[LukasMathis]

I like Windows 8 on the desktop. I agree that it has issues, but I also point that out in the article.

As for "undermining people's opinions": while I have no doubt that there are plenty of people who genuinely gave Windows 8 a chance, and found it severely wanting, I think it's fair to say that there are at least as many who never did, and just joined in on the bashing. Personally, I've seen a number of people who made jokes about Windows 8, but changed their opinions once they actually saw it on my Surface. It's a bit like Windows Vista, which people suddenly quite liked, once it was renamed to Windows 7 :-)

The actual point of the loss aversion thing, though, was to point out how Microsoft failed when it introduced Windows 8. I write this blog for designers, and learning from other people's mistakes is one reason why I write it. Loss aversion is an important concept in design; a conclusion to draw from this is that design changes should occur gradually, and not be forced upon people with a single, sweeping change.

[chrismcb]

Windows 8 is horrible on the desktop, I think you even mention this. But then you ignore that and talk about how great it is on the surface. You talked about loss aversion, but I don't see how you tied that in to the windows design. I thought you were going to discuss things that were removed from win 7, like the start button. But it just seems like the topic of loss aversion was another article that you included in this one. The real issue is trying to resolve both a touch screen environment with a keyboard and mouse environment. Win 8 is the former, with win 7 the latter. I don't know much about 10 but it seems to be more of a mouse and keyboard and less of a touch.

[bjmarte]

He ignores it because it is tangential to the point. The point is that windows 8 (or at least 8.1 imho) had a great ui for a touch interface and there is no reason to destroy that while trying to fix the desktop experience.