You misunderstand Microsoft. They listen to their customers probably more than any other software company I know. Unfortunately, they have way more customers th

You misunderstand Microsoft. They listen to their customers probably more than any other software company I know. Unfortunately, they have way more customers than any other software company I know. Hence the feature creep. They'll pretty much add anything people ask for (especially if people = big companies paying $75/Office seat). The definition of "what they do well" is Office, and in particular the fact that it's a jack of all trades, and a master of most. As for the default font, I believe it's actually Calibri, which is a great sans serif font. Personal preference will dictate whether it's appropriate for your uses, but that's why it's a dropdown menu and not a hardcoded value. If I had to guess why they left Times New Roman, I would guess because based on their collected statistics more people use sans serif fonts, or maybe just that it's more readable. Also, TNR is pretty ugly.