Re: hoo ray
"Nobody wanted to use a stupid Start Button either in 1995."
The main criticism of the start button was it said "start" which didn't make a whole lot of sense since the computer was already started. As a launcher though it proved very successful especially considering what it replaced in Windows 3.x.
The issue for Metro is that it doesn't provide any advantages over start at least for mouse / keyboard setups. Instead of a compact alphabetically sort list of programs you now have a contiguous smear of large tiles running several vertical screens sideways. It's a huge waste of space, requires a lot of mouse travel and mental effort to use and by flattening out groups it loses any sense of sorting.
MS could do a lot to improve the experience. First off would be to allow program groups. Most program groups contain 3 to 5 icons pointing at READMEs, help, uninstall etc. Just grouping stuff would save 3-5x the space in metro.
Second allow users to zoom in and out so that the tiles don't waste hideous amounts of space.
Third provide users with the means to multiple select tiles and ranges of tiles and sort them. Also provide a way to auto sort tiles.
Fourth, provide a metro launcher which provide some visual context of their desktop while they're doing this, e.g. the way GNOME's activities launcher does.
Fifth, put the Windows start icon back in so people can discover metro is there in the first place instead of expecting them to discover it by accident.
All of these things are simple and obvious ways to improve the experience. If they implement them they would improve the metro experience immeasurably over what is there. Whether it is "better" than the start menu would remain to be seen but at least it would make the experience tolerable.