_They use this to show that “the commands that make up 84% of what users do in Explorer are now in one tab”. But the more important thing is that the remaining 50% of the bar is taken up by buttons that nobody will ever use, ever, even according to Microsoft’s own research._
This hits the nail on the head when discussing the UI decisions made. If Microsoft had included the top 10 commands in an organized manner, plus a few more from their data, it'd probably be fine.
There's a huge difference between have never used and will never use. Microsoft's data is about past usage; the article makes an unjustified extrapolation from that to future message. This extrapolation is particularly relevant when discussing a feature that largely serves to improve discoverability - if the features make sense together, putting them together and making them visible may help users get more out of the software.
It would be interesting to find out how many people say "I never knew the file manager could do that" when they fire up Windows 8, even when the feature has been there since NT4.
This hits the nail on the head when discussing the UI decisions made. If Microsoft had included the top 10 commands in an organized manner, plus a few more from their data, it'd probably be fine.