But what I see is a gargantuan drop-off. A much wider range of variation than you'd normally expect, and mostly partitioned to different segments of the business.

Painting with broad strokes, Microsoft's products are fairly consistently "fine". Lately perhaps they've skewed towards "pretty good". But generally you know what you're going to get. Whereas Apple's products can be anywhere from unparalleled to embarrassing.

I've always attributed that user-tradition as a Jobs byproduct; he was a unifying force for the user experience and that role hasn't been filled since his passing. There are lots of hands involved with many projects, but it feels there's no point-person or champion on this for many years.

From going back to dongle hell of the 90's via USB-C, to the conflicting marketization of the macOS products, the connectors proliferating on the iOS standards(now lightning and USB C!), the conflating of iOS apps into macOS space, dropping magsafe; it doesn't feel very user friendly when you start getting into the details.