Reply 60 of 107, by 386SX
Maybe XP might be remembered also for a nostalgic reason as one memorable period in computer market when pc was the common wanted main digital device. Some'd say computers sold well even later or lately but I suppose slowly more as an 'home furniture' for the average consumer once the portable devices became the new thing to have, not for the professional developer, cad designer, etc.. obviously. I imagine before the pandemic situation make people reconsider things like "smartworking"/"high-end gaming with RGB lights sport cars shaped chairs" and the marketing around reevaluated back the pc again a useful device, most ones were probably taking often dust somewhere in the house or at least much less used than in the past, once other portable devices replaced it for common tasks.
But XP as other previous o.s. became the latest version that just did what was expected to from a user point of view in a fast stable way. Then times added more and more sw services instead of being added on demand. A game might now run together with hundreds of background processes and online based app stores as only place to buy and even launch games (and not everyone might afford expensive internet contracts to download huge amount of installation data instead of just buying a single game on disks maybe later at discount prices).
Imho this evolution make old o.s. superior because a single sw/hw felt optimized to do its job in the simpler way and people might have decided or not which softwares or whatever needed. Similar subject was discussed when HL2 game was released with the online requirement, store launcher, remote data extraction, as something that before was never ever needed so felt just wrong when the game/disc was already bought from the store and expected just to be installed/launched like every other games always were.