I don't really think it is only that. My first OS was DOS and i used Win3.1 a lot and while i do have nostalgia for those two, i think Win9x was better in terms of GUI design and as others have mentioned, the peak was around Win2K (though not everything was going upwards, i still think border-on-hover introduced in Win98 was backwards and essentially the herald of featureless form-over-function modern flat design).
And ever since i started using a window manager in Linux (somewhere in early 2000s) i really liked Window Maker's style even though i never used NeXTSTEP for many years (in fact the only time i used it i was kinda disappointed at how primitive it was in terms of window management compared to Window Maker :-P).
And ever since i started using a window manager in Linux (somewhere in early 2000s) i really liked Window Maker's style even though i never used NeXTSTEP for many years (in fact the only time i used it i was kinda disappointed at how primitive it was in terms of window management compared to Window Maker :-P).