[Jtsummers]

They did it before, and then unified it. The Win95 line had a distinct core compared to the NT line. It was unified under XP. XP had multiple editions (home, professional, a couple others). I no longer recall the major differences, but I think the big one was that professional supported corporate provisioning while Home did not (which meant if you were a nerd like me and had a home LDAP server Home couldn't use the login information from it, IIRC).

However, I don't recall the user interfaces being fundamentally different between those versions. And that's what they'd need now if they wanted a smartphonified desktop OS for the "average home user" (whatever that means) and the now over 25-year old interface for professionals.