To be fair, Balmer's mantra was always "developers, developers, developers, developers". You can shit all you want on Windows (and rightfully so), but they have bent over backwards for compatibility for more than a decade. Though portions of its libraries are always moving (I am actually having fun right now with a break in their USB-handling code), at its core, Windows' ABI has stayed constant. So the same .exe file that you got for your crusty old XP computer should (in theory) still work on your brand-spanking new W8.1 machine.

This isn't always the case when the developers don't use the DirectX API correctly, or start mixing image libraries to hack together a customization, but for the most part, they far outstrip their biggest competitor, OS X, where support for PPC was entirely dropped after a major release and the value of shiny apps outstripped the value of decade old apps.

Now, this has come to bite them in the butt, as "supporting the developers" has also come to include having a functional app store and a sane package manager, and retina-enabled GUIs are a hell of a lot more enjoyable than...