It seems to imply that expertise-driven design gave us Vista and Win7 while the data-driven one gave us Win8, Win10, and Win11. It's notable that, from this list, Win7 seems to be the only one that people genuinely liked.
Define "people". Tech people, people/customers in general, some other group such as shareholders? Both your point and the point your responding to could be true at the same time both anecdotally and/or in the data. Anecdotes are probably just another form of "expert opinions"
It's entirely an anecdote, but from my experience, Win7 was broadly accepted as a good iteration among techies and non-techies both.
As a software engineer, I actually find a lot more to be excited about in Win10+ thanks to WSL and other such things. But I don't hear my acquaintances who are non-techies being positive about anything from Win8 on.