» Always bet on the two-headed baby

Jakob Nielsen (via Adrian Kingsley-Hughes):

The Roman god Janus; Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; even Batman’s arch-foe Two-Face — human culture is fascinated by duality. We can now add Windows 8 to this list. The product shows two faces to the user: a tablet-oriented Start screen and a PC-oriented desktop screen.

Unfortunately, having two environments on a single device is a prescription for usability problems for several reasons…

Hey! I think I said that! Well, now it’s backed up by a usability expert. So there.

About one of the aspects of Windows 8 I thought interesting and would most like to see in iOS, Nielsen says:

Win8 does have an option to temporarily show a second area in a small part of the screen, but none of our test users were able to make this work.

Well, regardless, you should still follow Bret Arends advice and invest in Microsoft instead of Apple because Windows 8 is “a powerful competitive edge against existing tablets, such as the iPad, which run on more limited operating systems.”

Do people really feel more limited by using an operating system that makes it easier to do things, even if you can’t do all things?