You’ll read lots of reviews out there describing Windows 8 as a schizophrenic operating system.
All those reviews are true. No need to repeat them here.
The separation between Windows 7 functionality and Metro style applications and interface is like night and day without the transitions of dusk and dawn.
Windows 8 has to exist, and the way it exists today is the only way it can exist. The only way the Windows 8 interface really makes sense is with a touch screen. If you’re lucky enough to have one then the interface is quite nice and makes competitors like Android and iOS feel old and clunky.
Of course, even with a touch screen, most of your existing applications won’t be optimized for touch and you’ll spend most of your time on a Windows 7 style desktop with your same old Windows 7 applications using your mouse for control.
Clearly, this has to exist. We need a bridge to get from all non-touch devices, to all touch. The fact it looks the same as my xbox and phone and technologies like Skydrive make everything I do accessible across all my devices is just bonus.
A similar example was Windows Vista. Vista made massive security improvements in both architecture and application behaviors. Sadly, we all suffered through those annoying UAC prompts. But honestly, it’s not that Windows 7 implemented big changes to UAC. It’s simply that enough time had passed that most applications had cleaned up their behavior and no longer required administrator level access to perform basic tasks.
Sometimes, Microsoft just has to take one in the chops to drag the industry forward. That summarizes Windows 8. Without it, touch enabled laptops and desktops will never happen. That’s clearly the future, but we need the bridge to get there – thank you Windows 8.