As usual I think that sentiment was retroactive, certainly once Vista came out. At launch, people hated the Fisher-Price look of the Luna default UI. Like, a lot. The switch to the NT based kernel for the home version of Windows also caused a shitton of people's hardware and peripherals not to work anymore because they needed new drivers and the manufacturers of said gadgets -- if they were still in business -- could not be arsed. Some of this could be alleviated by bullying that hardware's Windows 2000 drivers into working with XP. Some of it could not.

XP's stability was a wonder at the time. Not many people remember how unstable Windows 2000, ME, and ALL the predecessors were.

Win98 meant rebooting a minimum of four times a day.

Windows has its ups.

The only problem people should have with it is that it's on 70% of ALL desktops which is about half a billion too many.

A fair competition should be there. Linux, Mac and Windows should have around 33% market share in an ideal world.

You may count whatever Google is doing or Samsung/Huawei can do as separate in a dream world.