“The problem with Windows 8 and Metro finally became clear to me when I was confronted by a wall of tiles and was lost,” John C. Dvorak writes for PC Magazine. “The sameness made it impossible to find anything. Why anyone would revert to vague and homogeneous tiles from highly identifiable icons is beyond my comprehension. Perhaps someone thinks it’s more artsy.”
“People sense something is wrong. The miserable sales of the Phone 7 products reflect the user sensitivity,” Dvorak writes. “So what does Microsoft do? It pushes the same bad idea to the new OS. Win 8 will be a huge disappointment if Microsoft insists that these metro tiles are a good idea.”
“When you look at your desktop screen, how do you find the program you are looking for? You look for distinctive icons using your human ability to recognize patterns. It’s what we do best,” Dvorak writes. “We are so good at this that we can identify an upside down icon. Mac takes the icon approach to interesting and useful extremes. Even document icons are miniature and identifiable shrunken images of the title page. This is extremely useful.”
Dvorak writes, “It dawned on me that, while artistically interesting, the Microsoft wall of tiles presents a navigational dilemma. It’s an out-and-out hindrance. As a user interface, it’s actually a disaster. It’s also a disaster for the Phone 7 phones.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: This might be John’s record for staying on his meds.
BTW, we came to a similar conclusion back in February 2010, when we wrote regarding Windows Phone ’07: Apple offers “a better-designed UI that doesn’t continuously destroy users’ visual memory.”
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “NixoN” for the heads up.]
Related article:
Dvorak: High-end niche apps drive market to iPhone, the one platform users and developers can trust – August 31, 2011