Windows 8 does look beautiful but the tech community’s overwhelmingly positive response seems a bit premature. After watching a video of it in action, I can’t help but notice the lack of unification across the platform. Sure, it’s well designed, but there is a huge difference between making something beautiful and making it usable.
For example, they may think it’s great that users can swipe a finger in any direction to produce an action (like moving one finger to switch apps), but there’s a reason Apple chose to use multi-finger gestures. Requiring a non-standard input obscures unintuitive results and helps ensure a user’s ideal outcome.
This beautiful interface is smooth, but it needs to prove that the disjointed, but tremendously capable, platform is intuitive for first-time users and that Microsoft can woo developers. Regardless, Apple had better kick its unification efforts into high gear. iOS’ handicapped functionality isn’t going to satisfy consumers indefinitely.
Sep14
