What does booting to the desktop have to do with anything? Out of all my Win8 annoyances, having to click the desktop tile is probably at the end of the list. Without a start menu, doing full-screen context shifts to launch programs is just annoying. The dumb metro-style things for, say, WiFi connector (a whole huge side of the screen, instead of a tiny popup, with less functionality than before) -- all that stuff is what's annoying.

Booting direct to desktop seems as pointless as adding a start button that launches the full-screen thing. No one was asking for that. So either MS is incredibly obtuse, or they think they're going to fool people by pretending to have changed something.