"Modern" = something that ruins perfectly good stuff in the never ending pursuit of "progress". UI doesn't need to change every few years. It should have stopped changing almost 30 years ago.
When you put "modern" or "new" into the name of a thing, you're basically announcing to the world that it was designed for the short term, and when it is no longer new it will no longer be relevant.
It was a great UI for mobile. It just was a terrible UI for a real computer, so people reacted badly to Microsoft trying to force it in there. Mobile devices and normal computers have very different UI needs, and you can't simply paste one onto the other - something Microsoft should've learned from their failed attempts to make a tablet with the older Windows UI.
The final name was also called Modern. I know this person worked on Windows 8, but as a member of the public we definitely knew the Windows 8 UI was called 'Modern'.
Hot take: I liked Windows 8. It used less memory than Windows 7, increased battery life, the file manager and task manager were much improved, I could mount ISOs without third party software, among other things. In truth, I didn't even mind the start screen. And I certainly liked Metro as a UI paradigm much more than Aero.
Of course it was still Windows at the end of the day, but 8.1 was my last Windows. The laptop I ran it on is slowly bitrotting in a storage locker somewhere on the other end of the country. I didn't like the look of Windows 10, several aspects of it were hard dealbreakers, so I never swapped to it. Eventually I just changed over to using Linux as my primary OS and haven't really looked back.
I didn't care for the UI at all which is the most common complaint about it. But it was the least offensive complaint to me, the existence of the Microsoft Store was had me looking for the exit. I guess I overestimated Microsoft's competence because the store remains an irritating tumor that hasn't yet metastasized.
Unpopular opinion: Windows 10 is worse. You could still control updates and uninstall or never install the telemetry packs in 8/8.1. And the UI problem could be solved with 3rd party tools. Windows 10 had the spyware baked in and got more annoying over time. But poor adoption of 8 and Microsoft abandoning it meant that in practice driver and software support for 8.1 often disappeared before even Windows 7.
I read somewhere that the visual design of Windows 8 was based on the works of Mondrian, because they wanted a design that didn’t just look like the Swiss School that Apple had adopted.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 35.4 ms ] threadOf course it was still Windows at the end of the day, but 8.1 was my last Windows. The laptop I ran it on is slowly bitrotting in a storage locker somewhere on the other end of the country. I didn't like the look of Windows 10, several aspects of it were hard dealbreakers, so I never swapped to it. Eventually I just changed over to using Linux as my primary OS and haven't really looked back.
Unpopular opinion: Windows 10 is worse. You could still control updates and uninstall or never install the telemetry packs in 8/8.1. And the UI problem could be solved with 3rd party tools. Windows 10 had the spyware baked in and got more annoying over time. But poor adoption of 8 and Microsoft abandoning it meant that in practice driver and software support for 8.1 often disappeared before even Windows 7.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Stijl
I don’t know if the idea of calling Windows 8 modern stemmed from that, or if they decided to pick Mondrian having already decided to go with modern.
A missed opportunity to call it "MoCoCo" which, if you ask me, has more flare and personality to it. What a waste :/