Because the Microsoft designers who make more than you and I have no idea of what style is. Take a look at Win 8, flat and square. Hell I could have designed that.

i have nothing against the design of windows8 i just dont like to have major changes in looks on every update they should be glad that people adapted to the funny look and went for it but changing these daily use items once again is just stupid ... 
and the navigation worse i now have to click 2 times to get a look into my spam folder thats horrible for a lazy person who always just did one click.
Sometimes i think they do this on purpose. 

One more thing when i press the windows key and Q for search i now get a major search- on win 8 i got onto start with the search opened
+ my seach field is now solid black it was blue before  

Microsoft is no help at all. Forget calling them.

Thanks Neil i updated this morning but uninstalled before installing win8,1
Got the newest build from Object desktop manager but still it was set to black for me i found out that i could change that by clicking start then using the charms bar to adjust then there will be extra color settings these seem to work seperately of decor8 

Neil did you find a way to have modern apps use chrome instead of the new internet explorer yet for me its opening links from the mail app in IE i would rather like to have them opened in chrome
 Edit: ok selecting chrome as standart once more will do just fine thought it would be more complicated than that

Also cool is that the 8.1 Enterprise eval is no longer the preview version today
AND
Visual Studio 2013 is out of beta today also.

Time to start making some RT apps.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/

http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/eng/visual-studio-2013

I finally got it upgraded and I'm soooo disappointed.  The "start button" just takes you to the "modern ui" page that I hate.  I don't see any significant difference between 8 and 8.1.  It looks like my kindle fire, which is great for a tablet and sucks for a desktop.

I promptly downloaded the trial for Start8 and love it!  I should have downloaded that a long time ago.  Live and learn.

Anyway, I'll now have the Win8 engine driving my machine and the intuitive interface of Start8.  I'm now a happy camper.   

I doubt that you will see RTM windows9 before 2015... I think your source got some wrong information it was planned before they started project Blue but it was delayed in schedule after... there was only a rumoured date for a RP nothing else.
Also i have to disagree, Microsoft has a good customer support,its true that most of them are not up to date on a fresh released OS or point release but let’s face it who can fix everything if there is such a vast variety of Hardware out there no system is the same you can only distinguish some factors of failure and try to make a right guess -like we all do..
After all they are Humans as well not quantum computers.
I do not blame them, since most of the time IF  something goes wrong on my system- iam the one to blame, since my system is modified like many others here.
And i think MS showed with 8.1 that they do care about their customers aswell as the success of the OS take a look at mail they have obviously listened, while they did not such a great job on the design but the functionality of the modern apps has been creased. Start can now be modified with walls colors and the tiles can be sized in groups… there is lots more...So sorry I do not agree with your post.

Well according to my news feeds, and the Redmond based company it self prerelease is slated to come out by February of 2014 I have done alot of research on this and all the news I can report are all in agreement on the dates of the prerelease !

I am not doubting you that very well could be i did not mean to ruffle so many feathers. i am just going on what i personally have encountered please don't take offense to my post i am sorry. I base alot of my decisions on the consumer reviews not the critics so all of your input is valuable to me , again i am sorry!

Nah....They'd lock me up in the looney bin in a heartbeat. 

The best example I can throw out is if you like the new Start interface that was introduced on windows8 than you benefit from quick access to a lot of information after the installation without adding anything.. Mail notification through the live modern apps. News, Bing reports, skype , Windows Messenger if you use it and Finance section.
 That’s pretty neat especially since you don’t have to open a single app and they all run on very very low resources.
The same can be achieved on windows7 of course with enough apps in autostart… But to me it seems like a bit more work to set it all up.
Windows8 is hibernating or comes with the option to Hybrid Boot -
Hybrid boot shuts down all logged user sessions but keeps the kernel hibernated the data will be then stored in the hyberfil.sys  that will be read on the new boot and  allows a faster boot.
Therefore you have a faster system start you can of course also activate a normal shutdown ( but I don’t see why someone would do that unless he is running a dualboot system) but currently with the new update 8.1 that will still cause chkdsk to run on a dualboot machine if you start windows7 this is a bit of a flaw and I haven´t found a workaround on this yet.
Windows8 has the new Start  interface that allows you to work with different apps at the same time but, without ModernMix that’s  pretty useless since most of us are used to work on the desktop and have our shortcuts on it.
So without ModernMix you will have to do extra clicks. Or MS would need to integrate something like it but too late
Windows8 comes with a Virtual machine… and so on… so it has some gimmicks no doubt… not sure if all of that is also on the standart win8 I run pro.

I bought windows8 on release and I only paid 35euros for it that’s the cheapest OS I’ve ever bought to date, would I buy it for the current price if I had windows7 ultimate ?`Hell NO… not after I got it for that cheap
The upgrades done are nice but the price is just too heavy if you already have a stable and good working OS to hand like Win7pro and up.
saying pro and up since the basic windows7 Starter is no OS in my eyes...

The shorter Boot time and the Multimedia based interface are neat But do not justify the current price I think.
If you get it with a new PC that’s fine but I would not pay 120USD or Euros for it especially since it will not include WMC…
If Stardock products would be included for a year I would reconsider … I have tried alternatives but most of them seem cheap and you will have close to no support or no support at all.

 hahaha