"... many people are resenting the coming retirement of the Start menu. ... I dont really understand the reasoning behind their objections."

From earlier in your article:

"A crowded desktop became the norm for most users, until the advent of the Start menu in Windows 95. ... Today, our desktops are a little like icon graveyards, with most functions accessed by a task bar, dock or a Start menu."

The Start screen is a return to those graveyards. You acknowledge the Start menu has replaced the unused desktop icon. If people have stopped using icons, why will they start using them again with Metro? Oh, wait; they don't have a choice. Metro is a return to the pre-Windows 95 desktop of cluttered, unused icons, a return that comes at the unnecessary expense of the Start menu. I'll eventually learn to use it, but I don't see myself preferring it to W7 or XP on desktop / laptop platforms.

There was a registry entry in the first Developer release to boot to the traditional desktop without going through Metro first. Apparently the number of people using it was so large that in the subsequent two beta releases, that backdoor was gone. MS, if so many people were unhappy with Metro, the solution isn't to jam the new GUI down their throats anyway. People expressed an preference for the alternative; take the hint. Allow a choice of GUI based on the hardware platform.