The difference between Microsoft and Apple: Apple would never have had the 64 GB one, because of this issue. They would just have the bigger drive, and charge more money for it.
If you sell a version of your product that is going to leave a bad taste in the mouth of a large percentage of your users... is it worth selling?
Do you remember when digital cameras were first starting to use flash memory? You could buy models that didn't have card slots but only included a few MB of flash. Nothing says quality like a new expensive digital camera that can only take less than 20 pictures. I bet a lot of people were unhappy about that.
Apple tends to be very opinionated, but they usually don't release near crippled products. They're willing to forgo the low-end sales to ensure a better experience.
This is just an odd decision. Why not ship with 96 GB and put some of that (say the 20GB system restore partition and the hibernate file) on a 32 GB partition that isn't shown to the user.
This seems like a very poor choice on Microsoft's part. Some consumers won't care, some consumers will get feel ripped off, no consumers seem better off.
