People tend to forget there were many players out there back in the day. Amoga was so far ahead in 'multimedia' infront of Pc and Mac that it's not even comparable until 486 era. Not to mention SGI and Sun machines. Pretending that Mac was some kind of single origin of everything or Pc being a toure de force is just wrong.

As Microsoft surpassed Apple and of course Amiga to become the absolute necessity of practicality that they are today, I don't think they cared as much about what the "cool kids" wanted.

I think it's apparent and I am thankful that Microsoft didn't copy Apple's UI and instead went with a much more practical and utilitarian approach than Apple. This along with Microsoft's business model obviously works better for the mass market and has stood the test of time whereas Apple has capitulated many times both on their UI principles and on their business model.