In my opinion, this just seems like another case of Microsoft chasing someone else's taillights again. In lieu of an actual strategy, they're just kind of throwing a bunch of things against the wall in the hopes something will stick.
Apple was able to pull this off because they were starting largely from scratch OS wise. They already made the decision to kick users and developers both in the teeth over there being no real compatibility between OS X and OS Classic. Plus Apple still has a market share that is barely statistically significant, so even if they kick the entire userbase in the teeth, it's generally people who are pretty committed to the platform already. Microsoft does not have any of these things, and is going to likely annoy its large corporate customers, who aren't interested in rolling out updates very often.
Microsoft needs to do some soul searching, IMO anyway. Figure out what kind of company it wants to be, and then spin off everything that doesn't fit with that vision. So assuming they want to be a software company, they should then dump the Xbox, Surface, and everything that isn't directly related to software. Spin them off into a separate company dubbed Microsoft Hardware or something, or even just sell them off to someone else like IBM sold it's computer business to Lenovo. This leaves the company free of distractions, and able to focus on their new mission.