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My point exactly. The Metro design is attempting to solve a problem but without making the choice: is it a desktop or a touch interface? While it may work well in a task-centered, touch-driven interface, it feels "soulless" in a multi-tasking, desktop-purposed one. That is the hard choice Microsoft need to make in order to allow for "true design" to happen in the platform.



>The Metro design is attempting to solve a problem but without making the choice: is it a desktop or a touch interface?

The choice they made was that we need not shoehorn interfaces into desktop or touch categories.

Why not be able to touch your laptop?

And it was a tough choice in the time that Apple separates iOS and OS X.

Android is the one that didn't make a choice and simply copied Apple in this regard.


Agree with the comment on Android. And yes: nothing wrong with touching your laptop (NSFW?). BUT: do you touch your laptop RIGHT now? How many Windows users will touch their laptop in the next 2-3 years? How successful was Windows Tablet Edition? Or those HP iMac-clones with touch screens? :)


"The choice they made was that we need not shoehorn interfaces into desktop or touch categories."

Imposing a touch centric UI onto traditional desktops is the very definition of shoehorning.

"Why not be able to touch your laptop?"

Having a touch interface doesn't magically confer touchscreen hardware. Most laptops will not be touchscreen as this means additional cost.

"Android is the one that didn't make a choice and simply copied Apple in this regard."

Apple did not invent the grid of icons concept. At best they imitated designs that came before them and Android imitated the imitator. It made a lot of sense at the time considering the iPhone was in the middle of running away with the market compared to traditional smartphone interfaces like the Blackberry, Palm, Symbian, and Windows Mobile.




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