There is a general lean for tech companies to put things on the cloud. Things like iCloud applications are ran through a web browser, thus PC compatible. Likewise, Microsoft 365 is a cloud based Office.
Will you ever be able to take a Mac program and install it on a Windows PC or vis-versa? Never will happen. The closest anyone will ever get is Virtual machines.
Anyway, Windows 8 isn't so bad. It hides things, but once you get used to the new interface it really isn't that bad and still runs all the Windows 7 software. Microsoft isn't like Apple where they can just abandon a platform and force people to upgrade immediately. There is still a huge install base of Windows XP and even Windows 2000 machines. Probably the one thing that keeps Microsoft from really innovating the OS is that pesky backward compatibility issue.
And yes, there are machines that require Windows 8 or later. Can fall into two reasons, lack of GPT support or simply there are no drivers for the components. I've already ran into a Samsung laptop that I downgraded to Windows 7 and then discovered that the Windows 8 drivers would not work and there were no Windows 7 drivers. Even generic drivers would not get some of the component to work. (USB 3 ports are one example).
Just upgrade to 8.1 and make it look like 7 as much as you can. Get used to the new interface, which is really geared around touch screens, but doesn't require it.
