I think what most of us hate him for is going the MS route rather than making Android phones. Nokia used to make great phones, but with sub-par OS. Why not combine the best of both worlds?
Now that Apple has solved the "I want a big screen" problem, I think those people will run back to iOS.
I'm sure Elop thought MS was going to put some more effort behind WP. They got a lot of things right, but not the UI and certainly not the marketing.
For what it's worth, I've been using WP for about 3 years now. It's performance is underrated, but Metro went too far as a flat UI.