I never understood the decision to stop shipping an os every 2 years between xp and 7. hindsight is 20/20 and all, but i was critical back then as well. Service pack 1 should have been a (cheap) paid release with whatever features they could scrape together.

The net effect seems to be, a big fraction of customers are just completely entrenched in XP and have lost the ability to upgrade. If they can't pay to get up to date, what would they be willing to pay for? Are those customers MS wants? There's a market there, but it's a tight fisted one.

Not releasing often enough seems like healthy for business criticism. At least some of those upgrades can be paid. It keeps customers in the upgrade habit. It keeps infrastructure nimble.

Releasing to slow means fossilization. That might be good for some aspects of business, it's cheaper. But again, less money to be had there.