Vista Stumbled so 7 could Run
As the article pointed out, Vista and 7 aren't too different under the hood; I'm still impressed that if your system could run vista, there's a pretty good chance it would run 7, 8, and 10 just as well (and probably 11 in a very unofficial, unsupported way)
Vista had some odd design choices (The too noisy User Account Control popups, terrible file access performance Pre SP1, and a last minute sound re-rewrite pretty much breaking Creative's stranglehold on premium audio spring to mind), but with the rough edges smoothed off between NT 6.0 and NT 6.1, the solid design principles could shine through.
The biggest positive change I think was breaking the Windows-land user and developer assumption of having admin rights at all time.
Working in the XP Era, the normal workflow (Especially for programs with 9x lineage) was;
- Try running a program as a limited user
- It does not work
- call the support for the program
- get told running as a non administrator was not supported
- Sigh, curse, and try and trick the program into working in a Varity of different ways.
With user Account Control on by default (And viciously rabid in it's first iteration), this was no longer a sensible option, forcing many smaller software companies to get their house in order - It made things so much better for security in the long run.
I don't love Vista; I never did, but I appreciate what it did right, and allowed for it's successors to do better.