Imagine if Apple released the iOS device, but the UI responsiveness was like Android pre-jellybean.
Sure, Vista works (and had for many many people), but XP set a responsiveness standard that Vista did not meet - and to be honest there were real, major issues pre SP1 (file copy crawling while music playing was the most egregious).
Meanwhile, Apple was slowing getting better and better with OSX, and right around that time, the Linux-powered netbooks first hit the stage and were quite good for the time and price.
Thanks to DWM (the compositor) in Vista, if you had decent enough graphics card, it was way faster than XP. Most of the UI issues were either that the GFX card was crap or the classic theme was enabled.
Vista was from a technical point of view, like going from MacOS9 to OSX...
They introduced a new kernel transaction manager, entirely new audio subsystem, new scheduler, new network stack, SxS, UAC, new display driver model, entirely new graphics stack, new power management stack, new crypto API, a whole load of new fonts and a proper stable 64-bit environment.
Sure, Vista works (and had for many many people), but XP set a responsiveness standard that Vista did not meet - and to be honest there were real, major issues pre SP1 (file copy crawling while music playing was the most egregious).
Meanwhile, Apple was slowing getting better and better with OSX, and right around that time, the Linux-powered netbooks first hit the stage and were quite good for the time and price.