You say 'boring' like it's a bad thing
"The unsurprising result is that Windows continues its tradition of boring, buggy software, and consistently fumbled updates."
It's an operating system. It's supposed to be boring. The expectation that it could or should be otherwise is a big part of the problem here. MS is trying to make Windows 10 exciting with its twice-a-year feature updates, and that's a big part of why it's crap.
The only time an OS would be exciting would be if the old one was so bad that everyone is excited at how the new one actually does what an OS is meant to do, which is to make other software look good and to generally be invisible. That's why 95 was such a big thing... Windows 3.x was so bad, UI wise, that having an OS that made sense was exciting.
Give me as much 'boring' as possible in an OS. An OS that installs updates whenever it wants, is constantly changing the feature set whether I want it to or not, and seeks to control my PC, requiring me to erect all sorts of defenses to maintain a modicum of control over my own property, is not boring. An OS with a weird UI that keeps changing between PC and phone, with the ribbon on many of the PC bits, and with so much flatness that it's hard to tell what is what is a lot of things, none of them particularly good, but it's not boring.
Wrestling alligators every day before I can get to my front door wouldn't be boring either. Exciting? Certainly, but that doesn't mean I would want to do it. Boring would be a huge improvement.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
