Metro *is* indeed innovative, and beautiful, but it's also very fragile. I was immediately taken by it, like you. I think a huge amount of respect must be given to the team that created something so different to everything else out there, whilst still working well. But sadly, not well enough for me. I found the interface to be too focussed on the zoomed/cropped typography and every app felt to similar and didn't get me thinking in "modes" which I need to do... in many ways it's not a GUI at all... it's a TUI (typographical user interface) and this is ultimately it's downfall... there's definately not enough design vocabulary outside of the type. And the tiles are easily destroyed with hideous work by 3rd parties...

I know plenty of 'pretenders' designers who claim Wacom and OS X Photoshop with a sense of superiority but are really just cookie cutter wannabe's - yet the best designer I've ever worked with uses a mouse and demands Windows + Photoshop - he runs circles around the others. You know - the old cliches are sometimes true - it's what you do with it that counts / all the gear, no idea etc etc.. Since hiring him I no longer use *any* tool usage as a form of assessment, instead choosing to focus on their actual technique with the tools they use. Which is partly your point, I just don't agree with the apple = better designer myth you continue to propagate...

When a laptop packing a multi-GHz 64bit CPU with gigs of RAM gets called a thin client...

100% agree

"You would get no animation training in a BFA or MFA graphics design program."

utter nonsense...