Remember Vista? This is microsofts way of using the world as its beta testers in between major OS types. Everything hated about vista ended up in win8 in some form or another. vista was the test bed for everything drm and media content control. Win7 was to placate the desktop crowd while experimenting with other things microsoft knew people wouldn't except... apparently microsoft thought last year would be a good time to try and dominate the tablet market, and do it fast and shitty.
By not giving people more of a choice to retain desktop convenience in their push for touch screen tablets and telling people that's what they want .. it pretty much backfired. Even NCIS LA can't put enough win8 tablet product 'in scene' show commercials to make a difference.
Looks like majority hate win8 more than vista. I didn't think that was possible. Don't take my word for it, just do some quick net searching for win8.
Maybe win9 may come back to the desktop more.
Maybe it's time for linux to really go mainstream?