Because that's your starting place. The start menu is called the start menu for a reason. So starting on the new 'start' menu in Win8 makes a whole lot of sense for legacy users. If I told my coworkers, "Win8 is the same as Win7 except there's a new start menu and the computer starts on the start menu when you start the machine," they would get it immediately. Years down the road, we won't call it the 'start' menu anymore (I'm betting on 'launcher'), but it will still be fine because it makes sense. MS actually did something that made a little fucking sense.
i for one would be happy if computers would start with a prompt again - sadly most games dont run on linux ... but computers sadly also have to "work" for the average user who cares more about visual appeal then useability.
how does useability improve if the distance i have to move the mouse multiplies? i have all menu stuff in the top left corner of my screen and the furtherst distance i have to move my mouse is about half the displays height and maybe 1/4th of its width - about an area of 15x20cm maximum. mouse paths increase drastically if i imagine a fullscreen start menu at worst 2-3 screens width. yeah with swiping it makes sense, but with the mouse!? i thought good ui design would be as short as possible paths and as few as possible clicks. edit: but i fear weve started a discussion where its mere a matter of taste and individual workflow as facts. de gustibus et coloribus non est disputandum, right? we wont get to an agreement apart from agreeing to disagree ...
Its funny how people want windows to be how windows has always been for them. Windows should never change like grandma and gramps, always there always how you remember them. Then people go buy new apple, and android gadgets. I sit in classes with people more than ten years younger than me And I'm often the ONLY one with w7 laptop or windows phone. Apple galore. So Microsoft got tired of getting its ass kicked and watching itself slowly fall into obscurity behind apple, google, amazon, Nintendo and all the other cocks its handling. there are whole generations coming up that only know the dumbed down apple ecosystem and mammas like mine who are spending money on silly kindle fires and other one (or one and half) trick ponies. Yes the adults of the world like windows 7 and find it to be possibly a perfect operating system. But clearly adults aren't driving the larger market. this a compromise for the children and adults. A model T of sorts
Btw, am I the only one who refers to peoples Macs as "children's computers". As in " I'm having trouble with xyz, can you look at this?" "sure... Oh you have a children's computer, nvm, i don't really mess with those"
Console commands are too dumbed down, people should have to write their commands in assembly to use their computers!
BTW Windows 8 has something like COM2. You can integrate C# with C++ COM and C++ with C# COM/IDL. Gadgets aside, that's interesting thing on its own.
GNOME 3 changed it before Windows 8. It's not a big deal, the only thing I ever used from start menu was autocompleted search. In GNOME 3 I keep all I need on the bar just like I put it on bottom bar in Windows.
