second UI in my operating system? At least in OS X, Launch Pad (which is a more spartan version of Metro, really), I can ignore the second UI if it doesn't work for me. With Win8, MS is shoving Metro down our throats and in its current iteration, I don't feel it's ready for prime time on desktops.