Why do you have to click Start to shut down?

This goes to show the value of actually watching users when they sit down in front of your system. Even though 'Click Start to Shutdown' seems unintuitive to all of us programmers, the usability study showed that it's what people expected. You can't really fault the Windows designers for following the users existing mental model rather than trying to change it.

Is it really that unintuitive to click the start button to start the shutdown procedure?

I think that as tech people, we often forget that the vast majority of people that utilise tech are often less logically inclined than we are.<p>Or to put it another way, simplicity + attractiveness sells.<p>David Pogue did an interesting TED talk on this in 06 in which he made a quick stab at the start menu thing at about 10 minutes in. Linked below for reference.<p><a href="http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/david_pogue_says_simplicity_sells.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/david_pogue_says_simplici...</a>

I actually knew someone who could not figure out how to shut down their computer because it did not make sense to them to click "Start" to shut down.

Will the sequel explain why, on Macs, you drag disk icons to the trash can to eject them? That always made me think twice about what I was doing.

For what it's worth, the first time I used a Mac quite a few years ago it took me a good five or six minutes to figure out how to log off.

I think I just lost a little more faith in humanity. Thanks for that.