[InclinedPlane]

And there you have it. MS needs everyone to like Windows 8. Period. They need grand mothers who might otherwise use an ipad to like windows 8. They need high school kids to like windows 8. They need pc power users to like windows 8. They've come fairly close to betting the company that they can create a singular experience that can be all things to all people.

[bornhuetter]

Complete nonsense.

They only need a sufficient number of people to like it. Even if not a single grandmother in the world likes it, they'll probably be fine.

> a singular experience that can be all things to all people

You obviously have no idea what you're talking about. Grandma's ARM tablet is going to use Metro, and Joe Accountant is going to spend all day in the classic desktop environment. The only thing Joe is going to notice is a new start menu, and that's not exactly going to be a deal breaker for anyone.

Regardless of whether you like the new Metro interface and the new start screen or not, it's simply idiotic to say that if not everyone in the world loves it then the company will collapse.

[InclinedPlane]

If MS was planning on selling a version of Windows 8 that didn't have Metro as the default UI then that argument would hold more water, but I don't see that being the case. Windows 8 would make a perfectly fine workstation OS in "old fashioned windows UI mode", but you need to go out of your way to get to that state. I think people are just as likely to live with Windows 7 or choose something else (Windows Server as a desktop OS, or ubuntu, for example) as they are to use Windows 8 if they don't like metro.