> When Windows ME and Windows Vista came out, people hated them even more than they usually hated Windows, so they did not use them. Microsoft was forced to respond by making a not-quite-as-bad OS in Windows XP
This timeline doesn't seem to make sense, as Windows XP came out in 2001, and Windows Vista in 2006-2007. Maybe you are referring to Service Pack 3 in 2008?
Reactions to Windows ME forced MS to respond with XP; reactions to Vista forced them to respond with 7. They're being stated in parallel rather than chronologically.
Your quote is missing the end, required for it to make sense (irrelevant parts omitted):
> When Windows ME and Windows Vista came out [...]. Microsoft was forced to respond by making [...] Windows XP and [...] Windows 7 respectively.
It's basically from ME and Vista to XP and 7, respectively. AFAIK respectively in this context means that for ME, they were forced to respond with XP, and for Vista, they were forced to respond with 7.
Yes, this is what I meant.
Also to respond generally to other posts. I am aware of the the separation between NT and 9x. That was Microsoft's problem and not the customers' problem. They could not force people onto ME and had to actually appeal to customers with XP. Then later on, they could not force people onto Vista and had to actually appeal to customers with 7.
Automatic updates remove the step where they have to appeal to anybody.
And I don't mean to single out MS. I remember having a Mac and switching from some version of OS9 back to 8.6 for some reason (don't recall why, but it doesn't matter because it was my computer so it was my decision). Nowadays people are complaining about Liquid Glass and they cannot rollback their OS on their iDevices.
Indeed it makes no sense at all, because Windows 2000 even came out before Windows ME.