Microsoft co-founder dings Windows 8 as 'puzzling, confusing'

02.10.2012
Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen today called Windows 8 "puzzling" and "confusing initially," but assured users that they would eventually learn to like the new OS.

Allen, who co-founded Microsoft with Bill Gates in 1975, left the company in 1983 after being diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease. He is best known in the Pacific Northwest as the owner of the NFL's Seattle Seahawks and the NBA's Portland Trailblazers, and as a part-owner of the MLS' Seattle Sounders FC.

In a Tuesday -- strangely titled in the third person as, "Paul's take on Windows 8," Allen said he has been running Windows 8 Release Preview -- the public sneak peak Microsoft shipped May 31 -- on both a traditional desktop as well as on a Samsung 700T tablet. The latter, designed for Windows 7, not its successor, has been handed out or loaned in quantities by Microsoft to developers, analysts and members of the press in an effort to convince them to create software, or try out the touch-first features of Windows 8.

"I did encounter some puzzling aspects of Windows 8," Allen wrote, and said the dual, and dueling user interfaces (UIs), were confusing.

"The bimodal user experience can introduce confusion, especially when two versions of the same application -- such as Internet Explorer -- can be opened and run simultaneously," Allen said.

Windows 8 has come under fire from some quarters for a variety of reasons, but the one most cited has been the double-UI approach, one dubbed "Modern" or "Windows 8 style" (formerly "Metro") that features a flattened, minimalist look and responds best to touch and gestures, and the other, called "Classic" by a few, that resembles a tweaked Windows 7 desktop sans a Start button and Start menu.