I had talked to some UI designers at MS about the ribbon not too long ago and heard some interesting feedback. For virtually every group that uses it they prefer it. One group doesn't like it as much though -- developers and power users. You'll probably never see the ribbon in Visual Studio.
What I found interesting is what tested best with power users -- whatever they were currently using. Even if they didn't really like it, they always liked it more than then next thing.
One of the worst places to get UI feedback, for something like Explorer, is from people who would read such a blog. I hope MS is mindful of this.
In all this discusion there is an assumption that I disagree with: that the people that has no idea about using computers should dictate the UI.
With every version of Windows, I must work a little more, if at all possible, to go back to the Windows 95 Explorer. With every version of Windows they add some "innovation" or "enhacement" that degrades a little more my user experience.
Buttons and bars that add nothing useful and take screen space. A couple of minutes looking for the options to revert the changes... the options BTW also move. Windows 7 makes it specially difficult to restore the menu.
"Simplified" folder managing prevents me from seeing two sibling folders in the tree at once. That was Vista I think,
The Windows 7 "libraries" are terrible and impossible to disable completely. The "classic" start menu has disappeared from earth's face.
And so on. Windows 8 may be a little more difficult. I don't know if beginners are happier. I don't care.
In all this discusion there is an assumption that I disagree with: that the people that has no idea about using computers should dictate the UI.
I don't think its people with no idea, but rather people who aren't power users. I suspect almost all of us on a site called "Hacker News" are likely power users in our OS of choice.
When Windows changes, I'm inconvenienced for an hour or so as I relearn where various things are. But as a power user, I relearn these things pretty quickly (if I'm so inclined). "Oh they've added something called a registry. Let me take a look at this... Hmm... so there is where the files are registering this data. What if I..."
This is what we do. We're going to figure it out. And to be honest, I find Win7 way more user friendly than XP. For example, with multimon and the ability to quickly snap windows into place with Win-L and Win-R -- that right there makes me feel naked on XP (or Vista).
So you make look around and say there are 250,000 Windows power users out here (and you're probably surrounded by them)! There are 300 million who aren't.
What I found interesting is what tested best with power users -- whatever they were currently using. Even if they didn't really like it, they always liked it more than then next thing.
One of the worst places to get UI feedback, for something like Explorer, is from people who would read such a blog. I hope MS is mindful of this.