I've always felt that Microsoft was a "grade-B" company that just happened to have the rights to the best all-around OS made to date.

Its really only the best OS because "almost everyone" making a PC type device used it -- so it stayed around and kept improving. However, Microsoft product-engineering is "second rate" (the individual engineers are outstanding -- its the leadership-problem to my mind).

So, maybe it was hard -- for them as a company. Or maybe, being grade-B, they just did not care to try to make the customer experience better until now. We all remember Vista and W8 "hiccups" -- anyone could have seen the issues coming but they didn't -- same company.

All merely Opinion, of course.