Re: Just change the UI
Hey, don't get me wrong here, I believe that Metro is innovative. In fact, I think it's a damned good UI in a lot of respects and I have a list of ways in which I wish I could make use of the Start Screen/Tiles on the desktop that I just can't. For example, the "live tile" concept is basically the "war room" display done properly.
But the Start Screen isn't a replacement for the Start Menu. It's very clumsy as an access point to your complete list of (rare-used) applications, and it's disconcerting to use it as a frequent means of getting at regular applications. I don't like full screen grabbers on a mouse-and-keyboard.
AHA; but there are places where what is an entirely inappropriate tool becomes fantastic! Multi-monitor, for example, could be made awesome because of the start screen. While the start screen isn't a replacement for the start menu it is the ultimate evolution of the quick launch bar.
In a multi-monitor environment I want to be able to "pin" the start screen to a given monitor and have it up 100% fo the time. The live tiles would present me with new information for the various applications on a streaming basis while also serving as great one-click launchers for various apps.
Where it all goes horribly wrong is in doing things like "trying to force full screen apps on desktop users" and "taking away a compact, hierarchical menu system that doesn't take up the full screen from desktop users."
Metro as a tablet interface? Actually pretty good. But on the desktop it's about as useful as a command line on a touchscreen smartphone. You can make it work, but it's frustrating and not nearly as useful as on a more approriate device.
WE'LL HAVE TO AGRE
E TO DISAGREE ABOU
T THE TYPOGRAPHY
ELEMENTS OF METRO
AS I FIND THEM RATHE
R ANNOYING.
Microsoft's issue is not an inability to innovate, it's a complete inability to figure out where to apply said innovations appropriately. They just can't help themselves, literally every good idea they come up with is run through a process of "how can we use this to either lock people in to our platforms or leverage a (near-)monopoly in one area to attempt to create one in another area". They can't not think in this fashion, and it completely ruins their "innovations".
Instead of putting their best stuff out there in the manner that makes the most sense, and then competing - even with themselves - they consistently choose to apply their innovations inappropriately.
Hence my very ambivalent feelings towards Microsoft. Unlike Eadon, I don't for a second think that everything Microsoft makes is evil or bad. I have always maintained that Microsoft produces some of the best technologies on the planet, and that they employ many of the smartest people currently alive.
But the best technologies and the smartest people mean nothing if the only way you allow their use is in a manner that is counter-intuitive, frustrating and ultimately actively detrimental to your customers. Microsoft's management, from their licensing to their partner relationships to what they choose to allow in their OS and app design (such as the ability to turn off Metro/get back the start menu or turn off the ribbon/get back the menu+toolbar) is what is earning Microsoft enmity.
Newer is not always better. Novelty is not, of itself, valuable. Your "new thing" must be demonstrably better than the "old thing", and this is something that rabid fanboys of any company never seem to get.
Microsoft makes a lot of new things. What they don't do is make using those things easy, affordable, intuitive or rational. (See: VDI licensing.) Until they pull their head out of their ass, I will continue to mock them and their implementations, even if I respect and admire much of their technology.
I have no idea whatsoever how you feel Oracle innovate at all, or are worth any sort of praise, admiration or even consideration whatsoever. Oracle either have you by the balls and you are a hostage that will pay them anything, or they don't. If they don't, why the metric fuck would you put yourself in that position, given their track record?
Cheers.