At the risk of sounding horribly naive, I don't understand why we rarely if ever see this kind of mind-blowing innovation flowing out of Microsoft in the form of consumer products. Vista is such a pain in the ass to use (when it works), and yet they have this awesome software in-pocket that'll take years to reach a consumer product (I would guess).

The only ground-breaking consumer software product that's come out of Microsoft recently has been (arguably) the new version of Office, which is actually trying to innovate in the already saturated domain of desktop publishing. The new Office interface shows some really high-level innovation in terms of usability and design, imho.

Anyway, it's just interesting (and frustrating) to me that they DO make some interesting and innovative products, but that these rarely reach the consumer market in a form that is still innovative and usable.

Sign... perhaps they're just suffering from a bit of Industrial Ivory Tower...

Microsoft's problem is that historically it has gotten away with marketing low quality products. However, these days consumers expect their products to work flawlessly - Google, and Apple are ruining it for M$$. I wouldnt be surprised if the consumer product that comes out of this tech is not as good as it could be ... thats just the M$$ way.

I have felt for a while that if M$$ doesnt get its act together, this could be the beginning of the end.