so I was at microsoft until recently and I can say that almost everything on this list had nothing to do with the CEO change outside of him being on the earnings call and the exec changes.

at a company as large as microsoft and after the billg era of constant product reviews, most of these decisions were never "ballmer" decisions, they were made by the folks who run their divisions. e.g. changes to windows for the start menu in 8.1 update were made over a year ago and by folks working for terry myerson, not ballmer and definitely not nadella.