Nothing like looking back and comparing what was promised to replace windows 95...and what we have now...we still don’t have everything.
To be fair, Win95/98/ME and WinNT/2K/Vista are completely different OS’s under the covers...
When MSFT decided to end the 95/98/ME product line, everyone perceived a huge increase in the bloat and complexity of Windows - because there in fact was a huge increase in the complexity under the GUI. So there was no getting around that.
The mistake MSFT made was trying to make the GUI appear to “be” the OS and branding the GUI relentlessly as “the OS” to customers. As a result, the customers have (on average) little to no appreciation for the huge increase in functionality under the GUI. MSFT makes each new release do a whole lot more things, especially in what they’re providing for 3rd party app developers, but the end consumer continues to just see gratuitous GUI changes - that can be undone with a simple system setting to make the system look just like Win98 or thereabouts.
There’s some things MSFT has done pretty well, but the planning of the long-term future of their flagship product... hasn’t been one of them.
parsifal just posted an excellent summary of what I’m talking about - the jaded “it is better because it looks different” reception by customers.
That’s MSFT’s failing, not the customers’. They make these huge, sweeping and largely gratuitous changes to the GUI, confusing users to a point where MSFT has to put in a “give me back my old GUI!” knob in the system. Click that box, poof the system reverts and you’re left with the following, unshakable feeling:
“I’ve been gypped.”