Talk about polarizing. People love this thing; people despise it. People hail Microsoft for boldly acknowledging the era of touchscreen computing; people mock it for taking away the Start menu in the name of trendiness.
Here’s one thing most people can probably agree on: Although Windows 8 may not be Microsoft’s greatest operating system, it may well be two of them.
That’s right: When you get right down to it, Windows 8 is two operating systems superimposed. Both are really good. There’s the regular desktop, an even more refined version of the popular Windows 7. And then, lying over it, there’s the new, colorful world of tiles and modern typography that Microsoft calls—well, Microsoft calls it Windows 8, which doesn’t help much. (It desperately needs a name. In this book, I call it “TileWorld.”)
Maybe Windows 8 is meant to be a transitional OS. Maybe the next one will be all TileWorld, all touchscreen, all the time.
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