Wow, taking things a little serious I think. MS are not trying to tell you anything, there's nothing wrong with the "tried and true" but things have to change otherwise we would stay in the same place.
Advancements wouldn't be made if the human race stuck with the same thing. As for the tried and true that's still there, the old desktop remains for older applications and for people to still use.
If I'm overly-serious and irritable, it's because you're telling me (and Microsoft is telling me, by taking away the old interface) that I'm somehow
wrong to want what I want. I was happy with XP; the designers had their new niche to play in, and the legacy interface worked just like I was used to from Windows 98. They started taking away the legacy interface in 7 (which is the main reason I haven't upgraded, aside from really having no need,) and now they're going even further with it. They're taking away the option that works best for me because they've decided for me that I no longer need it.
And to say something like "Advancements wouldn't be made if the human race stuck with the same thing" is naive. It's the kind of mindset that doesn't care
where something is going as long as it's
going. Change is only merited when the new thing is an improvement over the old thing (and even then, the hassle cost of switching has to be outweighed by the overall improvement.) Even stagnation is better than blindly endorsing a devolution of the user interface just because it's new.
The start menu is even there in an improved manner, just hover the mouse over where the start menu use to be and hello a newer version of one appears :-)
I'm sorry, I really don't mean to be rude, but if you've actually looked into the Start screen and you honestly think it's an improvement in anything but a touchscreen scenario (and, I suspect, even then,) you're an idiot. Have you looked into this beyond the promo shots? It's not New Magic, it's a space-hog version of the existing Start menu - which means that
every program that adds its own shortcuts will still be adding crap to the Start screen. It's not going to look like
this, it's going to look like
this; it's basically the Start menu if you auto-expanded every subfolder and put lots of padding in between entries. It's a waste of space and a stupid design.
And you can't get rid of it.I think people need to remain open minded and give things a try. Change should not be feared or put down, wait for it to be released for awhile.
Again, I wouldn't care what they do if they'd just leave the legacy interface alone and untouched and confined their slipshod experiments to the new crap. But they aren't.
A year or two from now I predict most people will have a different view.
What are they going to
do in a year or two? The thing that would most seriously improve Windows 8 (and people's reception of it) is to bring back the legacy interface; even the 7 Start menu would be an improvement. When the best thing that can be done for your design is to get rid of it, that says something.
I love 7, but it needs to evolve like most things do. I use to hate the new ribbon menu in Office 2007/2010 but since using it for awhile going back to Office 2003 etc and the interface feels outdated and slow.
But this is basically the problem with nerfing legacy UI; sure,
you might like the ribbon, and good for you with that.
I despise it. It's not a case of not having used it enough, we've been stuck with Office 2007 at work for two years now. I
still despise it; the spatial organization is bad, menu items that were easy to find in 2003 are a scavenger hunt now, and Office's always-problematic Toolbar Wasteland Syndrome has now expanded to a full-on mega-toolbar that you
can't get rid of. It eats up screen space, it eats up time, and it eats up happiness. Saying "well
I like it" is great, but it doesn't do anything to endear it to
me, or any of the countless other people who hate it.
It's the same thing with Windows 8; if you somehow
like to have your Start menu expanded into a wasteland of every entry every installer decided to put in there, with padding, scrolling across screens' worth of data just to find what you're looking for, then...well, you like it, but saying you like it doesn't
change anything about it that others are objecting to.