Different at all costs

With a new OS version comes a new design, a new visual style. Windows 10 is no exception; icons have been flattened and the Metro (oh, excuse me, "modern") look has been brought to more aspects of the desktop.

We reached the pinnacle of desktop beauty a while ago, in my opinion, with Windows 7. It took advantage of good hardware; previous instances of Windows had to make some sacrifices to accommodate real specs. The only thing that drives designers to change is the need to make the new product look new. In other words, be different at all costs.

Windows 10 is where this becomes a problem for me. It's the first version of Windows that features icons that I actively dislike. That's just, well, like, my opinion, man, but the point is that companies really like figuring out some new theme that looks sufficiently different from the previous. That new theme then creates unnecessary surprise and confusion in non-technically-adept users.