,cbae wrote

Opaque window chrome and sharp corners existed before Metro or even Aero, so I don't see how it's "a mashing of two approaches".

Oh I know they've existed before - the "Designed by T-Square" signature look of Windows is well known, which they finally started to deviate from slightly in Vista and Win7, which is their most polished GUI IMO.  Going back to a very angular-approach to design to me signals that they're heading in the direction of Metro, but you're right in that it's largely speculation on my part.  That screenshot of Explorer just looks very..."retro" though, and not in a good way.

The flat look works well with the ribbon because none of the ribbon buttons have the fake shading or gloss. They're flat too. What doesn't work are the minimize, maximize, and close buttons. They still look raised and out of place.

Plus they're huge - they look like they're been taken from a higher DPI setting.

Plus, the blue border on the right sight of the close button looks hideous. Those buttons should be either pushed all the way to the right or nudged down a little so that there's a border above the buttons too.

That would help to clean things up somewhat, but my hope was that we would see far more Metro-inspired Aero than this - I'd rather they just leave Aero alone if they're going to take this approach.

What did you think about the concept screenshots however?