As a standard that the industry could consolidate around Windows has always been an unqualified success (up until now).
As a pure OS - looking at Windows just as a pure engineering achievment
it’s always been mediocre to poor. Whether you want to look at performance,
efficiency, security, reliability, advanced capabilities or other metrics,
it’s never been all that good.
Windows 8 is probably the same turd just polished up a bit with tiles.
Ultimately, the market I think has voted on the quality of the OS as an OS, and probably doesn’t care *that* much about tiles, no tiles, or whatever.
Windows is OK but it ain’t great - and I suspect the market is merely
reflecting that fact.
Nobody buys an OS for the OS. They buy the OS for the apps.