That's not the history as I remember it. Windows 95 came before NT4, and it was the first to introduce the famous "start button" visuals. 95 however was still based on the old kernel and it crashed a lot. NT4 came later, with the same visuals, but due to the NT kernel it was remarkably stable.
Windows NT4 was much more stable than the previous Win3.11->95->98->Me line, but - primarily due to moving Graphics drives into the kernel for performance - was considerably less stable than its immediate predecessor in the NT line, Windows NT 3.51.
While 95 introduced long filenames to a mainstream audience, it was very unstable. MacOS 7.5 was not perfect (and the PPC migration brought some instability), but it was not nearly as bad as 95. NT4 had a kernel internally more advanced than MacOS classic, but most users wouldn't be able to tell.
Microsoft's GUI offerings started to really compete with Apple's with 95 and matured through NT4 and 2000.
Apple had a good product, if you compare it with what the PC market was offering. OS8 and 9 were well-rounded OSs that competed mostly against the 9x family, as XP, which made the NT kernel mainstream, wasn't launched until after OSX.
