The difference in 2002 is that Gates actually meant it, I know this because I got to see it first hand. Windows XP SP3 was all about security. Vista introduced

The difference in 2002 is that Gates actually meant it, I know this because I got to see it first hand. Windows XP SP3 was all about security. Vista introduced massive improvements with things like UAC, ASLR, Bitlocker, secure boot and add-ons like EMET that eventually got rolled into Windows itself. At the same time, there were massive changes in the engineering culture in terms of the secure development lifecycle. A lot of other, arguably sexier feature work took a back seat to get all of these things across the line.