[ajtjp]

"massive chunks of the OS were updated in Vista that took years to debug and smooth out to what is now Windows 10"

This is key, and also shows why, at least at release, the technical failures of Vista were what drove its commercial failure.

Part of it was the jump in specs - the infamous Intel chipsets that were Windows Vista certified, but couldn't run Aero, and in general the huge boost in requirements from XP.

Part of it was changes with in the OS, such as protecting the Program Files folder(s), and Vista's Shadow Copy system, which wrecked havoc with programs that stored user-modifiable configuration files (and more) in their install directory. Yes, Microsoft had been recommending against that for awhile, but it still broke a lot.

But as much of it was ecosystem readiness due to changes to changes to the driver model. There was some support for XP drivers, but it was still painful. I used Vista without service packs. It was bad, bad enough that I switched back to XP. Let's just say there's a reason that I didn't buy another nVIDIA graphics card for another decade.