"You don't know if it's a bad idea or not because it hasn't been done yet" is a conversation killing sentence if I've ever heard one. Ok, we agree to disagree, let's stop talking about this for a few months and see what happens!
Meanwhile, it "sounds ridiculous" to me not because it's an untested concept, but because I think tablets are inherently different enough from desktops to justify keeping their interfaces distinctly separate. I don't think it's possible to fit more than one full touch app (or maybe a condensed version of a second one for a few simple use cases) comfortably on a 10" screen (to say nothing of a 7" one). I don't think giant buttons and pleasant whitespace are a good use of a desktop or laptop monitor.
>Which is why they haven't just done that. They've put a lot of thought into it and come up with a system that scales through different interfaces.
Except that they didn't, in the case of the Start Screen. Program and location menus, quick launch buttons, "pinned apps," and lightweight search bars ala Unity Search/Windows Vista and 7 start menu search/dmenu, all of which don't obscure the entire screen while I'm trying to do something, are just some of the desktop workflow-friendly solutions to the "how do I start doing something else" problem that come to mind. The Start Screen doesn't completely break Windows, but it's still a bad idea on the desktop, and at least one instance of Microsoft prioritizing their tablet interface over their desktop interface.
>Except for windows tablets, that encourage multi-tasking.
Being able to prop a condensed view of an app up against an even more condensed view of another app is a far cry from being able to switch between dozens of running programs with a few keypresses and/or a mouse click. I'm not saying that it's not a good option to have available, it's just not in any way comparable to the style of multitasking that desktop interfaces are designed around.
Meanwhile, it "sounds ridiculous" to me not because it's an untested concept, but because I think tablets are inherently different enough from desktops to justify keeping their interfaces distinctly separate. I don't think it's possible to fit more than one full touch app (or maybe a condensed version of a second one for a few simple use cases) comfortably on a 10" screen (to say nothing of a 7" one). I don't think giant buttons and pleasant whitespace are a good use of a desktop or laptop monitor.
>Which is why they haven't just done that. They've put a lot of thought into it and come up with a system that scales through different interfaces.
Except that they didn't, in the case of the Start Screen. Program and location menus, quick launch buttons, "pinned apps," and lightweight search bars ala Unity Search/Windows Vista and 7 start menu search/dmenu, all of which don't obscure the entire screen while I'm trying to do something, are just some of the desktop workflow-friendly solutions to the "how do I start doing something else" problem that come to mind. The Start Screen doesn't completely break Windows, but it's still a bad idea on the desktop, and at least one instance of Microsoft prioritizing their tablet interface over their desktop interface.
>Except for windows tablets, that encourage multi-tasking.
Being able to prop a condensed view of an app up against an even more condensed view of another app is a far cry from being able to switch between dozens of running programs with a few keypresses and/or a mouse click. I'm not saying that it's not a good option to have available, it's just not in any way comparable to the style of multitasking that desktop interfaces are designed around.