> Is google singling out IE users?

Firefox defaults to google's search, IE doesn't (at least until the OEM gets paid).

I guess I'd call that paper an example of large amounts of sloppy guesswork. He doesn't make any observations of an actual Vista box to see if any of his conjectures or expected outcomes were true. Overall the paper hasn't aged well. It's like claiming that new cars can only go a max of 20 mph while commuters are daily using them and going 55 on the Interstate. Occationally someone has a engine malfunction or runs out of gas and suddenly believes "He was right! My car can't go 55", immediately forgetting what they just did yesterday, but that's religion for ya.

It more then a style choice, it's a reflection of the customer base and support model.

Windows does corporate support which forces there to be a large number of fixes are done for individual customers or given out only if you a specific problem (to minimize risk to the general population and lower testing costs). This prevents a single release wide number that could be incremented. The service pack release collapses all these combinatorial configuration possibilities back into a single point and sometimes adds back ports of features in later OS releases.

Apple on the other hand doesn't really do corporate support, so they can go with the simpler model of keeping everyone on the same linear update branch.