I just tried this on my Surface Pro and although performance is really lacking and pinch to zoom does not work, I am excited about the possibility of using other browsers than IE11. Chrome for Windows 8 has been abandoned since release so I hope Firefox will continue to develop this UI.
I don't know if it's a good or bad thing that WP8 apps break all historical resemblance to other app UIs. Anyone with first-hand experience that can offer some feedback of how these apps hold up from a usability standpoint?
On my Surface Pro I almost never go to the Desktop unless I need to do dev work or some arcane file management rituals. I barely even use Office on this device because OneNote satisfies most of what I need from my Surface (taking notes). I spend most of my time in IE11, Xbox Music, Mail (occasionally - doesn't work as well with Gmail as I'd like), Twitter, ReddHub (Reddit app), and OneNote.
As for my desktop, I do spend a bit more time on the Desktop, and I'm more likely to use Chrome, but I've found I spend most of my time using modern IE11 because it's a completely adequate browser. Some sites designed for Chrome have problems, and so I'll jump into Desktop Chrome for those. Obviously, I spend a lot of time developing on my desktop machine, but I'll jump into modern for things like Twitter.
I think the killer feature for modern applications on both the desktop and touch devices is that they are naturally responsive - apps are designed to adjust to the width of the screen they are snapped to, making multitasking usability much better. There are few desktop applications that work well resized to a quarter size of the screen, but most modern applications work great with that use case.
Varies a lot by form factor - my experience with Metro apps on touch devices has been amazing. On desktops, I rarely have a reason to use them - except for running a full-screen Kindle / Netflix app on an additional monitor.
FWIW, iOS7 and the latest Android UI actually borrow a lot from the Windows Phone flavor of metro pretty heavily. The context switching between apps on iOS7 is identical to what MSFT introduced in WP7.1 (Mango.)
This is exactly my experience, including the full screen Kindle and Netflix apps - they're pretty handy! I think on the whole it's a good thing that they're experimenting radically with the UI design, because it's been stagnant for ages and I feel that mobile UI paradigms, while not appropriate for every application, can really be much more intuitive and faster for certain applications. For example, I'd much rather browse Twitter or Facebook on my phone than from the web interface on my computer.
I agree. On my (non-touch screen) laptop I hardly ever use the metro apps. I like win8 but I just go to the desktop practically every time. There just aren't any metro apps worth using right now (I basically only use this laptop when i'm in front of my netflix-capable tv)
