In my not so humble opinion I think the Microsoft people got so enamored and carried away with the smart phone craze that they thought all devices should emulate them and designed Win8 to fit that model. It appears that the ability to use a mouse was an afterthought to satisfy what they thought were dinosaurs and sooner or later we would all see the light and switch over to touch screens.
Well they were wrong and a lot of the public agrees with me. When sitting with my laptop or desktop computer the last thing I want to do is to have to reach out to touch the screen to cause things to happen.