Windows 8 vs. shit: a comparative analysis

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Like, presumably, most anyone else who has recently acquired a new laptop or desktop computer and isn't a Mac user, this afternoon I found myself typing the words "Windows 8 is shit" hopefully into Google. I say hopefully: I suppose I just wanted confirmation that I wasn't suffering from some sort of odd cognitive malfunction. As it turned out, a little over 38 million people have so far agreed with me, and that's counting only the ones who were able to express their views publicly on the Net by the cunning stratagem of using their old computer to get a connection and open a browser. Because if you have just acquired a computer with Windows 8 installed, you won't be able to do either of those things on that new computer. In fact, you won't be able to do anything at all on it, other than stare impotently at a screen filled with rectangles ("tiles") allegedly depicting "apps", and all of them carefully selected on the basis of their utter uselessness to you as a human being (unless you are fleetingly fascinated by the temperature and climate conditions in a city in another hemisphere, or are naïve enough to suppose that Mah Jong is something that can be played on a computer screen). After, say, an hour or so, you may have discovered by accident that dragging the mouse pointer to the top right of the screen makes some shadowy icons appear, one or two of which might be considered mildly (if indirectly) relevant to the situation, if only they would stay visible long enough for you to actually use them. I will not tell you the name by which Microsoft wishes these shadowy and elusive icons to be known, simply because I do not wish you to spend the next ten minutes stamping around your living room in circles with legs akimbo, one finger shoved up your left nostril and the other tracing cabbalistic signs in the air, while your throat emits low, guttural, choking cries of anguish. This is not my intention. Rather, it is to question whether the phrase "Windows 8 is shit" is fair to shit. Personally, I'm beginning to think it isn't. The more I reflect on the question, the more it seems to me that, given the straight choice between Windows 8 and shit, any sensible person would be bound to prefer the latter. The following are some of the reasons why I believe this to be the case.

1) Shit does not ask or expect you to tap, stroke, pinch or "swipe" it. Windows 8 does. In fact, Windows 8 reminds me of nothing so much as a female cat on heat. You know the way it sort of rubs up against your leg or tries to stick its arse in your face or wants you to calm it down with the toe of your shoe. Windows 8 is like that. All that useless stuff on the screen that you didn't want is just there begging to be tapped or stroked. It responds to "stroking" by a kind of ecstatic shiver that accomplishes nothing at all. Which is fine if you're a tappy, strokey sort of person and you have a touch screen and lots of free time and a generous disposition. I do and I don't and I'm not. I'm the sort of person touch screens were designed to vex and frustrate. By now I suppose it's common knowledge that touch screens were the invention of a group of women who had been forced to practise Beethoven sonatas on the piano as children (and who knew the fable of the fox and the stork). As revenge for being expected to have hands that could play major tenths, they decided to invent a user interface that required exquisitely thin fingers with fine, tapered tips. An interface no Beethoven (and very few adult males in fact) could possibly navigate with any degree of success. Well, Windows 8 is designed with that demographic in mind: the thin-fingered community. You can use a mouse with it, but if you do, it sulks. Shit is far more tolerant and grown-up in at least this regard.

2)

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