I think part of the problem is that they actually try to push innovation (e.g. new UI paradigms with Metro), but then run into several vocal minorities, backtra

I think part of the problem is that they actually try to push innovation (e.g. new UI paradigms with Metro), but then run into several vocal minorities, backtrack a bit and try to find a middle ground. From the outside, it then looks like a random zig-zag course, but it's much more an iterative minimization of "mean square pain" among their fairly large user base. Communication could often be better though.