I remember some of the first reviews and/or thoughts about Windows 8, most of them being hopeful towards Metro as a much more complete UI in Windows 8. I expected to be able to use Windows 8 with its MetroUI for everything, without even having to switch to the desktop UI... Something like Gnome VS. KDE in Linux, just choose one at login and enjoy.
So I can understand what you're saying, because this somewhat feels like Vista VS. 7 all over again. Vista is a beautiful, sugar candy with cherry on top product, clean, polished, feature-rich and delightful to the eye, but its performance and stability was not good enough - Windows 7, on the other hand, works beautifully but looks ugly as hell, and has nothing near Vista's appeal - it's missing screensavers, Ultimate Extras, that sugar candy glossiness that Aero is supposed to be, instead looking flat and uninteresting... In my eyes both these products are, in their own ways, incomplete.
So now we have MetroUI VS. a redesigned desktop UI, both of with cannot possibly belong together, have completely different environments and looks, neither of which actually look good. The ribbon UI within Explorer is much too bulky to actually be useful, and with the details pane gone, browsing files for me is a small little nightmare. On the other hand, MetroUI is, again, flat, square, and uninteresting despite it's features (some of which are pretty cool).
On Windows 7 I could at least install third-party themes to make it look more decent and appealing to the eye, but double that effort for Windows 8 (assuming there will be a way to more or less heavily tweak the MetroUI interface at all)? No, thank you.