It was, and so was Mac OSX. What Gruber doesn't seem to get is that warmed over unix provides a much more stable OS than Windows NT or DOS. He should be proudly admitting its warmed over unix.
Second: "It’s almost impossible to overstate just how wrong Bill Gates is here, but Isaacson presents Gates’s side as the truth."
It should be mentioned more clearly that Gates was saying this on a sales call - his ultimate goal being to have every consumer computer made running Windows NT. If he stretched the truth a bit, he shouldn't be blamed for being ignorant, only ambitious.
This is what often irks me about Gruber - he makes disagreeing with Apple out to be an act of incompetence. Most engineers that don't like Apple products simply want greater customization over their tech, something Apple denies their users to promote ease of use.