Operating System transitions take time, for other software to adapt, for users to adapt, and for feedback to work its way back to headquarters. Microsoft HAD to get Windows transitioned from XP where software expected the user to be admin to a user based O/S like Linux and Mac - otherwise virus and security issues put their whole future in peril. Most of Vista's problems were because other software hadn't adjusted to the user idea. By the time Windows 7 was released, most third-party software was rewritten and the prompts were reduced so the user experience became good again.
Microsoft feels now that their existence is again in peril, not from viruses but from tablets and phones. They need developers to write Windows software that works well on tablets. The only way to do this (due to the chicken and egg problem - developers won't write for a platform with no market share and nobody will buy a device without apps) is to force desktop software developers to write software for tablets. To do this, they have to make Metro the default and make the use of old software as unappealing as possible to give developers motivation.
I thought the moment I saw the new Metro interface that this release will be a disaster of cosmic proportions for Microsoft. First, they're assuming that desktop PCs are essentially dead, when, the oracular pronouncements of certain tech sites notwithstanding, nothing could be further from the truth. Second, they're also obviously assuming that Windows 8 will provide them with a decent (if not dominant) share of the tablet market, yet between Apple and Android, their chances of accomplishing that are minimal at best. Windows 7 was (and is) by far the finest operating system Microsoft has ever produced. Had they made even a few minimal improvements to it and re-branded it as Windows 8, they might have had another winner on their hands. Instead, they are now staring absolute disaster in the face.
Microsoft is taking a big gamble with Metro. Not because it feels like it, but because it has to.
With Windows 8 you're going to have to use the Metro and the start screen - there is no getting around it. Its there, no option to turn it off. It is the placeholder for all things Metro to come.
The world is moving increasingly to handheld devices such as mobile phones, tablets for day to day tasks. Basic internet browsing or rather social media, and dirt cheap gaming on the go is quickly eating away at its market and they have nothing to show for it apart from a <1% market share Windows Phone and the xbox, who's active subscribers only account for 30million world wide (vs 11 million just for World of Warcraft on the PC/Mac).
When you compaire that to Apple's 315 million iPhones, iPads and iPod Touch devices running its iOS - with over 15million iPads sold in q4 last year alone - Microsoft has serious problems trying to grabble back some of the mobile/tablet market.
Not only that, but Microsoft's Windows isn't even synonymous with using a computer anymore. People are quite happy to go online with android or an apple tablet now. Microsoft is rapidly losing its branding and the any reason why the average joe blogs needs to use it.
So here we are. Microsoft have took a long term look at things, are finally at the point where the xbox, mobile, and windows will be a (somewhat) seamless connection. They'll all look and perform the same, and at the same time, they'll drag the 500million desktop machines that are ready to upgrade to Metro. If they could do that, it'd bring them inline with what Apple has right now, and thats with their desktop machines alone.
Add on that the experiance works across the XBOX and windows Phone, they could end up being on top again within a few years.
Thats where Metro comes in to play. Without it, Microsoft has no brand that sets itself apart and it has no way to lock its uses into the Microsoft ecosystem. A lot of people who are using Apple products continue to do so because they've got their apps for iOS. Many will have spent, by now, a considerable amount of money on apps and music etc. Metro is being pushed, hard, it really is.
Metro is coming, and you'll be using it on Windows 8. Not many apps right now in the Windows Store, but when it starts pumping them out (100,000 in Windows Phone now) fewer people will be even using the desktop.
Why go search on google or bing for software, download the exe, or zip file, install it get tool bars, find out its wrong version, needs updating, etc and then have it mess up all your settings when you can just click on the Store icon, find a program and buy it.
Users will be locked good and proper into the Microsoft Windows ecosystem, and the quicker Microsoft can start locking users into it the better.
It gets worse. The tablet experiance for Windows 8 is quite nice, Metro as a whole on the Windows Phone is an amazing experiance (I've owned one for a while) and the xbox is great too (save for the silly layout/adverts they'd used), but for the users who go from a tablet/windows phone to a desktop... the experiance there is very very much lacking. It has to be inforced, it has to be the same across the platforms. Its why we're forced to use the start screen.
Its Microsoft's way of anchoring us to Metro and the Windows echosystem.
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