Whilst i lke W10 per se, i have to admit the recent big "update" or whatever you ŵant to call it, did not sit well with my system, and to such an extent i had to roll back.

The problem was with Winsock - it nuked the settings to such an extent i had to reset them each time i did a cold boot in oder to access the internet. This is a documented issue on the Windows 10 forums., so far no reaction from MS nor a solution AFAIA. (do a "Winsock" search on said forum).

It also changed my PC id so that AD2 had to be re-authorised. Yes i know this has already been reported, and its not a show stopper, merely frustrating. It should not have done that.

One major, one minor issue, but enough to want to stop any updztes except for Windows Defender.

Cheers,
Jerry

...no distinction between the window with the focus and the other windows...

 
Agreed. That can be disconcerting, especially if you have a black-background window against a plain black desktop.
 
As a developer, I've always had mixed feelings about shadows and "3D" effects. They look cool, but they serve no actual function and they take up valuable screen real-estate. In a busy window with a large number of controls, shadows and borders can account for hundreds of wasted pixels. That might not sound like much, but it can be the difference between having to use a tabbed form versus fitting everything onto one page.

The early UI developers recognized how effective depth cues were, and used it to great effect so that users knew exactly what can be interacted with, what not, where one thing ends and another starts etc. You see this in Windows 3.1.
 
Sonar uses depth cues a lot, and with control density as high as Sonar's, it would become extremely difficult and frustrating if all depth cues were removed. You can see how the fugly (flat & ugly) theme in Windows 10 affects control density by requiring large gaps between all controls. All we are looking at now is a collection of flat monochrome lines, circles and squares. The only way to see where one ends and another starts is to use enough space to separate them. Yes part of this is because MS thinks touch screens are the future (yea, just like 3D TVs are - I still have some of those cool giant 3D glasses somewhere, haven't used tem in ~3 years). So controls need to be spaced out far enough to allow fat finger control.
 
There is a good balance between using no depth cues and using too much of it (approaching skeuomorphism). MS grudgingly added back drop shadows in W8, first only to the window that has focus, then later to all windows. Why? Because they realized how important that was, even though it goes 100% against their "nothing that can in any way be construed as skeuomorphism whatsoever" goal. It helps a bit, but that gets us to about 5% of where Windows 7 is. Making title bars colored gets us another 3%, so now we are at 8%. Still need to go 92% of the way.
 
Add to this that things like the sizing cursor's hit area is now outside the window (!!) due to the thin border, making it hard to resize the correct window when there are many windows in close proximity.
 
Honestly, they should not have let the interns design the W8/W10 UI. It shows that whoever did it had no clue and though it would be OK to put a non-windowed phone UI on a highly windowed environment.
 
Please let's just bring back the real UI designers, they seemed to understand this kind of stuff.

Flatness was introduced in Windows 8. I have gotten used to it and I agree with Bitflipper that there is a lot a waste in the shadows that isn't necessary if you have contrast between windows. I have customized my display to the point where it looks good and is also efficient.

If you don't embrace W-10 you will wake up one day with a hairdo like this:

 
You will be wearing this:

 
and driving this:

 
YMMV...
 
W-10, for me... a reboot fixes almost anything. Strange but true.
J

Adding depth cues doesn't waste any extra space since the depth cues are part of the control's background, not foreground. Since you need to draw the background regardless, it requires no extra pixels. By creating subtle curved edges, your brain will immediately interpret it as something that stands out and can therefore be interacted with. We lost all of that due to designers that failed UI Design 101.
 
On the other hand, if you don't add depth cues, you will be required to use extra spacing between controls since there is no other good way to visually separate them other than extra space. Imagine Sonar with all flat controls. It will be painful to use and the controls would need to be spaced further apart.
 
 

jbow
... a reboot fixes almost anything. Strange but true.

True since Windows Version 1.0...
 
Which also had a flat interface. When they went to a 3D look later on it was "new and improved" Now we are back to flat and it is still "new and improved"

W7 - set it and forget it.  W10- you set it and update f... it.  I have having to redo settings in W10. 
BTW the dark task bar is annoying.

Windows 10 and Sonar Professional are working fine for me.
(I always cleanly install the latest Windows 10 build from the ISO though.)

The latest update just landed here, so I let it through on one of my laptops, all seems fine. As to the aesthetics and getting ride of that flat white look, (which the update undone what I had done and put me back to the flat white look) while the new options pretty achieve the same outcome as the way I used to achieved it, it does add a couple of extra refinements to the look, which is great, and having it available via the GUI is always a plus. I'll run it on this laptop for a day or 2 more, then if all is well, and I have no reason to think otherwise, I'll let it through to my other 2 laptops and Desktop, and then if all is still well then I'll think about letting it through to my 2 DAW machines. All in all I think Microsoft has and is doing a fine job with Windows 10.