No, I've never been accused of being afraid of being in the same room as an opinion!
Actually, the better comparison would have been between W8 and Vista. Both were great kernels with crippled GUIs. In fact, the Windows 7 everybody likes is the exact same kernel as Vista. They even share the same Windows version number. The way to go is toward customer choice with multiple GUIs. Those who think cell phones are good enough could have them and those of us who use the capabilities of actual computers could have our way too.
Here's the killer app. This, properly executed, is the eulogy for the late, great Microsloth. Whether it actually GETS properly executed is another thing but the promotional video is inspired. It's as if they said "instead of crippling all the computers to make them into cell phones and trying to sell that, why don't we inject unhealthy quantities of steroids into cell phones and replace computers! That's an upgrade and upgrades outsell downgrades every time!"
http://www.ubuntu.com/phone/ubuntu-for-android
Note that this works by auto-selecting a GUI appropriate for the screen and hardware you are running at the time. Unbelievably brilliant and obvious. That's why Microsloth never thought of it.
Had Microsoft done this they would own the world. People would be asking "what was an Apple?" There's no danger of that though.