Memory lane: before everyone loved Windows XP, they hated it

Apart from the absurd new theme with big, squishy looking buttons, something you could turn off in a few clicks, it was a considerable improvement over Windows 2000.

At the time, there really was nothing better than Windows XP.

Linux for the desktop was still a mirage on the horizon, Apple was still shipping a clunky, barely coherent MacOS 9, and other vendors were lost in space. Solaris? SCO? SGI? Hardly improved in half a decade when it came to use as a general-purpose workstation.

It took Apple nearly three years to catch up to Windows XP with a workable version of OS X, with 10.3 being their first solid release with a full suite of applications.

It's amazing how Microsoft could produce such a popular operating system and then completely fail to capitalize on this success in any meaningful way over the next decade.

Windows 8.1, theming aside, is barely any different from Windows 7, which is arguably not all that different from Windows XP.

By comparison, Apple's gone from MacOS 9 to OS X (PPC) to OS X IA32, to OS X Intel x64 and through all that hardly anyone's noticed. Windows 64-bit, while a thing, looks like an enormous hack based on how disorganized it is internally, like now how it has two sets of "Program Files".

Though is it even possible for the conditions to be right for another "Windows XP" moment for Microsoft?

I remember picking the classic mode under control panel settings to find things where I was used to finding them. But the blue screen of death was occurring far less frequently which was a big relief.