Hi LongCipher,
I agree with your sentiment. I also notice with friends and parents the windows 8 experience does have a lot to get used to. When I let friends use my surface pro. They get the hang quickly of using search in the charms bar. But when opening internet explorer they choose the desktop version over the modern UI one. Friends even ask where is chrome or firefox, which I don't use natively.
What I notice that when my parents use windows, they're increasing getting lost in the flashyness of advertisement bars, endless buttons and menu's. I think they would benefit from a cleaner design of website pages in general. But not too clean. I get the impression my parents see the buttons and links as a switchboard. If something is not supported on the screen it doesnt exist and small icons virtually don't register. So signifcant tabs, menus and editing buttons need to be bold and big and clear, preferably icons with word at at least size 12 or higher.
For the average user, I think the biggest market, microsoft has a big job and responsibility, and to that end a compromise will always be made. I think that is why microsoft can only afford an incremental update. Probably windows 8 would have done much better if windows 10 came out first. For advanced and moderate users I think the windows 8 update was better understandable although not everyones piece of cake. I think with windows 10, certainly to the average consumer and business, an OS tailored to the more trusted pc/desktop and mouse and keyboard use will fair will with the majority, certainly the free update and promise of more stability and security will do well.
But on paper/digital screen many of us know that windows 10 could be so much more, certainly after what microsoft offered us with windows 8.x. I think for many the current windows 10 will be a good transition from desktop to tablet. But for more moderate to advanced users windows 10 could be improved to a better end user experience, as is shown by the amazing comments provided so far in many windows 10 threads on windows central.
As for me, Im looking for what would make the best, efficient and most productive windows experience on my surface pro. A computer that enjoys both the pc and tablet side of things. I use my surface for a blanced mix of entertainment consumption, work related things like reading and making documents and browsing the web. On occasion I edit videos and photos.
I prefer the startscreen design of windows 8 as the the most used apps are right at your disposal presented as live tiles. The live tiles also directlyl provide a myriad of glancable information that already helps organize my work and see an overview of what is necessary or interesting first. Get in, get out done. The charms bar helps quickly to change settings in an app quickly and the searchbar can quickly be found. It does a recent job of semi-indexed searches across apps and to a degree the desktop and peripheral storage devices as well. App design, switching between apps, multitasking and app snapping and closing app in the startscreen environment, which I think is a tablet environment, works nicely in my workflow. When I get into the desktop though, touch is a whole different experience. Because menu's and tiles and buttons are bigger in the tablet environment, pressing things there with the finger is more fluent and relaxing. In desktop you have the typical windows 7 styling with windows, taskbar and systemstray, operating it with your finger is tense experience, because the icons and buttons and lettersize are smaller, thus the errorrate of pressing the wrong button or missing the target button on pressing is greater. At first sight it may be a minor issue, but in the long run it starts nagging at you, leaving you frustrated and evading the startscreen in tablet mode.
If I look critically at my workflow with the surface pro I mostly use the startscreen (tablet environment). The only reasons I go to the desktop is to use office, advanced computer settings and options and filemanagement and microsofts free movie editing software (is good!) movie maker. These are not available as native apps yet on the startscreen environment. Hopefully this could change in windows 10 if they decide to make office apps for the modern UI, just like onenote. The pc settings from desktop and tablet mode are now combined, which is a good development. I hope they also consider making a modern UI app of windows movie maker. For me it is then not hard to imagine that the desktop environment could be phased out, in favor of a more (hybrid) tablet experience. But again that is my wish, which does not per se mean what is best for everyone. But I do wish microsoft would consider some more options for surface pro owners to be able to introduce more advanced features with windows 8.1 as the springboard designbasics and perhaps through toggles be able to switch on more tablety features and toggle off desktop features. Perhaps that would be af fair compromise.
Now, where do I sign up for those features....
I hope this helps LongCipher.