I'm not really convinced Metro was better than anything Apple at the time, even though it was refreshing and interesting. Was it actually easier to use? I didn't really find that nor see it with others.

I used Windows Phone, and it was great, minimal, intuitive, and prodcutive for most usecases I had (email, texting, calls, maps/navigation, banking, listening to music, light productivity, taxi). It did not fit the gimmicky ad ridden hellscape we live in now, I'm not sure how it got so far in Microsoft. Possibly from some old memories of living of selling products instead of creating addictions and selling data of the addicts.

Version 7 and 8 were great UX-wise, I have mixed memories about 10, mostly performance regressions bugged me, but was still faster than most non-flagship androids of the time... yet sometimes it felt sluggish to WP7 on potato hardware. The typography based UI was both fast and very readable and focused for well thought out apps. The standardized navigation buttons (on android button order may vary be vendor/model), and the clear gesture based navigation instead of hidden intearctions everywhere (long press, 3d press, app switching gestures etc), but using gestures for in-app navigaton were all easy to understand and grasp even by the elderly.

It was readable, well organized, nobullshit, but that is not what the masses crave. Metro was like how a "dumb smartphone" should be, in my opinion.

On desktop ot didn't work well. The live tiles were still a good idea, and if the taskbar supported them, it might have been a good idea (or not, was not tried, but could have be a bit like the old NeXT style refined, not stagnated and skeumorphized like on the mac).