I originally thought of stating that perhaps Microsoft may be trying to foist something more of a "closed" system a la Apple.
That'd be the death knell for Microsoft, so it's not going to happen. Desktop OSes should never be locked down, unless they're developed for a certain purpose. No one wants to be locked down at
all. It might be understandable on limited-use devices like phones and tablets, but not so on the desktop.
I think that whether or not this touchscreen interface takes off as Microsoft might want depends very strongly on corporate adoption.
That does tend to be true. Are we going to see IT departments out of nowhere decide to replace
all their monitors with touchscreens? I doubt that. What does it offer them? Not a damn thing. Sure, they might opt for touchscreens the next time they need to get a shipment in, but more often than not, it comes down to need and cost.
Given that the server edition of Windows 8 has the same Metro interface, Microsoft must be assuming that everyone is going to enjoy it. Imagine needing to go work on a server, only to have to deal with
that interface. Seems kind of clunky, when server configuration / fixing isn't exactly a simple thing.
I've been meaning to install W8 for a while just to use it and see how things fare. Might do that this weekend.