People may as well stop complaining about the Windows 8 Modern GUI. It's not going anywhere.

[liam_on_linux]

An online acquaintance commented that few Win8 users were using Modern apps, and that the Modern interface was useless for desktops because it's too tablet-centric, and it doesn't offer good multitasking.

Well, yes, it is designed for tablets. Why? Because it certainly looks like the personal computer of the near future - not the office workstation, maybe, but individuals' own machines - will all be tablets, except for a few nerdy hobbyists.

And true, the current Modern interface is poor at multitasking. But it does it, and better than Android or iOS do: you can see two apps at once.

And yes, I am sure that lots of people are installing Start menu apps. That's fine - Windows 8.1 is going to make that an irrelevance, as allegedly it will bring the Start button back. But all it will do is launch the Modern start screen.

Maybe a few - I bet a lot less - are buying ModernMix to run Modern apps in windows.

But I don't think that these apps increase usability or efficiency as such. They just make things more familiar.

But the thing is, 20y supporting Windows has shown me, very very clearly, that novice users don't understand stuff like window management and task switching and hierarchical menus. It confuses the hell out of them. They hate it. Nobody likes to be confused or to be made to feel stupid.

Multitasking, file systems, folders, clipboards etc. are hard. They're complex. They are for smart people and geeks who like to learn this stuff.

This is *why* tens of millions of tablets are flying off the shelves - iPads in the wealthy west, cheap Chinese Android tablets in the less-wealthy world, cheap cellphones in the developing world.

The problem that Windows 8 faces is not being more like traditional Windows. "Being easier and simpler, like Android and iOS" is Microsoft's problem.

Win8 is a brave attempt to do that... with legacy stuff left in for the nerds.

Yes, old hands don't like the new UI. Big deal. Windows ME didn't kill MS. Windows Vista didn't. The Zune didn't, the Microsoft Network didn't. MS has had dozens, maybe hundreds, of turkeys that bombed.

It's rich. It can afford it. It can wait.

Offices will keep buying MS products & that will keep the company afloat for years to come.

What it needs to do is capture a decent share of the only markets that are growing in the computer world: smartphones and tablets. Everything else is dying.

It has to get into that game, or it will die. Its management knows this. It will not give up. It doesn't matter how much the old timers scream.

If it can throw them a bone in the form of "boot to desktop" and a start menu, it will.

But the Modern interface is not going to go away.

Microsoft is not Google - with a single big fat cash cow that funds wild experimentation. Microsoft's thing is offering something for everyone and it all ties together. That means everyone has to go in the same direction, like it or not. And the computer market is going to tablets, and so that is where Microsoft is going, and all Microsoft customers are going with it, like it or not.

The thing is, as people grow in confidence with simple, keyboardless, finger-driven computing devices, they are going to grow in confidence. They are going to start producing music, video, pictures; they're going to write books, plays, other long works; they're going to program.

And that means that in time, the advanced users are going to want to multitask, to move data from app to app, to see apps side-by-side and so on.

Apple is completely rubbish at this. Android is not good at it but several companies have bodged on ways to kinda sorta do it.

Windows is really good at this.

MS is actually in with a chance if it can force people to use Modern apps, force developers to write Modern apps, force people to buy their software and content online direct from MS and not via 3rd parties.

(And don't forget, it's good at forcing people like this - like it forced adoption of the new Office 97 file formats, and then the Ribbon and the Office 2007 file formats.)

Actually, it is in some ways better-prepared than Google or Apple is. Google has a good strong offering, but only because it gives it away for nothing.

Apple doesn't. Apple has two different really good strong offerings which it is struggling to bring together: iOS and OS X.

Microsoft doesn't. It has a new look and feel, a new API, but also an OS with a legacy interface with the biggest software library there has ever been.

The desktop Linux world hasn't even noticed anything is happening yet, except Canonical, with its forward-looking but much-reviled Unity.

GNOME has some ideas but its new effort is widely loathed, too.

KDE has some plans as well.

But nobody's even mentioning the possibility of some day shipping anything from GNOME and KDE, whereas those people who've played with Ubuntu on tablets and phones mostly say it's great.

I kinda hope Ubuntu does make it, partly because I'll enjoy watching all the Unity-haters getting left behind, raging impotently. I am kinda petty and childish like that.

But also because Ubuntu, although the old-school Linux Taliban don't like it, is a real Linux, unlike Android. Ubuntu is the most polished, professional offering in the Linux world. So actually Ubuntu has a better chance than Microsoft in some ways - maybe.

But there is no point railing against Windows 8.x. It is not going away. The Modern interface isn't either, although it might change.

When good finger-driven PC hardware starts to appear, the Modern interface will take off. Maybe gradually, but I think it will.

I've played with a Surface tablet. It was actually a really nice device. No, it's not as mature as the iPad, but actually, it multitasks, it has a filesystem - even in the version 1.0 tablet device, it feels less crippled and limited than an iPad.

And actually, Microsoft is smart, it's very capable. It can turn on a dime. It embraced the Web, a bit late, but it didn't quite miss the boat. It jumped in the water, swam like hell and caught up and ended up at the helm for a while, with IE as the leading browser and IIS as the leading server.

The problem is not touch-driven interfaces. That's a trivial hardware problem. New input devices will sort it. Not just touchscreens - they give you "gorilla arm" - but touchpads and touch-sensitive mice and keyboards with strokable edges and big trackpads you can type on and secondary screens that lie flat on your desk. There are loads of creative gadgets out there. It will get sorted.

Mice were scary and new 25-30y ago. Now we all take them totally for granted. This is a trivial issue.

The big problem is finding a way to bring together a finger-driven tablet interface that also allows you to see multiple apps at once, and simple phone-style apps that also give you easy access to simple local data exchange between apps.

Those are hard to do.

But all this shouting over Metro? Forget it. Barking up the wrong tree.