Things like moving files around directories is black magic to them. Directories are black magic to them. The problem I see with this solution is two-fold:

1. The people who understand this stuff will be comfortable using context menus.

2. The people who don't understand this stuff will be just a stymied by the "move to" being in the ribbon versus being in a never-seen context menu.

However, what I would imagine MS is hoping with this is that the people in category two will gradually slide up to category one (well, more like 1a) because these things are in their face all the time.

Microsoft's solution is more akin to the way animal researchers teach apes to recognize arbitrary symbols. It's a subtle and pernicious form of vendor "lock in", because when you try to move those users away from their comfort zone in Outlook or Windows Explorer, they feel lost.

Personally, I think Microsoft and "people who can't be bothered to learn their tools" deserve each other.

The actual user story is always: find what I'm looking for. Google got it right with GMail and informal searching - screw manual organization. Power users should be able to set up structures, but typical computer folks don't need that.

For me, the problem with the ribbon has been (the times I tried to use Office 2010) that there are some more "advanced" commands (like, inserting a cross-reference to a Figure or Table) which became quite hidden away in the Ribbon. Specially, since in the old toolbar mode, I could add buttons to the actions I used most (I actually have a button for text-to-columns in Excel, or to bring the "insert cross reference" in Word, among others).

From my experience, the ribbon does not give you that ability.

Actually, every time I have to use the ribbon (my institute's laptop has office 2010) I start imaging an addon which "learns" what are the most used commands and configures the "Home" (or another) ribbon tab showing icons to access those commands. Surely, someone must have already thought of that no?

Also, do you realize that the Ribbon is customizable in Office 2010, in the same way toolbars were customizable in Office pre-2007?

This is similar to what MS did with pulldown menus in the pre-Ribbon days. It sounds like a great idea but it turns out to be a terrible one in practice. During the critical "newbie" phase, as a user begins to work with the program, the UI never seems to look the same twice. Tasks that should become reflexive never lose their dependence on the brain. At the same time, more advanced users are left wondering what interesting features they might be missing.

You really, really do not want a UI that changes behind your back, or in ways that aren't explicitly commanded. Resorting to discrete novice / expert modes is a venial sin in UI design, but "personalized menus" is a mortal one. It's about the worst thing you can do, and IMO there's no reason to think it would be any better in a ribbon-oriented model than in a menu-driven one.

(Edit: I do agree that restricting the adaptive menu scheme to a specific ribbon tab might be a more promising approach than monkeying with the structure and layout of the standard tabs.)

Tons of people struggle with things as simple as sending emails, or adding music.

Because of users like this, Microsoft is where it is. Any big revamp, and they'll just get millions of confused customers who suddenly can't make sense of the most basic functionality. It is Microsoft's own doing that they made their users get used to interfaces like this, but it's not as easy as just scraping it and throwing up something new.

It's also easy to forget that Windows has a userbase 10 times its nearest competitor (which is to say this brings in challenges which competitors might not face).

Jesus, the amount of Microsoft-bashing in on this article is insane.