Another way of interpreting this would be "Microsoft wants to get out of your way, it wants to be a (ubiquitous) platform so you can focus on what you're actually trying to do rather than on your OS or your device." Doesn't sound that awful to me.
They do make it reasonably pleasant to run Windows as a non-admin user though, and not the impossibility that was in XP.
Unobtrusiveness FTW!
That said, it's seriously lacking intent. Being everything to all people, all wrapped up in a single 'strategy' isn't necessarily going to solve the problems related to designing and building great software.