Spare me the conspiracy theories Ray. Every time someone says that crap, it can just as easily be turned around. You obviously must work for Microsoft's competitors to frequent a forum for an OS you clearly dislike, and spend all your time talking about how much it sucks. That's the only possible reason that makes sense... After all, it's not the first time it's happened, right Ray? And wouldn't a competitor want to sow distrust among the members of said forums, seems like you fit the bill perfectly.
Or, maybe you just have a personal opinion and want to share it. Wow, that seems so improbable. Let's go with the conspiracy theories.
Microsoft has made it abundantly clear the direction they are going. They've published thousands of articles, blog entries, presentations, videos, books, and technical papers on the subject. They've had several major conferences in which they have discussed these things as well. It can't be helped if you have simply been too busy to take notice of any of them. It's not like MS hasn't tried to educate anyone that would listen.
So to spout conspiracies about "inside knowledge" is patently ridiculous. Do yourself a favor, and if you plan to keep talking crap about the OS, then do your homework on it. But then, if you did, you probably wouldn't hate it so much. Most people that understand what Microsoft is doing, and where it's going are quite upbeat about it, because knowledge is a lot better than random speculation.
Mountain: It's not bad design to rebuild a bridge in place, particularly for extremely busy bridges that cannot simply be shut down and traffic rerouted. Microsoft tried to do that, actually. It was called Windows Longhorn, and it took 6 years to get out the door, and still wasn't nearly what it was intended to be. Large software rewrites almost never work, and the only reasonable approach is to do it in manageable pieces. Imagine if Linus Torvolds had waited to release the first Linux kernel until it was everything he wanted it to be. You'd still be waiting for it. In fact, Linux is the ultimate expression of this "build it piecemeal" philosophy, so it's rather ironic that Linux fans seem to be complaining so much about Windows 8's "consistency".
Why didn't they do a better job of integration? Because they're not intended to be integrated. One of them is intended to go away. That was my point about "Just make both ways 2.5 lanes", Integrating two pieces of a multi-step rebuild takes time away from the rebuild to do things that will just get thrown away in the next cycle. It's pointless, expensive, and accomplishes nothing.
Let's say you're going to rebuild your house. You can't just tear it down and start from scratch because you're living there, and doing that would make you homeless. So instead, you do it one room at a time. Are you really going to spend money at each stage of the renovation to make the rest of the old, 100 year old house look like it belongs with the new part? Only a crazy person would even try that, you're just going to tear it all down anyways, and attempting to "integrate" them would result in terrible architecture and structural stability, not to mention tripling the cost of your rebuild.
If you're still going to complain about how "why didn't they just integrate everything" even after that explanation, then I guess there's nothing that could be said that would satisfy you. Anyone that actually thinks about what would be involved with that (rather than just magic, which is the way most people seem to view software development) would also reject that idea.
A lot of people get the idea that because software is so easily copied, that it doesn't really exist. That it just more or less appears out of thin air because someone decides it should do something. They don't understand the very real effort that goes into all software development. And hour of work as a software developer is still an hour of work, just as an hour of work as a plumber, or a carpenter is an hour of work. And Windows 8 is the result of Millions of man hours of work.
Windows 8 is the way it is *intentionally*. They intended it to be this way, because they knew it was a temporary situation, and would have to put up with inconsistency for a few versions, but that inconsistency would steadily get less and less.
You're not telling them something they don't know when you complain about it. You're the guy standing in the middle of an empty room and saying "Hey, did you know you don't have any furniture?" Yeah, I know... I haven't bought any yet. "Well, I have a suggestion, you should buy some furniture". Gee, thanks Einstein, I never would have thought of that if you hadn't suggested it. We all know that guy. We've all rolled our eyes at him. Don't be that guy.
So please, stop thinking you're so smart because you've managed to identify the glaring problems of Windows 8. All you're doing is stating the obvious, and annoying everyone involved.