Tiles.
Who is the person who thought tiles were a good idea? Who are the people who agreed with him?
Tiles are amazing for touch screen users. Some of us enjoy touch screens and tiles facilitate ease of use much better than trying to click a much smaller blade or link. Microsoft is committed to accessibility for their products. Try to think of features outside of how they’re presented to you. Many features facilitate ease of use or accessibility enhancement for the disabled and handicapped.
I can’t tell you exactly but I do know indirectly who made the decision. Credit (or blame) should go to Craig Mundie.
It was about 1997 (or so) and I was working as a contractor for Mundie @ Microsoft’s Advanced Prototyping Team. This group was a think tank of sorts - visualizing future trends for the company. Mundie had come to form the team by way of the Consumer Platform division. His penchant was small devices like PDA’s, netbooks, and phones.
I remember a meeting where Craig announced a new project for the team, and eventually all of Microsoft. They wanted to standardize the Windows experience across all platforms. So if you moved from a desktop or tablet to a phone or even an embedded device in your refrigerator it would all look and function the same.
You can immediately imagine the limitations that small form-factor devices like phones would have - most phones could only offer a limited tab from hotspot to hotspot for navigation. Thus, everything needed to be organized into tiles for easier access. They actually forced the OS to accommodate the least versatile device at the expense of the most versatile.
As a result, navigating the menu system for accessing programs took a giant step backwards. We all suffered through it with Windows 8 and they relented to the overwhelming criticism of their customers and brought back the Start button (although compromised with a continued reliance on tiles) with Windows 10.
I use this.
http://www.classicshell.net/