They will learn that it was a dumb move when corporate customers with hundreds of thousands of installations refuse to upgrade because the eye candy does nothing to improve productivity on their (obviously non-touchscreen) workstations. Coming Soon: Windows 9 Business Edition with the Classic keyboard-and-mouse UI.
As soon as I "experienced" unity I RAN to gnome, screamed in horror, then ran to KDE and just cried a bit to myself. What the hell is happening to linux? Ever since the nearing of Steve Jobs' decline & death it's like every amateur designer in the world's been tyring to take his place.
They're all trying to mimick his vision and design but without understanding it at all. I think this is why we keep ending up with all these heartless, sterile, Kindergarden UI designs.
EDIT: I am referring to the dumbing down, over simplification, extreme minimalization, and looks over usability of next generation UIs in general. NOT to Window's entire "Metro UI".
From this day forward we shall call this abomination "Kindergarden UI".
Example: Tom: "Hey how's Windows 8 compared to Ubuntu?". Stacy: "Oh they're both going to shit, they've got kindergarden UI now."
I wish Microsoft would realize that Windows is NOT OSX. In their desperate attempt to fabricate a Windows Cult following and "it just works" culture they're going to end up destroying the very thing that made windows what it is.
I tried unsuccessfully to convert to mac a few years ago, and numerous times to convert to linux. In my perticular situation, my linux installs have less stability than my windows 7 installation. After all trialing 10+ operating systems over the last 7 years I realized: I love Windows, it's Microsoft I hate.
From this day forward I shall call people who tell others what to think "doomsayers". Judging a UI before you can actually try a working, functional version of it and then espousing that ignorance to others is just asinine. Even worse if you've tried it and hated it just because it's different.
"Kindergarden UI" is a ridiculous term, and very subjective. I really hope no one actually takes your advice on anything.
From this day forward I shall call people who tell others what to think "doomsayers".
But freehunter, I'm just trying to mimic Steve Jobs like the other designers :(
Naa, miscommunication here. I try out a new linux flavor almost twice a year. I tried out the Windows 8 preview. I kept my mac around for months when I was trying that out. I LOVE different, I love simple. What I don't love is "minimalization without understanding what needs to be minimalized".
I apologize if there was a misunderstanding. There's a lot of hate for change, especially in this thread. Metro UI might not be the best, but the desktop is a tired metaphor that wore out its usefulness after Windows 98. I welcome UI changes with an open heart and an open mind. I'm willing to hear them out (which I got burned on by Canonical when I began using Unity and it didn't get better).
I may have jumped to conclusions with your post, but you must admit there was no obvious sign of open-thinking ;)
Well, the preview of Win8 showed that you can switch between Metro and the classic desktop. When I deploy Win8 to my users, it'll be locked to the desktop mode. Metro will be a netbook/tablet/embed only thing.
Don't take the complete fail that Unity is and apply it to this situation. Shuttleworth has no big corporate customers he needs to cater to. Those that don't like unity can figure out how to install Gnome or LXDE or whatever. Windows on the other hand will have both options ready to go from day one with an ease of a click. MS knows who butters their bread: corporate clients.