] To get an idea of how Windows got to be such a mess,
] think of it as a house that was built on an island in the
] middle of a lake, deep in the countryside.

It is a good metaphor, except that it excludes the part about Microsoft building it for such an environment, and then marketting it in Shanghai, with big city features making it seem like the appropriate location. One could argue that Window 95 was not a Network-Focused operating system, but by 2000 they were getting in trouble about the webbrowser-as-inextractable-OS-element, and that doesn't make any sense without the intent to put it in a hostile urban environment.

No, he doesn't need to bash Microsoft... but it comes off as praise as expressed.