actually they did both just not exactly so by metro taskbar i guess you would imagine thumbnails or pictures (of sort) and not icons this was done in pre-alpha versions of windows 7, even before they did "superbar" the giant icons were thumbnails in some prototypes as for metro desktop to be active desktop of sort, not exactly so but they did have phodeo built into explorer in vista alphas which basically made moving file objects (icons/thumbs) (yes in 3D) while (in build 4066) you had aurora animation moving in background MS had many great ideas in past, even that date back to pre-NT 4 but at the end they are enterprises company and not home-user oriented (this is where apple wins)