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"Windows 8-style UI"???? Did their legal team pick that name? This says so much about the state of Microsoft.

This new name has a totally different persona and sends a confusing, unsexy message about Microsoft's vision for the future. It shows no competent person/team is in charge of maintaining a unified, consistent brand, but I guess we already knew that. The name "Metro" must have been an accident. Is "Windows 8-style UI" even really a name? It's more of a literal description. I don't know how you could pick something more lacklustre.

The experience formerly known as "Metro" encapsulates all of the innovative, risky developments Microsoft has been making on the UI front, with mostly positive responses (at least regarding the appearance). Metro was the word for Microsoft's sex appeal. Changing the name to something so unmemorable and vanilla is like deleting the word and its definition from the dictionary.

While this could have been a great opportunity to fuel the hype for the new UI with a slick new name, instead they choose to wet blanket the whole thing, making "Metro" not even really a thing anymore.

Microsoft needs help, they're clearly very, very sick.



One unlikely possibility (refuted elsewhere, but posted anyway): they deliberately chose a replacement name nobody would use, so that the public would continue to call it Metro. "Hey, we told them not to call it Metro, but they did anyway! Please feel free to tear up your trademark and eat it."


"If Microsoft had invented sushi, they would have called it 'Cold Dead Fish'"


Windows Chillfish, Enterprise Plus Edition

[Edit] I take that back. Judging by how their legal department utterly dropped the ball in making sure "Metro" was a usable name, they probably would have gone with a name like "iFish", or "Fishoogle", or "Wal-Mart".


Remember "Microsoft Windows Phone 7 Series" OS?


You think they could've done a slight pivot and called it "Metron" or "MetroX" or "Metronium" or something that at least captured the flavor of the original.

Can you imagine people in a store asking for this thing by "name"?


You could have at least read the article fully before going on a diatribe about Microsoft based on what they name a style guide. Jeesh. That's what they're supposed to call it until the settle on a new name by the end of the week.


Ok, the hyperbole of both articles got me.

> From now on, the new terminology that Microsoft is using is "Windows 8-style UI"… and "New User Interface".

The blog post carefully omitted the final, critical line in the parent article (I skipped the line myself):

> As we get closer to launch and transition from industry dialog to a broad consumer dialog we will use our commercial names.


Sorry, I forgot the crap article got posted instead of the better one.

http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/2/3216545/microsoft-metro-bra...




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