How to disable top bar for closing apps in windows 8.1 update 1?

And I apologise but, I cannot follow or make any sense out of this...

"when I press the start button on a Windows 7 Citrix machine I end up pressing the Windows 8 home screen button!"

 Or what it has to do w/ your comments regarding the APP control bar.  Possibly you could/would try to better explain what you have said.  Please & thank you.

Drew, I believe that he added a general comment about an issue in Win8 that applies to the Remote Desktop conversation in this thread. Once you develop the muscle memory to go to the lower left hand corner to activate the start screen, you tend to do that all the time. In a remote environment like Citrix or RD, that is a liability. You are constantly accessing the local computer instead of the remote computer.

To be fair, the only reason we developed this muscle memory was because MS decided to remove the Start Button completely in Win8. RD in Win 8 was truly a nightmare with a mouse because it was next to impossible to activate an invisible button by going quickly to the lower left hand corner of a floating window.

In regards to your comment about you can't please everyone, I think you need to look at how MS usually handled things in the past. They used to have a phased migration, with options to revert to previous behavior. Those options would eventually be phased out as users got used to the new way of doing things. Now, MS is on such a rapid release cycle that just when we start developing the muscle memory for the new way of doing things, they change it on us. I am trying to adapt to moving target, but I have to get work done. Unfortunately for every frustrating change, I get 2 or 3 useful new features, so upgrading is a must.

Sometimes we just need to vent. If you can't provide a positive solution, why criticize those giving feedback? Maybe if we yell enough, maybe MS will hear us and give us more options to work more efficiently. If we didn't speak up, we would have ended up with a Windows 8.1 without a Start Button, which again is a nightmare for Remote Desktop.

We might be a small minority, but we tend to be decision makers in the companies we work for.

This is ridiculous. Every time I try to close something in Citrix I end up closing Citrix itself! And when I press the start button on a Windows 7 Citrix machine I end up pressing the Windows 8 home screen button! This black bar is awful! Let us turn it OFF!!

And I apologise but, I cannot follow or make any sense out of this...

"when I press the start button on a Windows 7 Citrix machine I end up pressing the Windows 8 home screen button!"

 Or what it has to do w/ your comments regarding the APP control bar.  Possibly you could/would try to better explain what you have said.  Please & thank you.

Cheers,

Drew

This is ridiculous. Every time I try to close something in Citrix I end up closing Citrix itself! And when I press the start button on a Windows 7 Citrix machine I end up pressing the Windows 8 home screen button! This black bar is awful! Let us turn it OFF!!

Interesting... the fitting expression is, "Can't please everyone all the time"... if ever @ all.

This was given to people wanting an 'easier', more familiar, more conventional, way to close & manage Store APPs, especially, keyboard/mouse Folks.  It is, also, cool when combined w/ the ability to Pin Store APPs to the Taskbar.

No, it cannot be turned off but, one cannot please everyone all the time... if ever @ all... even when you give them what they asked to have.

Cheers,

Drew

This is ridiculous. Every time I try to close something in Citrix I end up closing Citrix itself! And when I press the start button on a Windows 7 Citrix machine I end up pressing the Windows 8 home screen button! This black bar is awful! Let us turn it OFF!!

In a nutshell...  It should be a configurable option... comes down to taste, like the color of the screen.  I don't intend to demonstrate to 200 residence how to use the new windows interface... although it didn't take them long to discover I hadn't protected the password from being changed....  The 21" screen is what they need to see what is written there. It is what they had before, and a down grade would just be another reason for beheading management.