Windows 8 was great if you went straight to the desktop and never looked back.  There were some terrific upgrades to the classic desktop (even the task manager got real-time graphs and proper hierarchies for the first time).<p>I always pictured a really talented dev team somewhere in Redmond plugging away thanklessly on things that the powers that be thought no-one cared about (like security and usability) until one day someone decreed from on high that the whole frontend would need to &quot;beat the iPad&quot;, and it all turned to poop.<p>This is speculation of course, but drawn on multiple similar experiences.