So you think that if a product doesn't reflect what the customers need or want they should still pay for it and shouldn't be allowed to tell a company why it doesn't work? That's just insane. Just because something is new doesn't always make it better and if it doesn't work or is harder to use then people are not going to buy the thing. You seem to assume that Microsoft is some perfect company and that anything they release that is new is better and that if a paying customer doesn't like it and says so that customer is some evil monster plotting against progress. That is not how technology or business works. Technology goes up dead ends and tries out bad ideas all the time. Businesses exist to provide products that make customer's lives easier. They exist to provide a service in exchange for money. The customer does not exist to give them money on demand so they can "push things forward"(By the way who gets to say what is forward progress any way. What makes the people working at Microsoft so special that they get the final say in this?)and if a product doesn't work for customers they are free to say so. That goes double for something like Windows 8 where it comes preinstalled on our new computers and we are never given the option to not get it and we have to spend $150 downgrading to the last version just to get something we can use. Oh and the companies that last they are the ones who ask the people who are not buying their products why they are not working so that they can change the product to reflect the needs of their customers so that they don't flee and use a competitor's product and they get to stay in business.
Let me put this is personal terms. I write fan fiction as an exercise to learn how to become a better writer. It's fun and it lets me try out ideas that I have in settings I already know and I can get some great feedback. It's no English 101 or creative writing course but it's better then nothing and the feedback I get helps me become a better writer. You want to know what reviews I find the most helpful and that I ask for? The negative ones. Because I care about what I am doing and I want to provide the reader who has taken time out of his busy day to read my story with a good well written tale. To that end if I keep making the same spelling or grammar mistakes,my prose are clunky,or a plot element doesn't make sense I want to know. So I can be a better writer and one day write something that people will pay money to read. The people who leave negative reviews on fan fiction dot net are not whining and they are not my enemies who I need to defeat,they are my best friends. They are the people who I am working to entertain and their feedback is making me a better writer. I am not doing anything to Microsoft that I have not had done to me.
I applaud Microsoft for in this case listening to their customers instead of ignoring them and then just complaining that their sales are down. I am still upset about My computer not being an icon and my friend still has trouble with using his windows 8 pc to program and debug stuff but at least they are taking steps to fix this with 8.1 and it looks like 9.
You can't know if a new idea will work or not until you put it out in the real world and have it tested by real people. True forward progress isn't made by just putting an invention out their and saying "This is how it is going to be and no changes will ever be made." True forward progress is made when an invention is put out in the real world and the inventors look at what happens when it is used in the real world and they make tweaks to make it work better in the real world based on what people that use the product say about it. Just look at early cars and how many weird ways their were to steer them and signal and just how unsafe some of them were. The car became what we have today because the people that made them looked at how people used them in real life and looked at what people said about cars and zeroed in on the most popular and most needed features. That is how true forward progress is made,when the companies putting out a product and the people buying it work together to make the product better and easier to use. The customers get a better product and the company makes more money,everyone wins.
Also as I said if you want Windows without a program tree or any icons it's called DOS. Windows is a program designed for idiots like me who found DOS too hard to use. It seems to me what you really should be doing instead of trying to get Microsoft to make Windows more like DOS which seems to be a losing proposition is instead let them know that you would like to see them launch a new version of DOS alongside Windows. Let them know there is a market for DOS 2015 and maybe they will grant your wish.
As I said true progress is only made when their is feedback from the customers,so give them your feedback. Just know exactly what you want so that you can make it clear to them what you want.