Re: Windows 9?
Windows 9 since 8 is clearly today's Vista.
It was always thus with Microsoft. You'd almost think they have a development strategy of alternating between pushing the envelope(*) and pissing people off and consolidation. Win8 was always going to be a bit of a lame duck. Win 9 should be pretty good.
MSDOS was the same. 3=good, 4=buggy, 5=good, 6=buggy. 2.0 would be exception to this rule but it was early days. Perhaps they hadn't formulated their strategy at that point.
(*)As far as MS can ever be said to have pushed the envelope.