[angstrom]

Their culture - across many products and many years - has been one of making complicated things more complicated.

That's just the side effect of the backwards compatibility which proved so successful throughout the 90s, not as a design or marketing goal I assure you.

There's a limit to how backward compatible you can be without stepping on the feet of the applications that came before while still pushing innovative new ideas.

[gruseom]

That's just the side effect of the backwards compatibility

I don't think this can be true, because the same culture is evident in their new technologies as in their upgrades. As I said, look at any issue of MSDN Magazine.