Even before the introduction of the Macintosh, several companies had begun to create a graphical operating system for the IBM PC and compatibles. In one sense, the Apple developers had an easier job because they were designing the hardware and software together. The Macintosh system software had to support only one type of diskette drive, one type of video display, and two printers. Implementing a graphical operating system for the PC, however, required supporting many different pieces of hardware.
Moreover, although the IBM PC had been introduced just a few years earlier (in 1981), many people had grown accustomed to using their favorite MS-DOS applications and weren't ready to give them up. It was considered very important for a graphical operating system for the PC to run MS-DOS applications as well as applications designed expressly for the new operating system. (The Macintosh didn't run Apple II software primarily because it used a different microprocessor.)
(Petzold: pp. 371-372)
We're still dealing with this problem. Notice that both Linux and Windows have to support a vast array of hardware devices, which Apple doesn't have to worry about. When people talk about the smooth Apple experience, they are simply not comparing apples to apples —yeah, I know, bad pun. Additionally, in the case of Windows, the developers had to deal with backward compatibilty for MS-DOS apps until quite recently —was it Windows XP the first release that finally bropke away from it? Sure, that still doesn't change the reality that one product provides a better experience than the other, but it should definitely put things in perspective when what we discuss is the relative merits of the software developers involved in these projects.
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