>The lack of a start button/desktop is not a usability issue in and of itself
Tell that to non-technical users who have trouble remembering to use the start button when it's staring them in the face, they need that visual cue at the very least.
You're right that there should be some sort of affordance to access programs.
What I meant was that the problem isn't that there's no `start` menu - it's that there's no consistent, intuitive, and quick way to access any program (along with having to switch UI's between desktop and metro, and a lot of other things) which are problems that the start menu originally solved.
>Tell that to non-technical users who have trouble remembering to use the start button when it's staring them in the face, they need that visual cue at the very least.
Which is exactly why the damn thing was useless to begin with.
Tell that to non-technical users who have trouble remembering to use the start button when it's staring them in the face, they need that visual cue at the very least.