I still don't get why Microsoft is pushing Metro SO HARD to bet everything on it when nobody really likes it that much.
Zune (where I saw it for the first time) failed in the market. Windows Mobile (that has the Metro theme) failed in the market. Now I don't know XBox (at all) and its GUI, but its success happened long before Metro was created.
People don't seem to like it in the new Windows preview all that much, either.
>I still don't get why Microsoft is pushing Metro SO HARD to bet everything on it when nobody really likes it that much.
I personally love Metro, and I'm not the only one in my circle of friends. I accept that not everyone likes it, but I really prefer a text driven design like Metro.
Similarly the Ribbon. The Ribbon was supposed to make Office easier to use. It was so incomprehensible (not to mention annoying and wasteful of screen real estate), Microsoft created a GAME to explain to users how to use the Ribbon. (How bad a UI fail is that?) Still no-one likes it, so they shoehorn it into more places.
I think Microsoft gets that Apple doesn't allow itself to be driven by focus groups, but instead they allow random insane people to drive them.
Well, to be completely fair MS Labs made it, not the office team, and there is no indication that they made it because it was so hard to use. If that was the case surely then Office would actually ship with Ribbon Hero, instead of having it as an unmaintained experiment you can download from their website if you happen to have heard of it?
IIRC, it was an experiment in gameification and Office and the ribbon was the thing that was new at the time, and it made sense to write it on top of teaching users the new UI.
While we're throwing around anecdotes on how incomprehensible ribbon is, I know plenty of people who are totally fine with it. I don't really use any MS products (and so never encounter it) and don't have an opinion on it, but I think phrases like "no-one likes it, so they shoehorn it into more places" are neither true nor even potentially valid (no one likes it so they use it more because... they're evil? They want you to hate them?)
The fact there's a Ribbon Hero 2 with what looks like pretty solid marketing behind it would seem to undermine your take. (No, I didn't know it existed either, but I don't think it was is a lab demo any more.)
i like the ribbon. it doesn't make access to anything harder - i couldn't find whatever i was looking for in pre-2007 office and i can't find anything now, but at least the icons are prettier. that's a net win for me.
no one liked the ribbon? data point here: i liked it. i think its very logically arranged and straightforward to use. i could never understand the frothing hate for it. because it has clear categories, and a nice visual layout of buttons and functions? because it doesnt have enough cluttered text menus?
Zune (where I saw it for the first time) failed in the market. Windows Mobile (that has the Metro theme) failed in the market. Now I don't know XBox (at all) and its GUI, but its success happened long before Metro was created.
People don't seem to like it in the new Windows preview all that much, either.
Why the big bet on Metro?