Windows 95 was the last operating system that Microsoft dedicated massive resources to human-computer interaction research (user interface design, etc.) That's what makes it so fascinating all these years later, particularly the early betas where things were dramatically changed from one build to the next.
Someone thought they could get away with that on Windows 8... without the expensive research part, AND cram a touch interface into it. As expected, users are balking. Instead of management burning money on all that advertising, they should have spent it on the research! This was General Motors' downfall, hopefully it doesn't take Microsoft down too. The full screen Metro apps also destroy the concept of multitasking (wasn't that the whole point of having windows?). There is a 3rd party utility from StarDock called ModernMix which window the apps AND adds a close button to those windows. What a concept! Right now to close a Metro app, you have to press Alt-F4.
Yes, Windows 95 was pretty lousy, but it was a big compromise. Microsoft maintained backward compatibility with 16-bit apps AND drivers for the most part, and had to support a crap ton of hardware from various vendors. Consolidation in the PC hardware market and of various hardware standards since then has made their life easier.
Windows 2000 was their perfect OS. It was the first OS released that was built on the stable NT core, and supported all the hardware and Win32 API advancements from the past SEVEN years (full DirectX, power management, USB, hot swap/PnP to name some). NT 4.0 really was a circa 1993 OS with a pretty 1995 UI tacked on. In a way, OS/2 had the same problem. Even OS/2 4.52 (MCP2) had that "viva le 1993" vibe to it and MMOS/2 was still a half assed separate install when it should have been integrated into the OS a long time ago.