As Microsoft has expressed, Aero is "cheesy."

Despite nostalgia, it was stripped in pursuit of a mobile-friendly UI (at the time).

'...calling the UI that debuted in Vista and continued in Windows 7, “cheesy” and “dated.”'

https://www.computerworld.com/article/1437474/microsoft-dump...

All Windows UIs will die, on Microsoft's time, not the user community.

Yes "cheesy" and "dated" because new Windows version was about to be released in 3 months from publication of that article. So marketing machine portraying everything old as bad and everything new as better was running full speed.

In the end we all know how "well" W8 was received due to Metro components. Slightly modified Aero theme was still there, all resource files like icons, graphics were largely carried in. Aesthetically and visually that version of Windows was like 5-year old would made a papier mache operating system of two different products.