I have a theory about this: it's the inevitable outcome of Microsoft's technical culture. Their culture - across many products and many years [1] - has been one of making complicated things more complicated. What happened with Vista was that, responding to criticism about security flaws, they set about addressing the problem in their same old way... and the runaway complexity finally blew up. They've used all the tricks in the book (and then some) making machines to make machines to create fingers to plug the millions of holes in the dyke. Now they've run out of fingers, and even slathering on the glitz can't hide the Rube Goldberg nature of their monstrosity. It's becoming plain even to end users who've never known anything but Windows.
If this is correct, then the Vista fiasco isn't really about Vista; if it weren't that it would have been something else. It's about what eventually happens when you make complicated things more complicated. It's a Sorcerer's Apprentice story. What's amazing is that they were able to hold it up for so long.
I really don't know if that's correct, but if it is, then I'm glad it's happening. I don't like complicated designs or code and I spend a lot of time trying to make mine simple. Someone (Spolsky?) said that for years at Microsoft, "computer-sciencey" was a term of derision used to diss people like me - people who care about finding the simpler, more powerful idea, or the beautiful, most essential design. Watching this implosion (if that's what it is) is satisfying, and not only because of Schadenfreude. For one thing, it confirms several fundamental beliefs (such as that runaway complexity is unsustainable). For another, MS had a huge influence on the software development world, one which has been pernicious in this respect. They didn't just legitimize the idea of making complicated things more complicated, they standardized it. (Look at MSDN Magazine: a new flavor every month and yet they're all the same.) The Vista fiasco is going to have a number of long-term effects; perhaps one will be to lessen this influence, and increase that of technical cultures in which design is valued.
[1] When .NET came out, I was struck by how much simpler it was than the MS stack that preceded it, which was a hideous mess. I wondered whether they had taken a new turn; subsequently it became clear that they hadn't. The better-designed parts of .NET (C#, the core libraries, and the CLR) were an anomaly. Even the auxiliary parts of .NET were done the same old way, as has most subsequent stuff I've seen. I think what happened was that MS brought in some new, more competent people in the late 90s (the most prominent of whom was Hejlsberg). The stuff they built and/or influenced was better. But they didn't change the culture, nor could they have. And the culture always wins in the end.
That's just the side effect of the backwards compatibility which proved so successful throughout the 90s, not as a design or marketing goal I assure you.
There's a limit to how backward compatible you can be without stepping on the feet of the applications that came before while still pushing innovative new ideas.
I don't think this can be true, because the same culture is evident in their new technologies as in their upgrades. As I said, look at any issue of MSDN Magazine.
Perhaps because it's a company of that size.
A software idea can be built many ways and usually more than one of these will be "right". But the moment you have a group of people with equal control and conflicting "right" ideas, you end up with something quite decidedly "wrong".
Small core development teams, with one visionary produces better, more usable software. For me, I will always take a product that feels easier to use than one overstuffed with obscure features. Hence, I use a Mac as my primary machine (also flit between Debian and occasionally XP).
Worse: it took 43 people just to build the shutdown feature.
http://moishelettvin.blogspot.com/2006/11/windows-shutdown-c...
This article will tell you everything you ever needed to know about why Vista turned out the way it did.
These OS war threads are always overheated and people basically read what they want to read into your comments. Sorry for misunderstanding. I'm pretty done with this.
edit: I will say, though, the post re:linux also could be understood to point out the weakness of your argument in general, and not so much to claim that linux is better than both OS's.
"I just bought a new BlackBerry, it requires Outlook, how do I get it on my computer with Vista"
For her it turned into a 5 hour process to install an email client built by the same company. I would say this has a great deal to do with the usability of the underlying OS.