As far as the touchscreen part of all this the author calls it correct when naming the article. MS didn't bother developing a new touchscreen capable gui for the desktop to begin with!
Uh... not sure if you're just trying to be funny or not(probably are). But yes, they did. Just plug in a touchscreen monitor
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It's simple fact! They took the RT tablet gui designed specifically for tablet and slapped it on 8 and simply because you can use a touchscreen monitor or click the oversized buttons won't make it an actual desktop gui but a shortcut for MS not to even spend any effort in that direction. Their main focus has been on Surface and RT to begin with taking a fast shortcut to put out something for OEMs to dump on new pcs.
You simply end up with an updated 7 core with the RT tablet gui slapped on fast as a cheap OS now that they have also stripped things out of the Windows OS to consider as well. People wanted a cheaper OS and they got it at a cost however!
While certain things at the core level were improved upon features were stripped out that had been incldued in previous versions now being charged for separately as well as making WMP useless wit the thinking there are too many media and dvd players out there so why have it included in Windows? "We'll cut some more corners!" Sound familiar?
The new Start screen and subbing for the Start orb or button are nothing while the Metro in your face to open each new program or a second IE window for example was hindsight as far as the desktop is concerned. On a tablet you only have one thing going at a time while on a desktop 8 is royal headache for any actual multitasker as far as productivity.
The Control Panel and other settings hidden in not known about tool bars and hidden right click menus only if you happen to right click in just the right spot notice also make it clumsy to work with. For the majority of users they are lost at first sight and then end up looking for a way back to 7 or Vista! For those of us who first saw the DP, CP, RP builds we either like it or hate it already having the first hand experience however. For some workarounds will help get through until the next MS success or flop shows up.