That's not what I meant. Apps (I so much hate this word...) are designed to be run in full screen mode. On any other OS you can have a bunch of them on the screen and still have access to application launchers (start menu etc.). W8(.1) only has the snap feature, which is limited, and you still have to switch screens regularly. It is clearly designed for not even laptops but smartphones, where every cm of the screen must be used to achieve readability. Remember when Windows 95 was running at 800x600 and we maximized explorer windows so we can see more than 2 folders at once? This is something very similar. Everything maximized.
True, but I personally do not use any of the Windows 8 Apps. First thing I do is I unpin them all from start and that is it. And the ones forced upon you like Music, Video, Photos or PDF Viewer are later replaced with my mp3 player, video player, foxit pdf reader or something, and I change the default program for opening pictures to Windows Photo Viewer just like it is in Windows 7. And that is pretty much it for me, I am all set, happy and ready to push the "fun button" all over again EDIT: In fact I do not imagine that anyone has urgent need to use any of the Apps. They were not in Windows 7 and now they are there, but they are only good for smartphones and tablets as I find no need for them on desktop, where you can pretty much replace them - Skype App with regular Skype, or Fullscreen Calculator app (which is completely ridiculous yes) with regular built in calculator. So the Apps do not bother me at all. But they are there yes, and I take it as price of unification.
Windows 8 is already more reliable for me then Windows 7 ever was (Reproducable explorer.exe crashes that do not happen in windows 8, old api etc). Why there has not been SP2 for Windows 7 ? Firstly, they cancelled the whole SP thing and secondly they published an update that simulates SP2. And why they cancelled it ? I think for that exists pretty obvious answer, and I fully agree with it. Windows 8 is far from "broken OS". If anything is broken, it is Windows 7 in current state.
Some people are just whiners. Microsoft has one of the highest quality controls on the planet. If you think you can do better, by all means; do.
Is this really a thing? Do you have any information about which updates slow down the system? This could be some really good info for those of us who plan to stick with Windows 7.
I think it would be difficult to tell, it will be according to every user experience as most of us just get many updates and install them as one batch. But, it is not impossible to find those updates. I personally, had a similar issue as I have an image of my C drive back to May 2013 and all went OK at that time. I started to feel the slowness after installing an update or two, can't remember in August as far as I think, but of course it will be difficult to remember which one/s exactly