No, what happened is Microsoft placed a bet on us moving to a multi-platform future where there are many fewer PCs and more tablets, hybrid devices, whatever, all with the need to use touch, pen as well as keyboard for input. The existing start menu and taskbar would be hideous on mobile devices.
The problem is they were wrong. But I'm not going to blame "designer types". If you ever used Metro UI on a Windows Phone device you'd see that it was a truly remarkable system... that was bent to fit a task it didn't fit.
For choice, they finally relented with windows 8.1 and allowed people to boot to desktop directly rather than the start screen. Windows 10 took off the start screen completely.
Choice matters. I liked the start screen but the horizontal scrolling killed it. Like pouring salt in Tea.
Too many changes.
Facebook's learned this lesson well. They no longer do large overhauls. Small changes at a time and in a few months, it's a whole different interface. Only infrequent users would notice.
That's what they are doing with Windows 10 - many small interface changes. The little changes are mainly minor inconveniences.
One last thing.
When they released windows 8 - hardware support was almost non existent. Touch screen PC from that era really sucked. Now with detachable screens, Win 8 style pc interactions might be cool.
> The problem is they were wrong.
They weren't far off either. While PC sales haven't crashed as many feared, the majority of growth in larger form factor computing has been iPads & Chromebook. That plus the fact that a big percentage of desktop software has moved to Javascript/ Electron.
I admit being sad that Metro was wasted though because it really was very nice on phones.
To me, the "advancement" of the human-computer interface came to a screeching halt at that time. People grok menus. Memorizing sequences of Mnemonic accelerators is natural when overlaid on a haptic path created by mouse movement/menu navigation.
Then you take everything and throw out the baby with the bath water by trying to put every past bit of functionality on screen at the same time when what one needs is to be able to set up a work bench quickly, and just do your work, and if necessary save said work bench state to return to later.
I've seen more and "better" advancements in UI design in exactly 1 place, in all the different software suites I use, and that is in IDEs. Ironically, the one place that programmers have to make due day in, day out.
It makes me wonder whether anyone who presides over these programs is actually proficient in the non-computing version of said task. A Typesetter/document composer for instance. Nothing about the modern interface leads me to believe that any actually invested individual is involved, and that the design was pushed by the need for someone at Microsoft to be seen as needed in order to change something.
Then again... Can"t judge 'em for that. We all want to be wanted.
What I hate is the save / options / preference / file menu of office 2016 upwards. It's a nightmare - just too many steps to save a simple file to disk. Even after using it for years, I still need to pay full attention in this menu rather than muscle memory.
Just because they are pushing OneDrive.
Even after years I prefer menus and toolbars over the ribbon. With them you can scan in one direction whereas with the ribbon you have to up and down, left and right. I find it really difficult to find something there.