[loumf]

I think of it a different way. The consumer market (if Microsoft doesn’t value it) is holding them back from paying tech debt. The fear of regressions is a good reason to not touch stuff.

If you do value a market and ignore this, the consequences can be fatal (see Sonos). But if you don’t, then doing the minimum is rational.

[apples_oranges]

I think it’s just like Steve Jobs said: they have no taste. That never changed and it causes them to fail time and again with innovations

[__aru]

I actually think Microsoft is often ahead of it's time with it's consumer-facing products, but executes very poorly. So they have good foresight, but "very bad taste" when it comes to execution.

Microsoft was early to making tablets, smartphones, living room PCs, etc. They just royally screw up the execution of each product category every time.

Maybe it'd be a fun idea for to take some of Microsoft's failed consumer ideas, and revisit them 10-15 years later to see if some other company successfully executes on it.

[drw85]

Making a bicycle with square wheels is not being ahead of it's time, though.

Most of the time MS is actually delivering something successful is when they are very late or bought it and put their sticker on it.

[layer8]

The problem with the last 15 years of Windows is the way that Microsoft did touch it, a lot.