Oh, are we already jumping on the bash Microsoft band wagon so soon? You seriously think a company like Microsoft did no usability testing? That'd be quite shocking as Metro itself utilizes a ton of new research on UX and interaction design.
Oh, please. Stop denouncing all criticism as the "bash MS bandwagon." Removing the start menu was a terrible idea that anyone who cared could have predicted - MS screwed up somewhere. But this is no surprise. Their UI design has been consistently poor for decades. Sure maybe they did user studies but their dog ate them. Maybe their initial designs were all so poor that what they rolled out was the best of the bunch. Maybe they had the most amazing UI design but couldn't get it through the office politics. I don't know everything they failed at in their process but it doesn't matter. Whatever it is they are doing doesn't work.
This WAS predicted by many users and blogs prior to the release of Windows 8. Criticisms started a year prior to the official release of Windows 8, with the consumer preview version.
"This WAS predicted by many users and blogs prior to the release of Windows 8."
There will be people saying negative things about any change. Often they'll be right, whether for the right reasons or the wrong ones. I wasn't asserting that no one predicted it, I was trying to get at why the parent was asserting it was terrible.
I haven't watched the video, but at a skim the article raises quite a few points, most to all of which have nothing to do with the start menu in particular.
It's a core paradigm of windows for as long as I remember. If you removed the steering wheel from your car do you think drivers would be surprised? Upset? Confused? If you had any common sense and don't have a case of Microsoft stockholm syndrome you would.
Removing the steering wheel (which is used for continuous, delicate control) is much more akin to removing the mouse/keyboard than the Start Menu - and guess what? Lots of computing devices these days are doing that as well.
Removing the start menu is more like changing how the ignition works (hasn't stopped the sale of Priuses) or changing how you shift gears (also has happened plenty of times).
Familiarity is certainly a consideration, but it's not the only consideration, and when you elevate it too highly you get stuck unable to fix anything. Mind you, I'm not saying they didn't - in retrospect - underweight it. There is certainly evidence they did. Though I'm honestly not sure to just what degree the backlash is vocal-minority versus generally felt. In my own (few) experiences with modern Windows systems, I wasn't shocked by the lack of a Start Menu - but my computer hasn't had a start menu for the better part of a decade so I'm obviously highly unrepresentative.
