> interface design has moved foward in huge strides in the last decades, learning from mistakes
Windows's UI has changed little in two decades, and some of the changes have actually made things worse.
Windows 95 was the first and the last Windows version where Microsoft poured millions into making a super-accessible, usable and intuitive user interface based on actual user studies, and it showed.
Windows 98 brought totally-not-product-bundling "web integration" to try and convince the US Government that Internet Explorer was a feature, not a product. This is where the scourge of Active Desktop, HTML Help, the bloated 98+ shell and other things came from. The change in Windows Explorer paradigm might have been good, but it was also a "web integration" change and Microsoft's own research from 95 showed that the 95 model was the most intuitive, so I doubt the change would have helped usability.
ME/2000 (the desktop was the same) changed very little UI-wise. They gave things a nicer coat of paint, though.
XP added the Luna theme and a second column to the start menu. Vista made everything glossy and added search to the start menu. 7 reorganised the taskbar. These were improvements overall.
Windows 8 came along and added an entirely new desktop environment and very poorly connected it to the existing one, creating a frankenstein UI.
Windows 10 now fixes a little of the Windows 8 mess, but it's still a mess. There's several different popup menu styles. There's multiple scroll bar styles.
And in Windows 10 there is still different tab styles, even on the same page (go to Explorer's options/preferences dialog and note how the first tab is themed and the second tab page IS NOT themed).
MMC has different icons to Windows Explorer. Different parts of the tree view in Windows Explorer have different icons for other parts of it.
Windows's UI has changed little in two decades, and some of the changes have actually made things worse.
Windows 95 was the first and the last Windows version where Microsoft poured millions into making a super-accessible, usable and intuitive user interface based on actual user studies, and it showed.
Windows 98 brought totally-not-product-bundling "web integration" to try and convince the US Government that Internet Explorer was a feature, not a product. This is where the scourge of Active Desktop, HTML Help, the bloated 98+ shell and other things came from. The change in Windows Explorer paradigm might have been good, but it was also a "web integration" change and Microsoft's own research from 95 showed that the 95 model was the most intuitive, so I doubt the change would have helped usability.
ME/2000 (the desktop was the same) changed very little UI-wise. They gave things a nicer coat of paint, though.
XP added the Luna theme and a second column to the start menu. Vista made everything glossy and added search to the start menu. 7 reorganised the taskbar. These were improvements overall.
Windows 8 came along and added an entirely new desktop environment and very poorly connected it to the existing one, creating a frankenstein UI.
Windows 10 now fixes a little of the Windows 8 mess, but it's still a mess. There's several different popup menu styles. There's multiple scroll bar styles.