I don't think they particularly have screwed up. Sure, removing the start button was a bad idea, but it's been blown way out of proportion. It was pretty obvi

I don't think they particularly have screwed up. Sure, removing the start button was a bad idea, but it's been blown way out of proportion. It was pretty obvious that the media and a lot of users were going to hate Windows 8 regardless of how good or bad it was, so Microsoft have to just keep pushing with the marketingspeak/bullshit. To "admit failure" would be to play into the hands of those trying to paint Windows 8 (completely unfairly) as New Coke. That being said, why not move to Linux now? Ubuntu and many other distributions are already excellent desktop environments and are great for programming. What sort of work are you doing? You're probably either stuck in Windows, or you may as well move now.