Allowing Users to skip ‘Metro’ is a Bad Idea

So it seems that Windows 8.1 will enable users to skip ‘Metro’ on startup. While I can believe that the current Metro experience (with no way to skip it on boot) would hurt Windows sales, I’m not sure that allowing users to skip it is really a good thing.

How many users will just skip Metro and never see how awesome it is on their touch based devices? Since pretty much all of us hate change, I have to think that it’s going to be a fairly high number of users.

I think that a smarter strategy would be to boot to a traditional desktop environment on a traditional desktop computer. If you have no touch capabilities, you see the desktop we are all used to. If you have a device with touch, you get Metro.

I liked that Microsoft was all in, taking this half step back will only hurt the Metro UI.

via Bob Martens

3 responses to “Allowing Users to skip ‘Metro’ is a Bad Idea”

Bob
9:08
I would hope that is what they ultimately do. As a (forced) user of Windows 8 … it is quite terrible on the desktop and laptop, but it works really well where it was designed to work: tablets.
I would think that keeping Windows 8 RT as Metro-only would be a good way of doing things.
Otto
10:53
The screenshots I saw of the Metro UI prevented me from purchasing Windows 8 entirely.
I’ll just wait for the next version of Windows, thanks, after they drop that sort of nonsense. Windows 7 is fine for me for now.
1. Curtis McHale
  11:55
  I do think that there are a host of users (like yourself or maybe me) for whom Metro just won’t work at all right now. But for people like my Mom or brother Metro is great, on a touch based device.
  I’m much more excited about what Microsoft is doing with Windows than what Apple is doing with OSX right now, and I’m an OSX guy full time.