I've never been afraid to adopt a MS tech. Silverlight still works fine and it's easy to convert a SL app to XAML/Windows. WCF works fine still and it's not that difficult to port that stuff over to WebAPI or ServiceStack. Maybe you're rather not have innovation.
"I have only seen Win8 once, and was unable to help the owner of the laptop it was on in do anything at all."
So you're not a tech person then, can't use google? My Dad is computer illiterate and upgrade to W8 from W7 without any help. How do people survive on Max OSX without a start menu? I think people like to complain about nothing.
Maybe, like I said, I never used it. Mac OSX doesn't have it and I of course don't use it there. My kids seems to do fine on both Win 8 and Mac OSX so I'm not sure what the problem is.
I do development on Android, iOS, and WP/RT. I do the same on Mac OSX, either use the launcher at the bottom or apple key + space bar and start typing. I'm a shill for both operating systems.
So you didn't slide your mouse around to close windows in Win7? Ever use Alt-F4? Win8 has better keyboard shortcuts than the previous OS's but you'd have to spend 2 mins learning something I guess.