You sort of answered your own question I feel Robert, I feel a lot of it is just about the fact that they've been around longer than a lot of people who uses the tech in the first place. Windows for example simply isn't "cool", but very few will actually question how important it is or say it's necessarily bad or anything, it just is too "basic" now for many people.
On the other hand, I feel Microsoft sort of sports many images depending on the division and each of those divisions sorta fight their own battles. I mean that WP for example is often just discarded in most peoples heads over Android and iPhone, but then again Xbox and Windows are marketleaders, pretty much. Now it's just cool to dislike the new Xbox so people jump on the bandwagon. PS3 was in a similar'ish situation when it came out, though. Then we have Windows, which I feel is quite self explanatory too. It's just so default part of modern life already that it has lost any shine it potentially has had, but at the same time only the most hardcore hipsters will try to talk down the importance of Windows
And with the whole new "8"-thing going on I feel they are trying to unify the image more and make it feel more like a one product. When you quickly think about it, it sometimes feels even weird that it's the same company behind all three products I mentioned. I love WP but the WP team seems painfully inefficient and slow at doing anything.