Hi Susan,
it's a really interesting issue.
imho with apologies to anyone for the below, opinions are just that
Taking the larger view, seems to me the lack-of-return-on-escalating-complexity and the rapidly increasing onerous-big-brotherness of Windows in particular is creating an ever widening gulf between itself and Linux.
The assumption that everyone on the planet *must* have a Creators Update is as sweepingly problematic as its name.
The pendulum swings and the gap Windows is so busily creating will be filled by people responding to the very need for more simplicity it's generating.
Apple unashamedly sticks to it's own perceived space just as in the auto industry do many manufacturers. Purchasing such a computer/car brings with it the understanding of what it will and won't do - to most purchasers anyway - and they buy it on that basis even though they may hanker for more. As I do, being Mac first and foremost.
A lot of people also miss that
"Mac OS X is based on BSD UNIX, which is open source. Apple releases its open source fork of BSD as the Darwin operating system. The XNU kernel that Apple uses is its variant of the Mach kernel, which is an implementation of UNIX"
and is a lot more amenable to cross fertilisation with Linux than Windows will ever be. Things like node.js port and run on OSX without problems and Microsoft struggles with keeping up with that particular revolution because their OS and underlying structure is so totally different. MS is the odd kid on the block, not so much Apple.
Phil
PS. I know I have node.js on the brain and people probably puke when they see it but when it's principal add on web serving package named Express was actually downloaded 4,688,534 times in the last seven days...