My main issue with MS is that when I do basic stuff on the mac (new camera/phone/mouse etc.) it just works - but for MS based OSes it is install x, plug in y etc.
The main problem is that M$ has pretty poor checking and procedures about how hardware drivers etc. are written. It doesn't check the quality of them, people who write Windows drivers are lazy and that causes all sorts of funky sh**e, the most common of the severe is poking memory which it shouldn't, causing blue screens of all sorts. This is one biggie as to why Vista failed, apart from all the other UI annoyances (e.g. UAC, which is basically a more annoying version of Linux's/UNIX's sudo command).
I guess the blame really goes on the vendors for writing lousy drivers with several programming faults (some of these faults are also responsible for security exploits), but since Windows is the front-end to all of this, then of course the M$ OS is always to blame.
Macs (or Apple) support less hardware than PCs, but inevitably do a better job ensuring that the hardware does talk to the Mac better and without many problems.
Linux is also getting that way mainly because the freelancers that write the drivers do a good job at it. Hence hardware "just works". The cheese is when you have hardware that isn't supported and you either have to apply a similar driver that provides some compatibility, or you have to write your own driver (and the latter is never fun).
I just want things to work and it finally seems that MS is beginning to understand that.
I don't think M$ will ever achieve "just works" status until hardware vendors write better drivers and software developers write programs that actually start neatly and clean up after themselves.
Basically, almost every program for Windows was written by an idiot; at best, it was written by the lowest bidder. Almost every program written for MacOS or Linux was written by someone that actually has a brain. I'm not joking.
But FWIW, most people are buying notebooks these days. In these cases, no matter if the OS is Mac, Windows or Linux, all the drivers for the hardware is there and set up properly. So all the user has to worry about are peripheral devices - digital cameras, printers, mice, USB drives, etc. Most of these under Windows work fine, except for perhaps printers, which continue to sport ill-written drivers and software.