Not all of us are gamers, use their computers as music stations, or worship the Apple God.
I use my desktop for basic computer functions and applications, and XP fitted the bill. IMO, it was the best OS Microsoft has ever developed.
That's fine that Microsoft is developing new OSs, but XP should have been sold as a second-tier or budget OS.
True enough, but the big problem with XP was always that it was a single-user mostly non-networtked OS with a decade's worth of bolt-ons and duct tape that would hold the whole mess together for a while, but ultimately was undermined by the fundamental weakness of the structure underneath it all.
I'm not a gamer either, nor do I personally own any apple products with the exception of a hand-me-down iphone 4, twice removed from its original owner.
I use computers to get jobs done, and occasionally to learn with. I want something designed to be multi-user from the ground up because we have more folks here than just me. I also want the OS to not get in the way or self destuct on me over time. For me, the answer has been Linux. Some folks are apparently willing to accept the headaches and hassles of running windows, (i.e., registry cleanters, virus scanners, malware scanners, having to reload every year to keep any kind of appreciable performance), I'm not.
I've used many different kind of computers, and have supported everything from IBM mainframes, to HP and DEC minicomputers, to small LANs of workstations. I have a lot of experience with different types of compters, and how they work and manage information. My rather lengthy experince with XP is that it's "OK", but a kludge. Using a "registry" the way that Microsoft does is pretty much broken as far as I'm concerned, for many reasons. People forget how utterly bad it was when it first came out. Most folks don't remember that it was pretty unusable until SP2.
However, because it was around long enough, and eventually became stable enough for most people who didn't know any better, it became familiar. It is the familiarity that people are so attached to IMO.
Personally, I'll never own a microsoft operating system untll two things happen.
1) a file should not be executable based on it's name.
2) the registry really has to go.
My 2 cents. YMMV