These arguments seem to largely revolve around the significance of versioning. Ie. "is it really 8, is it a new product?"
It seems that versioning as a method of driving sales of new copies of windows hasnt really worked since windows 98, as every iteration since has required a hardware upgrade to use.
And when you buy a new computer it tends to include a licence for windows, and at least in the last few years PC sellers even tend to be very slow to include new versions of windows on new pcs (for example, dell still advertise models with XP included, an OS which is over 10 years old at this stage), so there's evidence for the argument that new releases of windows have a negative effect on sales.
>"There isn’t much Steve Ballmer has created at Microsoft, at least not as far as the consumer sees it."
Microsoft is not primarily consumer oriented company.
To understand where Microsoft's focus lies, one must remember three things...