8 Issues In Windows 8: Modern vs Desktop

To be fair, I did not spend a lot of time on either Windows 8 CP or RP, Virtual Box & switching between a configured OS and beta OS on the Air was annoying. Since the past 2 days, however, I have been all Windows 8 on the Air. And Windows 8 feels great but I have a few issues, those I hoped wouldn’t make it into the final release:

1. Installing apps puts a lot of tiles on my Modern start screen, InteliPoint for example puts links to help files and other useless stuff. Desktop apps get an icon on the desktop and on the modern start screen. It’s unnecessary clutter.
2. Installing Windows 8 games puts a game tile on the modern start screen and not in the Xbox hub, unlike in Windows Phone. The Xbox tile doesn’t list just the PC games anywhere, instead has a huge list of Xbox and PC games you’ve recently played–something I quite like, but I’d rather have my PC games listed in the Xbox hub.
3. The Me tile in Windows 8 can only update either Facebook or Twitter; unlike Windows Phone, you cannot update multiple social networks together.
4. The People hub does not sync groups I created on my Windows Phone. Nor can you send Twitter messages to your contacts from the People hub, unlike the amazing Outlook.com People hub.
5. The Share charm sounds very useful. Unfortunately, on Windows 8 Pro, if you’re going to be in the desktop a lot, it’s useless. Even IE desktop pages can’t be shared. It’s ridiculous that nothing can be shared from the desktop. (Cue OS X Mountain Lion)
6. Broken IE: The modern IE and the desktop IE are completely different. If I have a page open on the desktop & want to share, I cannot send it to the touch-IE to share. This broken IE problem is an annoyance since it makes Windows 8 Pro feel like 2 independent experiences and not a cohesive UX. (If you set another browser as your default, you lose Modern IE. That doesn’t even make sense.)
7. Windows 8 Mail App: It’s beautiful. I haven’t used mail clients since a long time and the Mail app was just perfect. Unfortunately, it doesn’t support email threads; as a result all the ease of use and simplicity results to an app that falls short. It could’ve been the perfect email client. How hard could it be to duplicate the Windows Phone mail client?!
8. On the Modern Start screen if you take the cursor to the right/left edge in the center, you can scroll horizontally; which is a neat touch. Unfortunately, the behavior doesn’t work in any app, not even in Microsoft’s apps–a good UX element that’s broken.

So those are 8 issues I hoped wouldn’t have made their way into the final build. Having said that, within a few hours of installing, I completely switched to W8 on my Air as my primary OS. It’s beautiful, quick and Windows.